Here a pretty astonishing disconnect: A few days ago /The New York Times/ ran an "essay" (really a book review) a few days about entitled "The End of Tenure?"The second paragraph reads: "At a time when nearly one in 10 American workers is unemployed, here's a crew (the complaint goes) who are guaranteed jobs for life, teach only a few hours a week, routinely get entire years off, dump grading duties onto graduate students and produce "research" on subjects like "Rednecks, Queers and Country Music" or "The Whatness of Books." Or maybe they stop doing research altogether (who's going to stop them?), dropping their workweek to a manageable dozen hours or so, all while making $100,000 or more a year. Ready to grab that pitchfork yet?" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/books/review/Shea-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=tenure&st=cse
Then, in today's /Inside Higher Ed/, Cary Nelson of the AAUP writes: "The only true solidarity among current faculty members requires granting tenure to all long-term contingent faculty members. All. One hundred tenured slots for 9,500 contingent faculty members is not solidarity. It's a mud-wrestling contest with tenure as a prize. Nor does a tiered division between two classes of faculty --- 50 percent tenured and 50 percent expendable, or 75 percent tenured and 25 percent contingent --- constitute the principled structural change we need. What do we gain if we set as our ideal the permanent diminishment of most of our colleagues' lives? What good is a compromised ideal? Why congratulate ourselves for selling out?" http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/09/07/nelson It is not hard to see in advance who would win this fight if push came to shove. Morevoer, it is hard to see how push will not come to shove in the current political and economic climate. Although I have some sympathy for Cary Nelson's sense of justice, his advice sounds to me like the kind of suicidal bravado one sometimes hears in a group of people who are convinced that defeat is inevitable, and it is just a matter of time before the hammer comes down. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 [email protected] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ========================== --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=4664 or send a blank email to leave-4664-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
