Office Hours: Activism and Change in the Academy

232 Pages·2004·1.05 MB·English

by  Cary Nelson

About Office Hours:
“Straightforward, unpretentious, immensely readable, and on matters of
extreme urgency to a very wide potential readership.”
—Bruce Robbins, Columbia University
“Office Hours is always pointed, often poetic and amusing, and never
dull. Nelson and Watt accurately diagnose the serious malady that
threatens American higher education, and then suggest the cure. Do
read this book — it’s a tonic.”
—Jane Buck, President, American
Association of University Professors
“With the same acumen, energy, and urgency that they displayed in
Academic Keywords, Professors Nelson and Watt here address the crises,
plural, facing higher education today, including the downsizing and part-
timing of the professoriate; the corporatization of the university from
‘Citadel of Reason’ into ‘Campus Sweatshop’; the failure of many
graduate programs to develop ethical standards for the treatment of
their student-employees; and the mounting threats to academic freedom
in the wake of 9-11. A spirited call to action, Office Hours is must
reading for everyone interested in preserving and improving the best,
most vital features of the academy.”
—Patrick Brantlinger, Indiana University

OFFICE
HOURS
A C T I V I S M a n d C H A N G E
i n t h e A C A D E M Y
Car y Nelson and Stephen Watt
ROUTLEDGE
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Published in 2004 by
Routledge
270 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016
www.routledge-ny.com
Published in Great Britain by
Routledge
2 Park Square
Milton Park, Abingdon
Oxon OX14 4RN U.K.
www.routledge.co.uk
Copyright © 2004 by Routledge
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group.
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nelson, Cary.
Office hours : activism and change in the academy / Cary Nelson &
Stephen Watt.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-415-97185-3 (hb : alk. paper)—ISBN 0-415-97186-1 (pb : alk. paper)
1. College teachers—United States—Political activity. 2. Universities and colleges—
United States—Sociological aspects. 3. College teachers’ unions—United States.
I. Watt, Stephen, 1951– II. Title.
LB2331.72.N43 2004
378.1'2--dc22
2004013127
ISBN 0-203-01419-7 Master e-book ISBN
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction:It Might as Well Be a Conspiracy 1
Part One
Where We Are and How We Got There
1. Cohorts—The Diaspora of the Teachers 15
2. Anonymity, Celebrity, and Professional Identity 27
3. The Postdoc Paradox 41
4. Disciplining Debt 53
5. The Brave New World of Research Surveillance 69
6. The Humanities and the Perils of Globalization 81
Part Two
Toward Alternative Futures
7. Organizational Affiliation and Change 97
8. Is It a University or Is It a Country Club? 117
9. Collective Action, Collective Bargaining, Collective Agency 139
vvvvv
vi • Contents
10. The Economics of Textbook Reform 165
11. Transforming Teaching and Reaching 181
the Public on the Internet
12. What Would an Ethical Graduate Program Be? 189
Bibliography 213
Authors’ Notes 217
Index 219
Preface
Within a very few years, higher education as we have known it may largely
cease to exist. Economic, demographic, and political forces, combined
with faculty passivity, have led to a serious decline in research that seeks
to advance knowledge rather than generate profits. Meanwhile the pro-
fessoriate has seen its intellectual independence and institutional influ-
ence deteriorate. While most academics have looked exclusively to
external forces to explain this crisis, we place a significant part of the
blame on the professoriate itself. At the same time we look to the profes-
soriate and graduate student activists as potential sources of resistance
and reform.
The first half of the book details the current state of higher educa-
tion—emphasizing the most imperiled disciplines—while the second
half of the book offers a series of routes out of the present crisis. These
alternative futures take the form of case studies, covering unionization,
instruction, academic organizations, public outreach through the
Internet, and campus organizing as means to secure a better future for
higher education.
Office Hours: Activism and Change in the Academy deals not only
with the current crisis but also with a series of emerging ones—the risks
to academic freedom inherent in future terrorist attacks, the increasing
impact of globalization, the trend toward surveillance of research content.
Its solutions are numerous, but they also have one common thread: the
need for collective action on every front.

Introduction
It Might as Well Be a Conspiracy
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in the process of unravelling. Few of the forces shaping its future are
easy to welcome. Most will be destructive, especially to the most profes-
sionally vulnerable employees and the most financially vulnerable arts
and humanities disciplines. The linchpin of our vulnerability is higher
education’s increasing reliance on contingent labor. It diminishes our
ability to do creative work and undermines our capacity to serve our
students, while simultaneously undercutting our independence, our dig-
nity, and our potential to have any critical impact on American culture.
As we point out in chapter 3, a department can drift into dependence on
contingent labor without ever intending to do so. The collapse of state
budgets from 2002 to 2004 means there will be steady pressure to in-
crease reliance on part-time and non-tenure track instruction over the
next several years. To the extent that administrators are responsible for
meeting needs within reduced budgets, they are not the allies of the fac-
ulty in this matter. Many administrators, answerable to governing boards
dominated by business executives, see no choice but to increase the ex-
pendable instructional workforce. At the same time, they pursue more
corporate partnerships despite the loss of independence and shift in
mission they entail. As a result, arts and humanities faculty in particular
may come to feel increasingly less common cause with their administra-
tions. This could hardly be otherwise, considering how many provosts
now seem interested only in disciplines likely to produce wealthy alumni.
Confronted by this dual crisis in the status of the professoriate and
the fundamental goals of higher education, many faculty opt for denial
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