Archive for category Higher Ed
Revisiting the Digital Divide
Posted by johnacaseyjr in Higher Ed, Updates on October 15, 2012
Much of the research on the “digital divide” focuses on individual users and demographic groups that have traditionally had limited access to technology. A recent study by the Pew Research Center continues this trend. Their findings indicate that thanks to mobile technology, specifically the smart phone, internet use among all social groups is increasing. Fear of technology is also fading as once excluded groups learn digital literacy.
Although these studies are heartening to read, indicating gradual progress towards greater access to technology for all citizens, they fail to take into account the digital divide that exists within educational institutions. While television, radio, and internet news providers have been busy bashing the teacher’s unions and tearing apart the educational policies of “No Child Left Behind,” precious little has been said about the uneven technological infrastructure of our nation’s schools.
For every school with access to i Pads and state of the art computer labs, there are hundreds with only a handful of aging computers (usually in the library) that are available on a first come first served basis for internet research and word processing. This problem is endemic throughout the current educational system, reaching as far as the ranks of higher education.
Right now I am writing this blog post at home on my personal laptop. Partially this decision was made voluntarily, as I wanted to write during the evening in the comfort of my home and not use work resources for non-work related activities. Even if I had wanted to write this post earlier at work, however, I could not.
I share an office at my institution with four other Non-Tenure Track Faculty (NTT as we’re calling them these days). At one point, we had a desktop computer that was five years old. Not surprisingly given the CPU intensive nature of WEB 2.0, this machine died during the summer semester.
In its place, next to the CRT monitor (i.e. the kind that looks like an old TV), mouse, and keyboard of the old computer, sits a seven-year old laptop–a PowerBook G4. This machine was wrangled from the department after over a month of hectoring our IT guy. I had never even heard of this particular brand of Apple laptop so I took the time to search for information about the system on Wikipedia. It turns out that the “new” computer in my office is the precursor to the now ubiquitous Mac Book.
With its limited CPU power and an outdated browser, the most I can do with this laptop is check my email and read websites that aren’t overly graphics heavy or interactive. On most days I go upstairs to the computer lab and wait to use one of the three computers in our departmental computer lab. I also have the option (unlike most of my colleagues) of using the computer in my other office where I serve as an undergraduate studies program assistant.
Added to these frustrations is the lack of wireless internet access in either of my offices, which prohibits me from bringing my personal i Pad to work and getting around the technological limitations of my work space. At one point, I was able to “hack” my way into the network by plugging the internet cable in my teaching office into my own laptop, but as of today our internet connection there is down. This also makes it impossible to use the telephone in that room as my institution switched a few years ago from regular phone service to VOIP (voice over internet protocol).
If we move from my early twentieth century office into the classrooms where I teach, the situation is only slightly better. In a course I designed to teach digital literacy and multi-modal writing to my students, the most advanced technology in any of my three classrooms is a flat screen monitor with a VGA cable that allows me to plug in my own laptop and display its screen on a 25″ television. Wireless access is available in all three rooms, but that assumes that my students can afford to bring their own technology to class as I have.
“Plug and Play” is better than nothing in a world where technological access is no longer a luxury but a precondition for education to take place. Yet it places the burden of technology’s cost on the students and educators. Not only is this unfair, it also sends a strange message to our students: “You need to be educated for the jobs of the 21st century, but we will not provide the tools.” No wonder self-learning is coming back into fashion. Why pay for school when you can buy a laptop and let the internet teach you the skills needed to survive in a tech-driven world?
Now I should perhaps qualify my statement/rant above by reiterating the fact that I am a NTT faculty member. I’m also an English Professor. Perhaps things are different for the TT faculty in my department or are significantly better in other programs at my institution. My suspicion, however, is that while the technological infrastructure might be less antiquated than what I described above it is still inadequate to meet student needs.
When we talk about the digital divide, we need to remember that surfing the internet is a skill easily learned alone at home. Using the web to your advantage, however, is a skill that should be learned collectively in the classroom. Regrettably, this can’t happen when many educators work in an environment designed to teach Baby Boomers to fight the Red Menace.
Criticality and the Rebirth of the Public Sphere
Posted by johnacaseyjr in Higher Ed on May 24, 2012
Tonight I attended a talk by University of Chicago Professor Bernard Harcourt at the Gleacher Center in downtown Chicago. His talk was part of the Graham School of Continuing Studies Great Conversations seminar series. The subject of his talk was Freedom and Education–the seminar series theme for this quarter–and he took the opportunity to explore more fully several themes in his most recent book The Illusion of Free Markets as he walked the audience through his understanding of what the terms “freedom” and “education” meant to him as well as how they were inter-related.
Providing the audience a clear outline to his presentation, Professor Harcourt began by outlining three theoretical points that he believed were central to any discussion of freedom and education. The first was that “freedom” as the term is currently used is deliberately ambiguous. This ambiguity allows economists to use the phrase “free market” when (in Harcourt’s view) “in the economic realm freedom has no role.” He argued that in order for freedom to have a meaning the term needed to be replaced by something more precise. His second point involved the term “education,” which he also felt to be hopelessly imprecise in both the academic realm as well as our everyday lives. He contended that “we need to be critical of the claim that education makes us free” as it could and often is used as a tool of oppression. The primary example he provided the audience was an anecdote involving his son’s English assignment to write about a moment where he had “matured” or grown from “idealism” to “reality.” Harcourt saw this is as the first of many attempts by the educational system to circumscribe not simply the content of education but how that very concept was understood (i.e. a reality principle to the unreasonable id of childish creativity). Harcourt’s final theoretical observation involved the phrase “free speech.” In his view “all speech is costly,” at the very least requiring money for a venue or external support from a school or organization to grant it credibility and (thereby) an audience.
Having addressed his theoretical points, Harcourt moved on to examine what he saw as three key historical moments relevant to the topic of freedom and education in the 21st century. The first of these was the “corporatization of Higher Education,” a topic that I have written about on this blog several times, typically in relation to Adjunct Labor. To this phenomenon he linked the expansion of free online courses (referred to now as MOOCS or Massive Online Open Courses), which are increasingly being relied upon by students who could not afford the cost of rising college tuition. The final historical moment he referred to was the emergence of the Occupy movement whose teach-ins and recent Peoples Summit offered another venue for public learning that was dependent neither on the traditional college campus or online course portal.
These events combined with the theoretical issues Harcourt examined at the beginning of his talk all seemed to point (in his view) to a “political reawakening” in the United States and the re-emergence of a truly public sphere. The value of both developments, according to Harcourt, was in their potential to awaken “criticality” in the general populace. What he meant by that term was something analogous to what Liberal Arts scholars have traditionally called “critical thinking.” Namely, the ability to look at things as they are and imagine them in a different way. It also involves in Harcourt’s view the ability to retain a radical openness that seeks to ask the right questions as much find the answers to our current dilemmas.
Harcourt’s talk was cogent and powerfully delivered. The question and answer period, however, showed that the audience was hungry for more direction. We are all peering into the crystal ball that is the future right now and everyone (including Harcourt) is slightly baffled by what they are seeing. Sitting on the edge of action, one can be forgiven for being impatient. I know I am. But the message of the evening seemed to be pay attention and keep an open mind. And make sure to share what’s on your mind with other thinkers in the public square.
If you need a public square to share your thoughts and live in Chicago, there are many places you can occupy your mind. One is at the numerous teach-ins and general assemblies held by Occupy Chicago. Another is the never dull “playground for people who think”–the College of Complexes–at which I am a regular. Stop by at both. All are welcome. Just bring an open mind.
Dear Applicant
Posted by johnacaseyjr in Higher Ed on May 22, 2012
Just when you thought it was over, rejection letter season kicks back into high gear. Or in this case, rejection emails. For those of you who have been on the Academic job market at least once, you know exactly what I am talking about. Those mysterious letters or emails from schools you applied to over six months ago that inform you of your rejection for a job that you long gave up on.
My favorite so far came in yesterday. I’ve pasted the text here with the school and position ID information deleted:
Dear Applicant,
Thank you for your recent application for the Assistant Professor of English with the University of [Blank].
Your application has been carefully examined to evaluate your combination of education and experience in relationship to the specific requirements of this position. After a thorough review of all the applications we have selected another candidate who we feel best meets the needs of both this position and our department.
We appreciate your interest in finding employment with [Blank], and we wish you success in your efforts to find a rewarding position.
Sincerely,
English
Do not reply to this email. This is an automated email account which is not checked. Questions should be directed to the hiring official of English.
Is it just me or does this letter sound like it was generated by a spambot? Come on people. If you’re going to require a writing sample from me, the least you can do is craft a well-written rejection letter. One will do. Then you can cut and paste my name and yours into the template.
Have a good rejection story to share? Feel free to post it as a reply.
The Shrinking Middle–A Review of From Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities
Posted by johnacaseyjr in Higher Ed on April 19, 2012
The “crisis in Higher Education” has had so many studies written on it that its books alone could easily fill an entire library. Adding to this number is Richard DeMillo, a former Dean of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Chief Technology Officer for Hewlett Packard. In his 2011 book From Abelard to Apple, he makes a case that due to changes in both technology and educational cost those colleges and universities who reside “in the middle” of the Higher Education rankings should hasten to assess their current mission if they plan to survive.
Most of the schools in the middle addressed by DeMillo are state colleges and universities that flourished under the land grant act and the expansion of the pool of undergraduate students made possible by the G.I. Bill. Caught between the high prestige schools such as Harvard and M.I.T. and the for profit schools that have emerged in the latter half of the 20th century such as DeVry and the University of Phoenix, these schools in the middle are torn between “prestige envy” and a desire to be relevant to their prospective students.
DeMillo (as Jennifer Washburn before him in her book University Inc.) clearly illustrates that this push-pull between wanting to live up to the Germanic ideal of a University, a place where knowledge is studied and created for its own sake, and a desire to train students for specific careers has long dominated discussions of Higher Education. If nothing else, DeMillo’s book is useful for reminding us that the “end times” we feel that we face in 21st century Higher Ed are part of a much larger trajectory that is as much circular as it is a straight line. We are reliving many of the debates (DeMillo shows) that once dominated American discussions on the role of a college education in the early 20th century.
His book is non-linear in nature and provides a series of loosely interlocking vignettes that each provide a different piece of the puzzle necessary to prove his argument. It is not until the last chapter that DeMillo offers something of a blueprint for those leaders of colleges and universities in the middle who want to survive the coming extinction of the land grant institution.
The most pertinent suggestions he offers are to: Focus on what differentiates you from other institutions and establish your own brand. Then create a new balance between faculty interests and student interests using technology as well as locally created assessment tools to maintain it.
Although there isn’t much to argue with in DeMillo’s assessment of the problem, his solutions are problematic. Their heavy reliance upon the language of business enterprise makes me wonder if he believes there is any hope for the 19th model of the college and university imagined by Thomas Jefferson, Justin Morrill, and John Dewey. The ending of his book leaves one thinking that a “market correction” awaits in Higher Ed and that when the dust settles only the prestige institutions will be left with for profit online schools picking up most of the students once taught by the land grant school and community college.
From Abelard to Apple offers one more facet to our understanding of the problems in Higher Education that face the United States in the 21st century but it remains unable (as most of the books that preceded it) to offer a roadmap out of our current difficulties. This is not DeMillo’s fault but reflects a larger tendency in Higher Ed to overcomplicate the problem to hide its source. If everyone is to blame, than no one is to blame. We are all at fault and can therefore sit on our hands and feel bad for ourselves while sipping an over-priced latte.
Read DeMillo if you want to see another side of the problem but don’t bother if you want to find a way out.
Quality Over Quantity–Computer Assisted Grading Revisited
Posted by johnacaseyjr in Higher Ed on April 3, 2012
A Reuter’s report describes recent efforts to create computer software that could scan and grade common errors in student essays. Mark Shermis, Dean of the College of Education at the University of Akron, is supervising a contest created by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation that would award $100,000 to the programmer who creates an effective automated grading software.
Shermis argues that if teachers weren’t swamped by so many student papers in need of grading, they would assign more writing and student’s would greatly improve their written communication skills. He sees this new technology as an aide to the overworked writing teacher rather than a potential replacement.
Steve Graham, a Professor at Vanderbilt who has conducted research on essay grading techniques, argues, in contrast, that the replacement of writing teachers by grading software is not only “inevitable” but also desirable as “the reality is humans aren’t very good at doing this.”
As the writer of the Reuter’s article notes, talk about paper grading software is not new. It began in the 1960s. Now, however, technology has reached a level where such grading is not only possible but also probable. But the question still remains: Is it a good idea?
Leaving aside for a moment the question of faculty employment, machine grading sidesteps a more important question than how to get students to write more and grade that writing effectively. Namely–what is writing and who is responsible for teaching it.
In too many schools writing is viewed as the “problem” of the English department. Students are sent to writing classes to learn essay structure, research techniques, and grammar. Only the last of these is universal. The other two skill sets are discipline specific. I guess that explains why to my students everything they read is a novel and every paper a literary analysis. They’ve been taught after all that writing equals English.
If we really want students to learn not just writing but effective communication, parents, teachers, and administrators need to spread the responsibility for this instruction across the curriculum. Some schools already do this but most are content to leave communication training to literary scholars. Machines won’t change this. They will be programmed to evaluate whatever curriculum is currently in place. Until the curriculum is changed, the machine will not only replicate the error but multiply it.
Moving on to the issue of employment, part of my unease with a machine that grades papers is it would most likely put me out of a job. I have 48 student essays in need of grading that are staring at me right now as I pen this post. Of course, the curricular changes I suggest would more than likely have the same effect, with or without machine assistance. The way to counter this, however, is to lower class sizes.
This is the other aspect of the issue that is completely ignored by most research. If class sizes are lessened, not only will more teachers have employment but writing will become a less onerous task to teach and evaluate. It could also then be meaningfully integrated into the entire curriculum and not remain the purview of the English Department.
Would such changes cost a lot of money? Yes. But it is a good investment. Far better than the money we’ve wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan and the even larger sums of money we spend incarcerating drug offenders. It’s even better, dare I say, than the cost of a certain software currently being designed to solve all my problems.
Knowledge Is Power
Posted by johnacaseyjr in Higher Ed on February 11, 2012
Somewhere in the top drawer of my dresser is a metal insignia that reads Savoir C’est Pouvoir–Knowledge Is Power. That insignia was given to me by my uncle years ago when he left the 82nd airborne to return to civilian life. He had served for several years as an intelligence officer with his unit and that service was reflected on the insignia he wore on his maroon beret.
What is true for the armed forces is often equally true in other areas of life. In this case the quest to reform the conditions of teaching and learning in higher education. To achieve any kind of victory, it is first necessary to understand what exactly you are up against. Good data can save lives on the battlefield and it can shape for the better (or worse) the future of students and teachers in the college classroom.
The task to gather accurate intelligence on Adjunct labor conditions began with a vengeance last week as Josh Boldt, an Adjunct Professor of English at the University of Georgia and fellow attendee of the New Faculty Majority summit, created a Google docs spreadsheet where Adjunct faculty can list their salaries, benefits, and working conditions. Here for the first time the general public can see in one place how much Adjunct faculty make at institutions throughout the United States and (in some cases) the world. I’ve added my information to the spreadsheet. I’d encourage you to do so as well.
Reading through all the information on the spreadsheet is a bit daunting and at some point it will need analysis and visualization to work as an organizing tool, but I anticipate some great coalition building campaigns emerging from out of this data. Administrator’s can easily dismiss claims based on ethos and pathos but they can’t dismiss the logic of numbers. A quick scan of the data on this sheet shows that the median salary for Adjunct faculty is well below the suggested MLA guidelines and is far lower than the amount needed to sustain oneself let alone a family.
In a recent post to her Inside Higher Education Blog, College Ready Writing, Lee Bessette extols the benefits of this “crowdsourced” project on behalf of Adjuncts everywhere and I am inclined to agree with her. My only quibble is with her use of the word “hero.”
At the New Faculty Majority summit I was frequently the annoying pragmatist who pointed out the need for data and clear talking points not simply to push our adversaries back on their heels but also to energize the people we hope to form into a coalition to change higher education. Call it lamenting, kvetching, carping, whatever you like–the fact remains, I have been witness to and participant in ALOT of failed organizing campaigns. I’d like to think that I have learned something from those experiences and what I was saying came from that perspective.
We don’t need heroes in the quest to reform higher education. Instead we need patience, perseverance, and clarity of vision. These are the qualities that inspired Srdja Popovic in his campaign to topple Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic and later guided uprisings in places such as Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.
Let’s not kid ourselves. The status quo works for the people in power. If it didn’t, contingent labor wouldn’t be expanding and it wouldn’t be invisible to the general public. To make it stop working will require thousands of micro-strikes against it rather than one dramatic lunge. We are small but mighty. Non-violent guerilla war against corporate higher education has begun.
Passing the Buck–Higher Ed Style
Posted by johnacaseyjr in Higher Ed on December 2, 2011
The first lesson you learn upon entering the realm of Academia is that “it” is always someone else’s problem. What constitutes “it” depends on the specific setting of your conversation, but this ethos remains surprisingly consistent. If we are talking about a conference or journal article, “it” is the hegemonic forces that are “hiding,” “masking,” “distorting,” or otherwise oppressing someone or something. If we are talking about a department meeting, “it” is the College Administration (i.e. the Provost, Dean, President, or Chancellor) who just doesn’t understand the value of what we do. If we are talking about meetings at the upper echelons of Academia, “it” becomes the legislatures or broad social forces that hamper the leaders of colleges and universities from making much-needed changes. Everywhere in the Higher Education the message seems to be–Our hands are tied. We’re waiting for Godot to come and untie them.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Pozzo and Lucky. I’d invite them to dinner if I could and, of course, make them wait an insufferably long time for their food. But too much is at stake to continue the hand wringing and finger-pointing that has thus far passed for action on the problems in Higher Education. While we wait for Godot, our professions are increasingly marginalized. Many schools have already consolidated individual language departments into one massive campus unit and it is only a matter of time before those mega-departments are deemed “too costly.” Then work can be outsourced to private contractors to tutor students in foreign languages. Much maligned First Year Composition programs, quite frankly, are the only reason most English departments have remained intact. However, in some schools English is now part of a new department of Media and Communications or is blended with History or Language study. Seismic changes are coming soon to a humanities program near you and yet not many in the professions are agitating to be at the helm of these changes. Or, if they are, they have been shut out due to their marginalized place in the academy. As I’ve said before, the most active and engaged members of the profession right now are the non-tenured who are easily fired for making waves.
And so, at the risk of sounding monotonous, I ask again: WHAT IS TO BE DONE? My recent tiff with the MLA shows that their idea of action is a committee report. We don’t need any more data. There are probably giant warehouses along the Potomac filled with statistics and studies that no one has ever read let alone used. Picture the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The problems we face in Higher Education have not changed that much since I entered school as an undergraduate fifteen years ago. They have merely intensified.
When it comes to taking action, HASTAC and THAT Camp are among the few groups who seem to be getting it right. Embracing technology rather than fearing it or treating it as a fad, they are looking at how that aspect of Higher Education is changing the ways in which we understand grad school in the humanities and the nature of the profession as a whole. Also, unlike legacy organizations such as the MLA, they are doing something to make sure that students (both undergrad and grad) are learning the knowledge they need for the 21st century. If you haven’t been following these two groups, you should. HASTAC is holding a conference in Ann Arbor, MI as I write this post and I’m sure that more learning will take place there than at the MLA in Seattle this January.
Despite my frustrations with the current system in Higher Education, it would be foolish to deny all that I have gained from my experience as a student and a teacher. Among the lessons learned are two key truths. The first is how little I actually know and that I am dependent upon others to help me fill in the complete picture. This is something that Cathy Davidson addresses in her own way through examining attention blindness. The second is that keeping silent is not an option for intellectuals. The state paid a lot of money to educate me and I have a duty to society to share what I have learned. That is what I try to do both in the classroom and out. Scholarship is either vital, active in the world around us, or it dies in a sub-basement somewhere. What I do is of value to the non-academic community and I am proactive in asserting this.
In my next post, I’m going to address a specific set of solutions in Higher Education that affect me directly, listing some suggestions that I have for changing work conditions for Adjuncts. Until then I encourage you all to think about solutions rather than problems, changes that might be applied to whatever you do in the academy. And yes, I am looking squarely at you Occupy MLA. Your heart is in the right place, but some of your tweets make me want to scream. If you have any solutions specifically relating to Adjuncts that you’d like to see in my next post, send them along. We’re all in this boat together. We can either collaborate to fix the leak and survive or drown alone.
“Go Big or Go Home.”
Posted by johnacaseyjr in Higher Ed on November 28, 2011
The words quoted in my subject line are taken from a tweet by a participant at Occupy Cal events this Monday and they express a sense of frustration with the faculty in the University of California system for doing so little in response to the beating and pepper spraying of peaceful protestors at Berkeley and UC-Davis. Aside from a few courageous souls such as former poet laureate and Berkeley Professor of English Robert Hass, most have been content to passively serve the machine. Then, as if to add insult to injury, they pass resolutions or statements of condemnation.
One of the more recent entrants in this growing circus of bad faith is the Modern Language Association (MLA), whose President just issued a statement today condemning the actions of police on the UC campuses and calling for greater vigilance in the protection of free speech. As another member of the Twitterverse notes, “Search all your parks in all your cities / You’ll find no statues to committees.” You also won’t find great historical changes effected by words alone. Without the Union army, what good would have the Emancipation Proclamation done the slaves? Faculty are either blind to their power to effect change on campus or choose not to use it. Either way, they are letting students down during their hour of need.
Here in Chicago, somewhat ironically, violence has not been a problem on our campuses as much as crushing student debt and cutbacks to services. But again, faculty inaction has proved a plague to meaningful change. The only members of the faculty who seem willing to agitate are also the most vulnerable members of the institution–the Adjuncts. When I go out to Occupy Chicago and Occupy Colleges related events, I see hardly any tenured or tenure track faculty amongst the ranks. Instead they seem content to live in a bubble, writing and teaching on issues of social justice and freedom without actually participating in their defense. What are they so afraid of? Tenured faculty in particular have a job security of which I can only dream. Yet I put my livelihood on the line because I am scared for the future of my country as education becomes a scarce resource available only to the superrich. What will it take to stimulate them to action? Does their job have to be outsourced too?
Sometimes it seems like the majority of those in academia are indeed sitting in an Ivory Tower, looking down upon the current dysfunction in the land. I refuse to be one of those who simply shakes his head and waits for Godot because he’s not coming. We are Godot. The time to act is now while there is still something left to save.
Denizens in the Realm–A Response to Rosemary Feal
Posted by johnacaseyjr in Higher Ed on November 24, 2011
Director Feal:
Our main point of disagreement is not concerning the solutions to the problems we face in Higher Education but in how we interpret the nature and purpose of a “scholarly/professional organization.” Both in your remarks as well as those of First Vice President Michael Berube it is evident that the MLA leadership understands the organization as above the mundane concerns of daily life in the disciplines that it represents. These problems are apparently best left to the university and the individual members of the organization who should talk directly to their supervisors. Should the problem prove particularly intractable, you suggest, it should be taken to another organization whose job it is to deal with such problems: the AFT, COCAL, or AAUP.
Let’s pause for a moment to consider the logic of this position and its implications.
First, it is a self-congratulatory stance that evades the ways in which the MLA has itself helped to create the problems in Higher Education today. While tenured faculty slept, the ranks of those tenured shrunk to historic lows. While tenured faculty slept, Higher Education became a business rather than a duty owed to society. While tenured faculty slept, privatization found the university and outsourcing became the new norm. Why were they sleeping? Because their professional organization was convinced that scholarship was limited to the dissemination of works among friends. A few tried to shape themselves into public intellectuals and activists, but they were the exception rather than the rule. Most were content to let someone else take care of the problems in Higher Education or conduct a study telling others how to fix the problem. And we wonder why the phrase “it’s academic” has entered the idiom of United States English as a pejorative. Inaction is not the same thing as innocence. In fact, in my opinion, it is worse than the actions of those committing misdeeds.
Second, it places undue pressure upon the individual member to fix these problems on their own. The MLA asserts that it has provided a roadmap or “guidelines” for its members with which several MLA leaders were more than happy to supply me. They then tell me–“Find your way out of the problem. If that doesn’t work, go to your department head or supervisor. Go to your Provost or Dean. Show them the MLA roadmap and pressure them to help you out of the problem.” With all due respect, I’m a part-time worker without even a yearly contract. I’m hired by the course or by the semester. As an intellectual immigrant who is perhaps best understood as the academic equivalent of a day laborer, I somehow doubt that those in the university administration are all that interested in what I have to say and more than likely would fire me for making waves. In fact, I’ll be surprised if this series of letters to you, Director Feal, doesn’t lead to me losing my job. Yet another inequity of power that you seem content to overlook.
To this, you more than likely would retort, “Go to COCAL or the AFT. They will solve your problem and protect you from recrimination.” I’ve worked with Unions and grass roots labor ogranizations in the past such as Jobs With Justice. They would more than likely help me to retain my job as they are interested primarily in issues of labor law and workplace regulations. They are not, however, interested in issues specifically relating to deep rooted problems in the profession of English and Foreign Languages. Nor should they be. That is the job of the MLA. I am not asking the MLA to become a pseudo-Union or labor organization. I am asking the MLA to become an activist professional organization that backs its words with deeds. How many of these Deans, Provosts, and Department Heads that would never listen to my concerns about the steady decline of the profession are fellow members of the MLA? If the organization leadership can’t effectively speak to them on my behalf as an adjunct, then the MLA is not a true professional organization but an erudite book club.
This brings me to my final point about the membership of the organization. Just as every book has a target audience, every organization has an ideal member. Based on the responses I’ve received from the MLA that ideal member has the following characteristics. They are tenured or tenure track, work at a major state university or well-known private school, have held their position for three years or more, have published multiple books and/or articles with high visibility presses, and are more interested in research (per se) than issues of pedagogy.
So where does that leave the rest of us who do not fit the mold of the ideal MLA member? In my case, I seem to fit the “cranky graduate student” stereotype who will assuredly (the satraps believe) grow out of his awkward phase once he gets a tenure track job. Should that not happen then I will be politely asked to move to the back of the bus, joining one of the committees or discussion groups meant to address my “condition” of contingency. For what is the Committee on Contingent Labor if not a back seat on the bus. Those of us who do not fit the MLA ideal, regardless of how we are pigeonholed, are the Denizens of the realm. We are subject to the will and pleasure of the reigning aristocrats and apparently should be quiet and simply bask in the glory of being amongst the cognoscenti at annual conventions while they discuss issues relating to oppression in literature and culture. Does no one else see the irony here?
I can’t say that I am all that surprised by the elitism and willful blindness of the MLA. Legacy institutions tend to suffocate under the weight of their own bureaucracy and inertia which are born of outmoded traditions. I was, however, hopeful (for at least a moment) that my words would matter. Now I see that I was mistaken. My membership dues are good until the end of this coming year. After that date, I intend to let my membership lapse and use the money to join a professional organization that not only shares my ideas but allows me space to nurture my talents as a scholar-teacher. To all my true colleagues, those who have read this post and found yourself in essential agreement, I encourage you to do the same. Vote with your feet. Leave the MLA and join an organization that better meets your needs.
Should my words have caused offense, I can only remind you Director Feal that you wanted to know what was on my mind. Now I have told you. The secret’s out and we are right back to where I left our conversation on Twitter so many days ago. We will have to agree to disagree. The one rhetorical advance we seem to have made in this verbal figure eight is in exposing the exact nature of our disagreement. In doing so, my point has been deftly illustrated that we hold the same degree but live in different worlds. The ground upon which you stand is very different from mine and it affects your point of view. Perhaps if you came down into the valley, you’d see the village is on fire and would grab a bucket to help put out the flames. I’d like to believe that of you as you seem from your words a well-meaning person.
Sincerely,
John Casey, PhD
Adjunct Professor of English
University of Illinois at Chicago
and
Columbia College Chicago
An Open Letter to MLA Executive Director Rosemary Feal
Posted by johnacaseyjr in Higher Ed on November 21, 2011
UPDATE: I have removed from this letter two inappropriate analogies that compared the MLA’s failure to act directly on behalf of its non tenured members to citizens in Nazi Germany and Penn State during the sexual abuse scandal surrounding its football team. I apologize to both Rosemary Feal, Executive Director of the MLA, and Michael Berube, its First Vice President, for this needlessly inflammatory rhetoric. Neither comparison is justified. The rest of the argument stands awaiting an answer (12/06/2011).
I wrote this open letter in response to a spirited discussion that took place this Sunday between myself and MLA Executive Director Rosemary Feal via Twitter. Having worked in academia for some time, I hold no illusions as to the efficacy of my words. I wrote this open letter primarily because it was the right thing to do. Too many non-tenured faculty are silent out of fear. I refuse to keep living in darkness. Here is a little piece of light. Hic Placet.
An Open Letter to Rosemary Feal
Executive Director of the Modern Language Association
November 21, 2011
Director Feal:
On Sunday, November 20, we engaged in a spirited conversation via Twitter about the role of the Modern Language Association (MLA) in advocating for non-tenure track faculty. I claimed in my initial tweet that the organization was woefully behind the times and you asked me for specific examples to explain my position. To your initial inquiry, I replied with a list of requests, starting with a call for a change in attitude of tenure track faculty towards adjuncts and moving on to more tangible demands for equity of resources (i.e. computers and office space) and opportunities for professional development such as sabbatical leaves and the ability to design new courses. Your reply to my list of requests was that each item on it was a “university issue” and related to the “profession” more than the “organization” that is the MLA. Following this observation, you requested that I more fully articulate what I believed the MLA was not doing for its adjunct members. In your words, you asked me to tell you “what a scholarly/professional association like the MLA can do for its members.” I write this open letter to you in response to your request.
Perhaps the best place to begin is with your distinction between the university, the profession, and the MLA as a “scholarly/professional organization.” The way in which you reference these terms makes it unclear to me whether you believe these spheres overlap or are distinct regions within Higher Education. My impression from your tweets is that you view the MLA as a sacred space—distinct from the schools that employee its members and the disciplines it represents. As a long time student of the work of Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, I cannot help but see such a distinction as a fallacy of the highest order. It is impossible to separate “the profession” from the organization that represents its many branches. Likewise it is not possible to separate the MLA as “a professional/scholarly organization” from the campuses where that organization’s goals are (at least in theory) expressed. These spheres are interlocking and mutually supportive. Together they have long worked to enforce the status quo in research, teaching, training, hiring, and disciplinary structure.
In response to my complaints about the MLA’s support of the status quo, you brought to my attention the work of the executive council, delegate assembly, and various committees of the organization such as that on “contingent labor” (a term that I despise for its dehumanizing connotations). You assert that great strides have been made in the last five years. As a member of the MLA for over a decade, I can assert that from the ground upon which I stand little seems to have changed for the better in the academic landscape. In fact, conditions have grown steadily worse. Every committee report and nonbinding resolution only signals for the other half of academia a reality that they as non-tenured faculty already knew. Statistics and statements mock rather than comfort. They suggest failure and futility rather than foster hope and innovation. What we (i.e. the non-tenured members of the MLA) need Director Feal is not another proclamation, study, discussion group, or committee. What we need now more than anything is action.
You rightly assert that the MLA cannot effect structural changes in Higher Education on its own. Individual members, particularly tenured members, and the schools in which they work must shoulder their part of the burden. However, the tone of your remarks resounds heavily with the ethos of “passing the buck.” “We at the MLA have done our part,” you imply, “Others have dropped the ball and let you down. Our hands are clean.” Somehow the MLA manages, in your view, to stand pure and whole in the middle of an ocean of dysfunction in which its members swim. Perhaps they receive a magic towel to dry themselves off when they enter the halls of 26 Broadway or preen on the convention floor.
The time is now Director Feal. The MLA must lead or be left behind. If the organization is up to the challenge, here are five suggestions from a member of its heretofore silenced majority. Five ways to take action on behalf of non-tenure track faculty rather than writing more speeches on their “condition”:
1. Leadership positions in the MLA must be made to more accurately reflect the heterogeneous nature of its membership. How is it that an organization of nearly 30,000 individual members has no community college faculty let alone non-tenure track faculty in its main governing body—the executive council? Standing committees on contingent labor and community colleges not only represent tokenism at its worst but have all the trappings of a ghetto for paying members who don’t fit the MLA’s desired type (i.e The Research One Tenured Professor).
2. There must be consequences for members both individual and institutional who do not abide by the already existing resolutions on academic labor. One reason that talk about the “condition” of non-tenure track faculty is cheap is the official words of the MLA come with no power of enforcement. The MLA needs to back its words with action. Any member (individual or institutional) who does not abide by existing MLA resolutions on labor and workforce conditions should face potential expulsion from the organization or sanctions preventing them from accessing organizational resources. Moreover, violators of MLA labor standards should be placed on a public list on the organization’s website and members should be warned not to engage in business of any kind with those institutions.
3. The MLA should learn from organizations such as HASTAC how to better incorporate alternative academic job paths into its convention and also its governance structure. They should additionally lobby member institutions for changes in educational practice to make graduate students at the MA and PhD level aware of these nontraditional paths and give them an opportunity to train for jobs other than that of college teaching or research. For those already in the non-tenured faculty pool, the MLA should create funds to help those interested in doing so to retrain.
4. The MLA must quit its stance of neutrality. At best it is acquiescence to the abuse of non-tenure track faculty and at worst it is complicit in the destruction of Higher Education. The organization must become more active politically. Its presence must be vocal and visible in the state capitals as well as Washington, D.C. If the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) can do this, why can’t the MLA?
5. There should be limits to the number of times that a member can consecutively publish materials in the organization’s publications or present papers at the annual convention. This would allow MLA members outside the upper tier to more actively take part in the scholarly activities associated with the organization. Fresh voices provide fresh perspectives. These in turn will allow the organization to change in order to meet the new exigencies of the twenty-first century.
Failure to take action will simply precipitate the decline of the MLA, which has become for many of its members no more than an acronym for a citation style and a place to interview for jobs. I am cautiously optimistic that having gained your attention some of my suggestions might be at least considered if not implemented. Whether this blessed outcome happens or not, I am nonetheless grateful to be noticed and taken seriously by a member of the Research One elite. As an adjunct faculty member I am, quite frankly, used to being ignored or used as an example of what can happen to a profligate graduate student. This letter offers me the opportunity to remind those in the inner sanctum of academe that I am not tenured but I am faculty. I don’t have books published by scholarly presses but I am an intellectual. I am unable to obtain a tenure track job but I am not a loser. I am you but for a twist of fate and your patronizing resolutions hurt more than simply being ignored.
In closing, I would like to acknowledge the reality that there are consequences for me writing this open letter. As a non-tenured professor, I could easily have my contract “not renewed” (a handy euphemism for being fired) at any time for any reason. I take this risk of perhaps losing my job on behalf of future generations of students (both undergraduate and graduate) as well as the inspiring non-tenure track faculty who increasingly teach them. I have known in my eleven years of teaching as a Graduate Instructor and Adjunct Professor so many non-tenure track faculty that have given so much of their time and effort while receiving so little in compensation or recognition from their schools and the professional organizations that ostensibly represent them. It is for this silent majority that I speak today. I hope my words meet their approval.
Respectfully Yours,
John Casey, PhD
Adjunct Professor of English
University of Illinois at Chicago
and
Columbia College Chicago
John A Casey Jr 