The fight is against corporatization. The first stage was adjunctification, which, instead of “equal pay” or any other improvement of adjunct conditions, should be the focus of revolt. If we can reverse adjunctification, we can stop corporatization, The missing link is students. If students understood what was happening, if they became radicalized, if they demanded justice, something would happen. Do students really understand how their impending loan debt is wrapped up with the exploitation of faculty? How can we radicalize students?
Guest blogger Jeanne Zaino is professor of political science and international studies at Iona College.
In his provocative and deeply depressing The Last Professors Frank Donoghue warns that corporate logic has taken over the academy. His findings are confirmed by Andrew DeBlanco who, in his award winning College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be not only bemoans the demise of liberal arts education, but attributes it to several factors including the “commercialization of American higher education.”
Tellingly neither Donoghue nor DeBlanco call on humanists to rise up. Nor do they offer any real hope that the liberal arts generally, or the humanities in particular, can be resuscitated. Far from a call to arms, these books are elegies, laments, requiems. As Donoghue writes, “the conditions to which many seek a return – healthy humanities departments populated by tenure-track professors who discuss books with adoring students in a cloistered setting – have…
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