Inconvenient Truths

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Three decades ago, non-college white men were solidly Democratic. Many of them were unionized. They had jobs that delivered good middle-class incomes.

But over the last three decades they stopped believing the Democratic Party could deliver good jobs at decent wages.

Republicans have done no better for them on the wages — in fact many policies touted by the GOP, such as its attack on unions, have accelerated the downward wage trend.

But Republicans have offered white non-college males the scapegoats of racism and immigration — blaming, directly or indirectly, blacks and Latinos — and the solace of right-wing evangelical Christianity. Absent any bold leadership from Democrats, these have been enough.

“More Jobs, Lousy Wages, and the Desertion of Non-College White Men From the Democratic Party,” Robert Reich

I know a lot of these white men, without college, in low-paying jobs. My family is full of them and, thanks to Facebook, I am in touch with many of my childhood friends, most of whom didn’t go to college. I’d make Reich’s story a little more complicated. We were raised in Texas, where there are few unions. Texas, though, is on the bleeding edge of racial relationships in every direction. In some ways geography is destiny.

There’s the obvious tensions along the Mexican border. Or, rather, two borders; the political border, along the Rio Grande, doesn’t match the cultural border, which cuts across the lower third of Texas. Texas isn’t just Western, or Southwestern, though, it’s also Southern, and so divided by Black and White as well. So in Texas it is easy to imagine the ways that the right has used race to divide the working class against itself.

Most of my friends back in Texas didn’t abandon the Democratic party, though; they never entered it in the first place. Somehow, as they grew up, they grew into reactionary politics, despite the fact that we were all nascent liberals in Junior High and High School. At some moment, or over the course of time, perhaps in the 1980’s, something switched. I honestly don’t know how the right and its narrow-mindedness came to seem so appealing.

I suspect that a big part of it has to do with a kind of resentment of professionals and technocratic, scientific culture. Obama isn’t just hated because he’s Black, he’s hated because he’s so well-educated. The enemy is the professor as much as the community organizer, those know it all overpaid egg-heads. The Democratic party represents a meritocratic ideal that’s only half real at best. Hard work often doesn’t pay. People resent that lie.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Professional, Writing

Strange Fruit

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I would prefer that Obama win the election—not so much because he’d be so much better than Romney on policy but because he will disappoint so many of his loyalists that it would be good for radical politics. Instead of people bellyaching about McCain’s awfulness, as they would have had he won in 2008, we got Occupy. Occupy faded, in part because attention was turned to the presidential campaign… Presidential politics, given the power of money and all our constitutional structures that nurture orthodoxy, is the natural terrain of the big boys. It would be much more fruitful to organize around specific issues, like single-payer health insurance and living-wage bills; to develop better institutions, like livelier unions and third and fourth parties; and if one must work in the electoral realm, to build from the bottom up, where the likes of us could actually make a difference.

“Why Should the Left Support Obama? Doug Henwood”

At some level, I agree with Mr. Henwood– I usually agree with him— but at the same time I have some real misgivings. It’s true that lots of us have been so worried about the far right that we are willing to be, in effect, leftist yellow dog Democrats, willing to vote for any Democrat, even if he’s a yellow dog, figuratively or literally. I’m not sure that this is more than anecdote, but Facebook has made this election seem terrifying.

We’re all busy with families and jobs and to one extent or the other we are all low-information voters. On Facebook, though, I’ve discovered how deeply the right-wing has penetrated my family and friends back in Louisiana and Texas. I know conservatism well; I was raised by a man who joined the Republican effort to elect Reagan in 1976. I suspect Dad was Republican because he thought the chaotic Democratic party couldn’t run the country.

He shot himself in the foot. A few years into the Reagan era, when Dad died, the Republican administration had already succeeded in its efforts to eliminate Social Security’s once generous survivor’s benefits program. That made it much more difficult (among other things) for my little sister to go to college. Dad mistakenly thought Reagan would help him and the middle class. I see my family members and childhood friends making the same mistake.

Reagan’s election in 1980 was a landmark event, signalling more than three decades of erosion of power and affluence for everyone but the very rich. Reagan seemed like a bozo at the time and maybe he did no more than articulate the program already well underway. Romney seems like a very similar sort of clown, and maybe he too is doing nothing more than articulating the plan, but his ideas are worse than Reagan’s. We all need Obama to win.

Posted in: Economics, Online Places, Writing

The Beginning of the Beginning of the End

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Today, more than 70 percent of all faculty members responsible for instruction at not-for-profit institutions serve in non-tenure-track (NTT) positions. The numbers are startling, but numbers alone do not capture the essence of this problem. Many of our colleagues among this growing category of non-tenure-track faculty experience poor working conditions and a lack of support. Not only is it difficult for them to provide for themselves and their families, but their working conditions also interfere with their ability to offer the best educational experience for their students.

“A New Faculty Path,” Adrianna Kezar, Susan Albertine and Dan Maxey

I’d like to say that this ongoing research project, housed at the University of Southern California’s Pullias Center for Higher Education, and dubbed, “The Changing Faculty and Student Success,” is very good news. After all, the project is founded on the recognition of the basic problem in higher education, which isn’t for-profits or new communication technologies, but the end of tenure and the loss of most full-time teaching positions.

It is good news insofar as it might signal at least the beginning of the beginning of the end. It also lays the groundwork for what might happen once the U.S. economy emerges out the recession. It could be a while before economic growth allows universities to have realistic budgets, bu there are some signs that full-time teachers could become a selling point in the emerging post for profits market. This might nudge that process in the right direction.

I hesitate only because the article, and the research project, is so chock-full of corporate speak or corporate-academic speak. I’ve gotten too many emails about my “customers” (my students) to be very comfortable with a rhetoric of “stakeholders” and “student success” and the like. The problem, of course, is that real change will involve as much conflict as consensus and a university should be about faculty and staff as much as students.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Online Places, Professional

Kick the Bums Out

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Great boards recognize the difference that David Leslie has pointed out between a good governance structure (which properly gives them the ultimate authority over all aspects of the college) and good governing (in which boards defer some of that decision-making to internal groups or individuals that have far more expertise than they). Boards need an information-driven governing process that operates within a culture of collaboration — among themselves, with the president, and with the faculty. Making decisions too quickly or in isolation often erodes core institutional values.

“Governing Higher Ed Through Balance: Why Cultivating Collaboration Is Crucial, Now More Than Ever,” H. Kim Bottomly

President Obama was elected, at least to some extent, because he called for an end to partisan politics. He’s not quite running on that principle anymore, because experience taught him that the Republican opposition is less interested in making government work and more interested in defeating the first Black President, no matter what the apparent cost to the country, or, indeed, to common sense itself.

Ms. Bottomly, who’s president of Wellesley College, has a very Republican idea of compromise that seems typical of the academic administrator’s brand of bipartisanship. The board of directors, dominated by members “heavy with business experience,” she tells us, should “retain ultimate authority over all aspects of the college” but should also promise, to “defer some of that decision-making to internal groups.” Is that balance and collaboration?

Republican policies destroyed the U.S. economy, as well as many economies around the world, and as long as they keep advocating these policies they should fought off or ignored. The business people on the boards have likewise undermined or even destroyed the foundations of U.S. education, making full-time jobs more and more rare and college so expensive as to be nearly inaccessible. Compromise? I say we kick the bums out.

Posted in: Economics, Professional