Since last October I've received hundreds of letters from readers of this column. Some were angry. Most were encouraging and sympathetic. Many had compelling points to make about the academic-job system.
If we regard this mail as an unscientific survey of prevailing concerns among academic workers, several major themes emerge:
The economic conditions of academic labor:
- "Last spring I taught eight sections of lower-level core courses at five different institutions ... I still couldn't afford basic health care."
- "I refuse to donate to my alma mater. They are already getting free labor; why should I give them anything?"
- "I would estimate that 10 to 15 per cent of grad students in my school are homeless. They just can't afford housing. They live in cars and wash themselves in public restrooms."
Generational tensions between the academic "haves" and "have-nots":
- "A lot of faculty who were hired when an M.A. was sufficient for tenure feel threatened by applicants who in the last year delivered more conference papers and published more than they have in their careers."
- "Even though I already have a book at a major press, I am treated cruelly and unfairly by colleagues who barely had a dissertation when they inked their contracts."
- "Departmental parties are all the same: tenured sots condescending without realizing that most of us don't particularly like them nor believe anymore in the mythology of apprenticeship."
Some writers expressed unfocused anger and despair, while a few directed their anger at me:
- "C'mon, you're at Harvard. You ARE the privileged elite. You wouldn't have this column otherwise. What gives you the right to complain?"
- "You do yourself a real disservice criticizing the elders of the profession. They made it what it is today" [irony not intended].
On the other hand, the majority of letter writers expressed warm support:
- "You're not writing into the void; thousands of us are having the same experience."
- "I am damn proud of you for speaking out" [from a former adviser].
- "I have been at this for two years, and now I'm blacklisted. Good luck to you."
- "You certainly told it like it is! Don't let the angry voices keep you from writing."
- "The reports of your academic death are exaggerated."
- "There is life after academe. You will survive, and, I suspect, thrive."
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of "going public" with the labor crisis has been the dozen or so invitations I received to have coffee or lunch, some of which I accepted. Some people felt they had to tell me their story face to face, often with detailed information about conspiracies at work to destroy the profession (or me personally).
I even had one meeting on the mall in Washington, D.C., that was oddly like the scene in Oliver Stone's film JFK in which Donald Sutherland reveals the secrets of the countergovernment to Kevin Costner: "I'm not going to tell you who I am or what I represent, except to say that you are close." He was another graduate of Harvard who believed he had been branded an "agitator," and had been shut out of the profession. He named names and warned that if I didn't change course, I would be punished as he had been.
I don't know if there is an organized conspiracy afoot to destroy higher education, but that's certainly what it looks like to some.
Thirty years of increasing exploitation has filled a vast reservoir of hatred for the academy. Black humor is common among the academic proletariat, but sometimes the humor seems ominous:
- "I've been waiting for more and more incidents of deadly violence to break out in academia. We may soon replace 'going postal' with 'going adjunct.'"
One thing seems clear from all these letters: the culture of trust has evaporated. At the same time, the gap between tenured faculty members and adjuncts, in terms of income, is widening. Although tenured faculty, in general, are underpaid, they earn on average from five to 12 times as much as the average adjunct for equal work.
As a result of this disparity, most tenured faculty members are institutionally conservative even while they are politically radical in their scholarship and teaching. To that extent, they are hypocrites and cowards. They've left it to the most vulnerable members of the profession to do all the fighting.
One letter writer seemed to articulate perfectly the rage of this generation. She accuses the tenured elites:
"Instead of protecting your so-called apprentices, you let this new system creep into place. You stood idly by and protected your own privileges while the profession fell into ruin. Don't expect civility in return for destroying the lives of a generation of talented people. The enlightened practitioners of civil disobedience can only keep the extremists (and their backers in the unions) from playing hardball for so long without major concessions. From now on, expect real trouble on every large campus and at every major conference."
Who would have predicted that academic life at the turn of the millennium would seem oddly akin to the paranoia and rage of the militia culture of rural America? Academe will not be for the faint of heart in the years to come.
Let's hope some of the pressures can be relieved before matters progress beyond mere incivility.
Bill Pannapacker, a graduate student at Harvard University, can be contacted through his Web site at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~pannapac He is seeking contributors for a book on the academic labor crisis. Information can be found at his homepage.
