In response to Michail's critique of my response to the original post let me offer the following. 1. I don't think/believe that university teaching is the only unalienated application of academic training. Indeed, I spent three years working as an intellectual worker for the unions, and another year working for the government in which I was less alienated than I have in my 30 some odd years teaching at the academy. 2. There is no evidence in my experience that the existing professoriate attempt to restrict the entry of new, intelligent recruits. We have just averted a strike, the most important issue of which was our demand that the university hire replacements for retirees and not fire older members just because they were 'old'. (i.e. over 69) Within hours of our strike deadline, the Univerisity administration was willing to concede on ++every issue++ except hiring young members to replace retiring members. We were willing to go on the picket line for this principle, ** the last principle the administration was willing to concede**. I am not sure of the details but as a last 11th hour compromise we got a promise that in a letter of agreement (for those less familiar with industrial relations, a letter is less enforceable than a collective agreement clause) would ensure replacement of retirees with new, tenure stream employees. What bothers me is this alegation that existing faculty is either protecting its position somehow or its elite status by descriminating against new, particularly brilliant, hires. From my experience, this is a crock! I have been on our hiring committee for 4 or 5 of the last several years and _never_ have we ever turned down any candidate whose credentials were even adequate, never mind superior. Sometimes we have ranked a woman ahead of a man for reasons of gender equality, but not because of competence. This idea that we discriminated against someone because the applicant was superior to our faculty members, is such nonsense that it hardly deserves to be recognized. What pen-l members must recognize is that labour market discrimination, whether it appears in academic labour markets or in primary or secondary labour markets, is a function of capitalist discrimination and has nothing to do with the preference of workers, academic or otherwise. This association of adademic discrimination with the professoriate is the same as the association of slavery with slave ship owners. Who owns the ship determines the terms of passage. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba Ps. We still need to support the profs at the university of Brandon who went out on strike today on many of the same issues we fought for, and won, her at Manitoba.
