We are all familiar with the distinguished professor who turns to the assistant professor to ask "What did you think of the exhibition?" while ignoring the lecturer standing next to him. This gesture, a familiar one in any department, represents the power dynamic that motivates the current blog war about the MLA and non-tenured faculty.
The reason that the accusations have become so vituperative and the reason that some bloggers make the ultimately outlandish comparison between tenure and white privilege is because non-tenure track faculty have in most practical terms been made invisible within the university, even as they have become an ever increasingly vital component of its operation. Lecturers feel betrayed by senior faculty precisely because their more established colleagues implicitly affirm the economic system that reduces adjuncts to hired help every time they treat them as inferiors, both intellectually and administratively.
The fury at the MLA arises from the no doubt mistaken belief that the organization could act politically to defend and represent the academic under-class. Recent history shows, the power of the MLA stops at the dean's keyboard. Throughout the public debate about adjuncts and the MLA, too many senior faculty have stated that they support the claims of the non-tenured, but that they are powerless to change the university system. "I'd like to help you, but the dean would allow it." That statement is the moment of betrayal as far as adjuncts are concerned. Explaining that ten years ago, we wrote a report about the mistreatment of lecturers no longer suffices to establish a sympathetic solidarity between the academic classes. Senior, i.e. tenured, faculty have to go beyond the shrug of sympathy.
We need to include the entire faculty in our political agenda and our intellectual discourse.
No comments:
Post a Comment