This petition has been making the rounds, and has been signed by a number of philosophers and other scholars whom I respect (it's also been signed by some hypocrites, mindless ideologues, and clowns, but that's OK! [amusingly, Avital Ronell, Ms. Solidarity with graduate students, signed]). I encourage readers to take a look. Here's the core of the statement:
In recognition of the profound disruptions to faculty’s personal lives, their research, and their teaching, hundreds of U.S. universities have offered year-long extensions of the tenure clock to assistant professors. This is a welcome and indeed unprecedented step. But its uneven application across academic ranks is inequitable and unfair.
Without extending the same measures to non-tenure track (NTT) faculty and to graduate workers, universities leave unprotected the most precarious academics, including those who shoulder the greatest teaching burden. NTT faculty and graduate workers are facing the same challenges as tenure-track faculty: adapting to remote teaching, massively increased caretaking responsibilities, lack of access to libraries, labs, and archives, and the forgoing of professional opportunities. They are also faced with an anemic job market that will only get worse as universities announce hiring freezes for the coming years.
The effects are predictable. The gulf between secure and precarious academics will deepen; countless promising academic careers will prematurely end, depriving the world of knowledge they would have produced. Thousands of scholars and their families will be stripped of economic security just as they need it most. Without employment, NTT faculty and graduate teachers will not have healthcare in the midst of this devastating pandemic....
We therefore call on all universities that have offered extensions of the tenure clock to include all academic workers employed for fixed terms in this extension—and regardless of institutional position on the “employee status” of graduate students. Whether it is the “guaranteed” package of funded years for graduate employees or the capped terms of lecturers and preceptors, all academic workers deserve the relief of knowing that they have job security and the opportunity to complete their projects in more favorable conditions....
We, the undersigned, will not accept invitations for speaking engagements, workshops, and conferences at named institutions [that do not extend these measures to NTT faculty and graduate students]. By signing we commit to observing this policy for the 2020-2021 academic year. We will reassess pending future developments.
A couple of observations:
(1) A threat to decline "speaking engagements, workshops, and conferences" during 2020-21 is a rather idle threat, given that there are unlikely to be many of these. Why not a serious threat: decline invitations for the next five years, decline to do tenure and promotion and departmental reviews for the next five years, etc.? I think I know the answer.
(2) Assuming there are such engagements, whether live or via Zoom, the threat will end up being carried out primarily against schools with fewer resources, since those schools will not have the financial resources to commit to the benefits proposed.
(3) The commitments proposed are expensive, and to make them, most universities will have to cut money elsewhere. Where? And won't protecting NTT workers and graduate students likely have the effect of shifting cuts to custodians, cafeteria workers, and support staff, who also have as much need of "economic security" and health coverage? Many of the latter are the truly "vulnerable" members of most academic communities; why should "solidarity" be only with faculty and aspiring faculty? Here's how philosopher Alex Guerrero (Rutgers) put a similar concern on Facebook, where I first saw this:
Given the uncertainty of the Fall, enrollment, state budget support, and much else, doing all of this would require dramatic trade-offs. Do signatories to the letter have a view about what tradeoffs are acceptable? Again, a genuine question. Firing or furloughing TT faculty, administrators, administrative staff, food service and maintenance workers? Increasing tuition? At Rutgers, unionization and various state rules would block most of those moves. At a few schools, they might be able to turn to their endowments. Many schools are making choices just to remain in business at all.
(4) The bigger dilemma here, of course, is that we live within an irrational economic system, where human needs get met not by design but only when profitable. Should we really prioritize keeping as many people in our academic lifeboat, while ignoring all the others who have smaller or less reliable lifeboats, or are already flailing for help in the ocean? Maybe we should, on the theory that we can affect our lifeboat, but not the irrational economic system.
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