Jumping the Gun: On Tenured Radical and Lumpenprofessoriat on Tenure

Tenured Radical has posted another great broadside against tenure over at her place, so I figure I'll use it and a now-golden oldie from Lumpenprofessoriat to pick up the conversation on the wisdom of rethinking and expanding the tenure system where Craig Smith of FACE Talk and I last left it.

So if you've read TR's and LP's posts, you'll see the good old revolution vs. reform debate underlying the differences in their perspectives on tenure. TR emphasizes the toxicity of the system while LP points to one school that's trying to detoxify it.

Or maybe a better metaphor for the difference in their approaches would be the abolition vs. colonization debate--is it better to abolish tenure or for academics dissatisfied with the system to migrate to places with reasonable approaches to it? To take the plantation metaphor a step further, ought faculty to burn down the Big House or escape the plantation?

If these latter metaphors make you a bit uncomfortable, then they've done their job. It is thoroughly ridiculous to suggest, as I've done, that tenure-track professors working at schools in or aspiring to join the Billion Dollar Endowment Club are in any sense of the word enslaved. (The nontenurable-as-migrant-labor metaphor at least has some merit to it.)

Maybe I'm putting words in TR's mouth by mapping this metaphor onto her post, but it's only at private institutions and in right-to-work states that her opening assumption that tenure and unionization are mutually exclusive makes any sense. Rather than putting their efforts toward abolishing a system that works at the vast majority of higher education institutions in the U.S., as several of her commenters have suggested, why don't the tenured radicals at private institutions and in right-to-work states go ahead and try to organize? The Yeshiva case was a bad decision; I'm sure either President Clinton or President Obama would appoint a Supreme Court justice or justices who could help to overturn it.

In the meantime, taking over faculty senates and other sites of governance and pushing for the nature of scholarly work to be reimagined and revalued--and not just by administrators, but by faculty as well, for I encountered a lot of resistance to the Boyer Commission's recommendations from some of my most productive colleagues (in garnering grants and publishing research), even at a teaching institution like mine--is one way to go at privates and right-to-works. Forming an AAUP chapter or revitalizing an existing one at the same time is even better.

There's much more to be said on this, but I have a long day of student conferences, broken up only by a department meeting, waiting for me on campus. Be back later....

[Update: Sequel percolating. In the meantime, check out chasing the red balloon's tracking of this anti-tenure meme-in-the-making!]

[Update 3/20/08: Craig Smith joins in.]

[Update 3/25/08: One of Craig's blogging partners in crime, Phil Ray Jack, preaches it! Meanwhile, profacero has started an open thread on this emerging discussion.]

[Update 3/26/08: Lumpenprofessoriat has a great response, which includes the suggestion to label Tenured Radical's position "surrender." While it's true my slavery metaphors were more obviously tongue-in-cheek, even my revolution vs. reform dichotomy was not all that serious, particularly given Craig and my ongoing conversation on tenure in which we were questioning such binaries.]

[Update 3/28/08: Here's my latest salvo in the tenure wars--actually, it's a cease-fire proposal. There are a bunch of belated responses to the TR/Oso Raro exchanges, from Chad Orzel, Timothy Burke, Dean Dad, and Dr. Crazy.]

[Update 4/3/08: Whoops, I missed undine's brilliant pieces at Not of General Interest! And the new one from profacero.]

[Update 4/8/08: Belated link to Dr. Crazy's latest at Reassigned Time. And to Eric Rauchway's at The Edge of the American West.]

[Update 4/11/08: Laurie Fendrich at Brainstorm jumps in.]

[Update 4/13/08: Undine tries it once more, with feeling.]

[Update 4/16/08: How did I miss the soon-to-be-tenured Dr. Virago's post from last week?]

[Update 4/19/08: Laurie Fendrich offers two models for replacing tenure with multiple-year contracts over at Brainstorm.]

Who Is This Guy?

Just came across (via BookForum) an almost interesting attempt to assess the state of the profession through the MLA job list rather than the MLA Convention, but since when does The Nation publish badly-thought-out Chronicle First Person pieces or lame Inside Higher Ed op eds? (Links to that which does not suck.)

Losing majors? Trend-obsessed? Maybe the problem is with his department. Is that really a profession-wide phenomenon? If it is, then perhaps there are more structural explanations to be pursued? Reading tea leaves doesn't cut it...nor does waiting for Godot the Next Big Theory.

[Update 3/29/08: Check out Amardeep Singh's take over at The Valve.]

[Update 4/10/08: And Tim Burke's and Joseph Kugelmass's.]

[Update 4/15/08: It's fitting that on tax day I finally found The Little Professor's statistical rejoinder to WD!]

Who's In?

You know how it goes...someone invents something cool and it takes a while for it to be accepted, much less taught in academia. You want examples? Well, we all know the stories of how long it took for English literature to be taught in England and American literature in America, but we could go back further to the emergence of literature itself as something to be studied, or forward to the origins of film studies last century. Well, what happened then has been happening lately for tv, new media, comic books, and video games. This will come as no surprise to those familiar with my super-secret group pop culture blog, but I've been following developments in these newer fields of academic study, over the shoulder of friends who are in the middle of them but too busy to blog there. This little brainstorm is for them, and anyone else who wants to get in. I've been batting around this idea for years, so be gentle with it, ok?

I've always liked the cultural studies model of an academic conference focused on a particular movement or subgenre, where creators, critics, fans, and others can get together and almost anything can happen from there. It's a good model, but not hands-on enough for video games studies. What I'm envisioning is crossing this model with the model of a basketball camp or golf clinic: getting kids from grades 7-12 together for a week on a campus one summer where they can play the latest equipment and games (donated of course by the companies who want a chance to send their developers out and get quality focus group experiences), work on skills in a variety of genres and compete in their favorites ones, and learn how to be more critical consumers and gamers through workshops taught by leading figures in video games studies, question-and-answer sessions with game designers, and discussions of, reflections on, and writing about their gaming experiences. The number of genres and issues to be considered is dauntingly large, but we could always start small and scale up.

I need to check with my friends in coaching to understand sports camp logistics and economics better--it's been more than two decades now since I was a participant in one--but as my girls get older, I get more and more serious about actually putting the idea into action. So who's in?

Non-Western Literature Student Learning Analyses: The Untouchables on Marquez

I'm experimenting this year with adding blogging into the mix of things students do in my courses. So this semester I'll be posting post-group research/teaching-project learning analyses from students in my Non-Western Literature course. The students' task in this assignment, one dimension of many they're being assessed on in this project, is simply to identify the one or two most interesting things they learned about the text and or writer on which they presented as a result of the planning, research, teaching, and reflection/assessment process they went through in doing the project. These are not meant to be full-blown analytical/interpretive/argumentative critical essays, but instead little personal, subjective pieces on what the text they taught meant to them.

Here's the first batch, from a team who named themselves The Untouchables and lead a great discussion on Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.

***

Anonymous #1 leads off:

I learned a great deal about 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I came across many themes in the novel such as solitude, magical realism, and politics. However, the two things that I found to be most interesting was how real life experiences influenced him and how the novel is circular. Overall I enjoyed this novel.

Some of the things that influenced Marquez to write 100 Years of Solitude were the banana republic, his grandfather shooting and killing a man and his grandmother going blind; these were just some of the things that occurred in the novel. He was raised by his grandparents for eight years. His grandfather was a father to sixteen children. Colonel Aureliano represents his grandfather in the novel. There was a character in the novel that went blind just as his grandmother did.

Another thing I found interesting was how the novel is circular which is represented by the characters who travel to different locations but they always end up coming back to the main location which was Macondo. Jose Arcadio leaves with the Gypsies, his ship gets wrecked so he returns back to Macondo. Colonel Aureliano Buendia constantly returns to the town after his fight against the conservatives. The seventeen sons of Colonel Aureliano Buendia always return to the town and end up dying there.

I learned so much about the author Marquez and how his life played a big part when it came to writing his novels. I like how he was very descriptive in his novel; it made me want to keep reading. Through those descriptions I was able to formulate a picture in my mind which helped me to understand what was really going on in the novel.

***

Katie continues:

While reading the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez I found myself thinking about life itself. The novel made me stop and I thought about life, and the things in it. The novel also made me think about what it means to be lonely and what happens to those who find themselves alone. Solitude is one of the themes in this novel and I think that the readers should think more about this theme when reading it.

Solitude is a real subject in life, and it can mean different things to everyone. In the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, all of the members of the Buendía family experience solitude in one way or another. Each of the members in this family is a part of something bigger that was started by two of the older members. Úrsula founded a new town with some of the other women in the family when the town they were living at kept looking at the family as weird people. The family was involved with incest, and so they were cursed to have a baby with a pig tail. The town was called Macondo and it wasn’t surrounded by other towns, so it was in solitude that way as well as the family members of the Buendías.

While reading the novel more, I found that the Buendías over time were not really with each other mentally. They are with each other in the town but they have their own lives and they do their own thing. Also, many of the Buendías leave Macondo, but then they come back to the town. For example, with Amaranta and how she returned to the town after a while being away. She came back along with everyone in the family who did leave Macondo. It seemed to me like no matter what each member of this family did, they just couldn’t stay away. With many families people do leave and then come together for special occasions, but this family didn’t really do that.

I found that doing research on the book while reading it, that Márquez was in solitude for a long period of time while writing One Hundred Years of Solitude. I thought that that was interesting to know, because his characters had this connection with him. Overall this was a good book to read, because it has several lessons and what it means to be a family. Families interact with each other, and it’s good to have that connection. Also, that solitude is different from one person to the next and it’s not just one person alone with no one else. It can also mean that a person is in the midst of a crowd, yet that person can feel alone. This novel speaks differently to each reader, and the reader has to find out for him or herself what the novel is trying to convey.

***

Preston adds:

First off, I would like to say that I really enjoyed reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. It really made me think, and look at non-western literature in a whole new light. What I mean by this is the book opened my eyes to what could be considered non-western literature and what could be considered western literature. Not only this, but it makes you think about third world countries in a whole new light. This book gives us a view of people that were not from Colombia. They were brought over by Francis Drake’s voyage. So when we see this book we look at it in a western light because they are Spanish from Spain. However, they are living in a third world country that has been cast down and is in turmoil. So the book could clearly be seen in a western and non-western light; this makes it arguable for either side.

I would like to now direct your attention to the book Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. He talks about how the winners write the history. So should we look at the Buendia family as winners or the losers? Well by the time we get to the end of the book we can see that they clearly are the losers since all but two have died. The clear winners would be the people like Marquez who escaped out of the town’s solitude. Yet, really the Buendias are a second generation of victims. The first being all the displaced people (Indians) who were in Colombia before Drake came.

I think Marquez is a truly unique author who was able to use the events within his life to make a story. This I find interesting because being a future teacher, I plan to have students write about their own lives. Thus I could use Marquez as an example of how one’s own life can be the ground work in a novel of their own. However, I would personally not use this with any class under 11th grade and would make sure that the students as well as the parents were aware of the themes within the book (incest, violence, etc.).

***

So there you have it. Next up: Team Ghosh! on In an Antique Land.

[Update 4/3/08: This Wikipedia article on Marquez got "featured article" status and it was done by students of this guy!]

This is for D at LGM

Let's compare CBAs! UUP's new contract got an A+ from the membership (close to 98% approval rate). What grade does it deserve?

You Won't Find This on The Edge of the American West

Unless Ari and Eric get seriously into Tim Burke or Rob MacDougall territory. What am I talking about? Click here! Hey, just doing my part to help my favorite blogging historians broaden their horizons. And trying to make CitizenSE just a little bit fun again.

The Long and Winding Road II: A Response to Craig Smith; or, Elaborating the Model

It strikes me that Craig and I have been unpacking everything about the "two out of three ain't bad" tenure model except for the model itself. Sure, I've noted that it's really a 4-tiered and not a 2-tiered model, but that's just a correction to my original fragment of a post.

So let's elaborate what, for lack of a better name, I'll call the Meatloaf model (because you can play it on your 4-track?):

Track 1: The traditional tenure-track job, in which you need varying degrees of excellence in varying weightings of the traditional triad to get tenure at a variety of institutional types among the 4000+ colleges and universities in the U.S.

Track 2: The research-teaching tenure-track job, in which, in exchange for a lower teaching load, higher research expectations (or vice versa), and no service responsibilities, you accept a lower salary than those on Track 1 (but equal to Tracks 3 and 4).

Track 3: The teaching-service tenure-track job, in which, in exchange for a lower teaching load, higher service expectations (or vice versa), and no research responsibilities (outside of course design and class prep), you accept a lower salary than those on Track 1 (but equal to Tracks 2 and 4).

Track 4: The research-service tenure-track job, in which, in exchange for a higher service load, higher research expectations, and no teaching responsibilities, you accept a lower salary than those on Track 1 (but equal to Tracks 2 and 3).

Of course these aren't the only ways of elaborating my Meatloaf model. But for now, let's leap into some possible applications of it....

Are we imagining it as something strictly limited to conversions of non-tenurable positions into tenure-track jobs? There are pros to this version of the model, as some of my colleagues on a UUP activists' listserv have noted: 1) it prevents administrators from converting already-existing pretty-darn-good jobs to worse ones; 2) it prevents administrators from doing the same thing over time by making all newly-created positions fit Tracks 2-4 and further reducing the number of Track 1 positions offered; 3) it provides a clear way for people already doing a great job at an institution to compete with outside candidates on the (nearly-)inevitable national search that's involved for (most) any tenure-track position, as it provides something of a disincentive for those who really want to aim for Track 1 to apply for any other kind of position; 4) it provides both greater flexibility and clarity to the people in the non-tenurable positions (as well as to departments) in terms of workload expectations than the current system, not to mention better salary and benefits, security, and advancement opportunities.

Are we imagining it as something imposed from above or proposed from below? This question is implicit in the reasons why it might be a good idea to "test-drive" it, as it were, on tenuring the non-tenurable. Or to rephrase the question, how and at what level are decisions made as to which kind of track a formerly contingent faculty member gets on? I can imagine several models: 1) the administration chooses the track, in consultation with the department, before the position is advertised; 2) the candidate chooses the track, in consultation with the department, after beating out everyone else who applied for the position; 3) the administration, department, and candidate work within ground rules negotiated with the faculty union or AAUP chapter, or, in their absense, the university senate or other faculty governance body, or, perhaps guided by principles set out by national professional associations like the MLA and AAUP and faculty unions like the AFT, NEA, CWA, and SEIU.

But why imagine it only for this limited purpose? Why not start with general principles at the national level and negotiations at the campus level, and then, within the rules hammered out, give administrators, departments, and individual faculty members the widest range of choices they can agree to? For instance, under what circumstances can you jump tracks--or be involuntarily transferred from one to another? Think of the institutions that can't afford to offer sabbaticals all that often--why not have the option of switching from Track 1 to Tracks 2 or 4 at teaching-intensive institutions for those faculty who wish to focus more on research for a set period of time? Why not use it to give teeth to post-tenure reviews? Tenured free rider who's been boycotting service for a decade? Boom--Track 2 for her! Tenured deadwood when it comes to developing new courses and doing any other kind of scholarly activity in living memory? Boom--Track 3 for him! The budding administrator who's been getting course reductions for chairing departments, senates, and chapters? Boom--Track 4 for her!

Hey, why would we need an administration if we had this system? Could the Meatloaf Model lead to the withering away of the administration-faculty divide that Marc Bousquet so vehemently denounces over at How the University Works--or "the administration" itself?

Hold on a second, isn't this moving way too fast? Hey, nobody here but us bloggers.