A Holiday Gift for the Rest of Us

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After Obama picked many centrist, conventional Democrats—and even Republicans—to his Cabinet, his choice for labor secretary is refreshing. Hilda Solis is a progressive with a will to fight and to work with grassroots labor, environmental and immigrant worker movements.

Labor leaders across the board applauded the appointment of Solis, who serves on the board of American Rights at Work, a labor-founded but more broadly based advocacy group. Her ties to labor are deep, going back to at least her state senate days, when she also became a crusader for environmental justice.

In These Times, David Moberg, December 18, 2008

I keep thinking about all of these claims and counter claims about Obama’s cabinet and administrative choices and what they signal for the future of progressive politics. A lot of this speculation seems all tangled up in the identity and cultural politics that, for good or ill, Obama seems determined to muddle up.

Most of what eventually happens will depend very much on Obama’s ability to convince a group of very differently minded people to work together. The open question, of course, is to what end. I think progressives ought to skip these debates altogether. It’s all media hype anyway.

Instead, I think we need to focus on a few specific changes that have the greatest potential for a multiplier effect. That’s why Hilda Solis seems like a real holiday gift. I think the Employee Free Choice act, which Solis surely supports, is out best bet to create a powerful movement that isn’t dependent on Obama.

I would love to see the numbers of people without health care reduced to a few million; I want true national heath care even more. I think a green economic program is great; even better would a rebirth of railroads. If Obama manages the first, and we have a stronger labor movement, we can get the second too.

Posted in: Economics, Online Places, Writing

The Balance of Power: “Education in the Balance”

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Data from the two surveys show that between 1995 and 2005 the number of tenured and tenure-track faculty members in US postsecondary education remained almost unchanged, while the number of non-tenure-track faculty members, both full-time and part-time, increased dramatically. These data about changes in the number and especially the mix of full- and part-time, tenure-line (tenured and tenure-track) and non-tenure-line faculty appointments should be considered in relation to the growth in student enrollments in higher education that occurred over the same period. … We recommend that there be a regular survey and update on staffing practices in English and other modern language departments at least every ten years, so that changes in staffing patterns and the categories of faculty employment can be tracked and reported. Reports about the composition and characteristics of the faculty in English and other modern languages should also be developed from the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF) as further studies in the NSOPF series become available…

Between fall 1995 and fall 2005, student enrollments in degree-granting postsecondary institutions grew by more than 3,225,000 (22.6%), from 14,261,781 to 17,487,475 (Digest, table 175 and table 190)…

Given what is essentially zero population growth in the tenure-line faculty, increases in student enrollments are being accommodated by increases in the non-tenure-track faculty. Although across higher education, tenure lines have not been eliminated in favor of non-tenure-track positions, in the context of a student population and a non-tenure-track faculty that continue to increase, a tenure-line faculty that never grows becomes a diminished, and diminishing, segment of the faculty. As a result, tenure-line faculty members become an intellectual and educational resource rationed out in scarcer portions to an ever larger student body.

“Education in the Balance: A Report on the Academic Workforce in English“

In the 1990s Graduate Student Union activists, myself among them, made a lot of noise at the MLA each year, protesting the growing use of part-time and graduate student teachers in universities. Among other things, we convinced (forced) the MLA to gather a factual portrayal of employment in our field. We thought these numbers would convince many who just thought graduate students were bothersome kids.

Not surprisingly, each survey demonstrated that the activists were correct. Step by step, universities were de-skilling their workforce. As this report emphasizes, this is largely done by omission rather than commission. As the universities grow, in other words, new non-tenure track positions are created. In effect, the U.S. university system, long plauged by heirarchies of race and gender, has created a hierarchy on top of a hierarchy.

At the top are the tenure track professors with generous salaries and benefits, including, among other things, the ability to avoid teaching lower division courses. At the bottom of the top, as it were, are part-time faculty (many if not most without Ph.D.s) and graduate students. They still benefit from the facilities and they can, if they are graduate students and very fortunate, attempt to leverage their experiences into tenure track positions.

“In general,” the report concludes, “it appears that an MA or an MFA is accepted across all institutional sectors, four-year as well as two-year, as an appropriate degree qualification for teaching the lower division.” The emphasis here, of course, is on “lower division.” The conservative view is that there are too many Ph.D.’s out there for what is needed. As the report makes clear, the glut is created by administrations’ hiring practices.

There are differences between Ph.D. granting institutions and M.A. granting schools and so on. Nonetheless the pattern is consistent: “…the full-time positions are part of a larger argument about … a teaching faculty (largely off the tenure track and outside the tenure system, located in the lower division) and a research faculty (almost exclusively tenured or tenure-track and charged with the preparation of majors and graduate students).”

One layer down, in two-colleges, the trend is the same: no growth in tenure track Ph.D.s and more part-time and non-tenure track employment. The report may suggest that we’ve fought this trend to a standstill. Or, more cynically, that the privileged tenured professors are adept at protecting their positions but either uninterested or unskilled at stopping the (unfortunate) transformation of their field.

Posted in: Composition, Language, Writing

Hope, Shoes, and Inertia

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On all of this, the Bush administration has gone out of its way to lend a hand to Obama’s transition team and, in the process, help institutionalize the imperial transition itself. Like the new money arrangements pioneered in the 2008 elections, it surely will remain part of the political landscape for the foreseeable future. From such developments in our world, it seems, there’s never any turning back.

There’s nothing strange about all this, of course, if you’re already inside this system. It seems, in fact, too obvious to mention. After all, what president wouldn’t move into the political/governmental house he’s inheriting as efficiently and fully as possible?

The unprecedented size of this imperial pre-presidency, however, signals something else: that what is to come — quite aside from the specific policies adopted by a future Obama administration – will be yet another imperial presidency. (And, by the way, those who expect Congress to suddenly become the player it hasn’t been, wielding power long ceded, are as likely to be disappointed as those who expect a Hillary Clinton State Department renaissance under the budgetary shadow of the Pentagon.)

On January 20th, Barack Obama will be more prepared than any president in recent history to move in and, as everyone now likes to write, “hit the ground running.” But that ground — the bloated executive and the vast national security apparatus that goes with it (as well as the U.S. military garrisons that dot the planet), all further engorged by George W., Dick, and pals — is anything but fertile when it comes to “change.”

Tom Engelhardt, December 08, 2008

I have to admit that I almost– almost– felt sorry for our almost gone and not-to-be-missed president when I saw that shoe toss in Baghdad. He’s been reduced from the most powerful man on earth to a hapless, pathetic clown. It’s an almost too convenient metaphor for his legacy. Sabotage has a shoe-origin, too.

I imagine many people share the shoe tosser’s angry, frustrated exasperation. The thing about a presidency is that it has a certain inertia– it keeps going in the direction it been pushed for a long time, even after a decision to change course. That’s why so many of Obama’s fellow travelers have become so skeptical so quickly.

Given this imperial momentum, in other words, tossing a few shoes might well be a good choice. I am not sure, though, that I am ready to declare disappointment. For one thing, I want to keep my expectations reasonable. A president is just a president, not a revolution, and so there are limits to the sorts of change we can expect.

On the other hand, there’s a Nixon in China scenario here that I think is being ignored. It’s long been recognized that only Nixon could have gone to China; anyone else would have been called a communist sympathizer. We might optimistically hope for the same thing in the Obama administration.

Perhaps only Clinton– known for her Hawkish predilections– can credibly lead a State Department-focused foreign policy. Perhaps only Tom Dashel– as pragmatic as they come– could create a visionary transformation of health care. Perhaps this motley collection of Republicans and Washington insiders can make change work.

Posted in: Economics, Language