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Mr. Johnson is a professor of history at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of Ernest Gruening and the American Dissenting Tradition (1998). He is a contributing editor of HNN's blog, Cliopatria.
On the HNN homepage, CUNY professor emeritus Jesse Lemisch has penned what could charitably be termed an overheated attack on Columbia University provost Alan Brinkley, whose decision to look out for Columbia's overall interests rather than that of graduate student union activists Lemisch sees as explaining"liberalism in collapse." The issue: for the last two years a fraction of Columbia's graduate students have gone out on strike. Last year, they protested Columbia's decision to pursue its rights, under the Wagner Act, to appeal the legitimacy of a vote on graduate student unionization to the NLRB. This year, after the NLRB ruling went against the graduate student union movement, the strikers are protesting Columbia's decision to follow federal law.
Lemisch is an activist in CUNY's faculty union--whose leadership started its tenure by sending union dues to the legal defense fund of Lori Berenson, the American convicted of terrorism in Peru. The sins that Lemisch attributes to Brinkley and Columbia are, perhaps, more explicable through this unusual perspective. To handle its interests in the NLRB case, the university hired a New York law firm. (Apparently, only unions are entitled to legal representation.) This spring, after union activists announced a plan to go out on strike, Brinkley penned a memo to other Columbia administrators urging them to make"plans for the strike." (Apparently, the provost was supposed to sit idly in his office and ruminate on the horrors of the corporate university.) The contingency plan included exploring the possibility of not paying those grad students who went out on strike and/or requiring strikers to teach an extra term to compensate for the time that they missed in teaching. (Apparently, strikers are supposed to get paid even when they don't fulfill their teaching responsibilities--a pretty good deal!)
Lemisch breathlessly links to a Nationarticle that reads like a parody of political correctness. Columbia's measures, we are told,"would likely rise to the level of illegality if graduate student employees were covered under the National Labor Relations Act." But, of course, the graduate students are not covered under the act.
Columbia's response to the unionization movement, we are told, reflects a"new, corporate style of management." But, of course, it was the unionization movement itself that introduced the labor-management model to Morningside Heights.
Graduate students, we are told,"increasingly feel exploited," since"most are acutely aware that their chances of finding a secure full-time position in academia are slim." I'd challenge that argument strongly about Columbia Ph.D.'s. But if the claim is true, then perhaps these people should choose other careers--it seems foolish to spend several years getting a degree that the recipient knows going in will be valueless in securing employment.
Lemisch's call for Columbia's top administrators to resign over this issue is absurd.
Jesse Lemisch's complaint that Brinkley's memo signifies the "collapse of liberalism" brings to mind his comic attempt to head off the "collapse of the Soviet Union."
At the time, in 1990-1991, Lemisch was in Moscow with his good friend, Edward Pessen, who was then teaching at the University of Moscow, and both found themselves in a veritable fit over Yeltsin's attempt to dismantle the Soviet Empire. Anxious to help Gorbachev preserve the Soviet state, Lemisch and Pessen appointed themselves its potential saviors. Their instrument was the Articles of Confederation, thinking that it might be a useful model that Gorbachev might offer the breakaway Soviet Republics to induce them to stay put and not follow Yeltsin's lead. So they rushed around various Soviet libraries and archives looking for a copy of the Articles. Failing to find it, they telephoned friends in New York City, who faxed them one. They then hastened to deliver it to the Kremlin. But, as Lemisch lamented in a memorial service for Pessen some years later at which he related this quixotic tale, they were too late. The Motherland was disintergrating, and they returned to their hotel sadly defeated.
Should one regard Lemisch as the herald of lost causes?
David Lion Salmanson -
4/29/2005
KC,
The Michigan case goes against your situation at CUNY. There, constant turnover in leadership, while presenting challenges for organizing, has kept issues focussed on concerns central to the day-to-day well being of graduate students. A Professor dumps 100s of extra hours of grading on you? There is a grievance procedure so you can get paid for your work and the union's got your back in case of retaliation. (Generally, it's the professor who gets retaliated against, as the extra wages often come out of his budget but that's called individual responsibility). During my time at Michigan, the professional radical elements in town (who I believe were Maoists, sheesh) tried to take over the union for various radical causes and were soundly defeated each time.
Jonathan Dresner -
4/28/2005
Sometimes they call them "curricula" too, I'm told. Syllabi and such are involved....
Robert KC Johnson -
4/28/2005
"I wish we could draw up an old-fashioned indenture, giving us a set period of time of funding, delineating how many years to be spent passing orals, how many teaching, and how many researching and writing."
As I understand it, this is exactly the structure that Columbia now has. Harvard does as well.
Robert KC Johnson -
4/28/2005
I will put this report in the file for the next time I'm in a public debate with David . . .
I agree with Rick that this is a simple situation, but from my perspective it's a lose-lose. The loss for the universities is easy to detect: the instrusion of a non-academic interest group with a permanent leadership but transient membership into the university structure, creating a situation in which, as time passes, the leadership winds up championing its own individual agenda rather than the interests of either the grad students or the University.
At CUNY, for instance, the administration is now facing strong pressure from our union (which, in a peculiar arrangement, includes full-time faculty, grad. student adjuncts, and staff) to write into the next contract a new hiring procedure in which CUNY adjuncts will receive priority for some or all new lines. That's a perfectly understandable demand for a union representing grad students to make. It's also one that would be disastrous for the academic well-being of the University if implemented, since it would prevent national searches to hire the best candidate, which might or might not be a CUNY adjunct. Ditto with the demand of the Yale strikers for more racial, ethnic, and parental-status diversity in the grad student population. If the small raises demanded by the union (which would in large measure be offset by the unuion dues) don't meet this demand--as undoubtedly they would not--what would the union leadership's next demand be to achieve this goal? This involves a fundamentally academic question of departmental autonomy, within the guidelines of federal law, to admit the students that the department deems qualified.
From the grad student perspective (as someone who opposed an unsuccessful move to unionize Harvard grad students when I was in grad school), I agree with the problem--there are too many part-time positions and the job market is terrible--but I fail to see how grad student unionization addresses either concern. One of the commenters above said that unionization might make CU grad students feel less exploited, and hence more confident on the job market, but that's a stretch. Unionization certainly will increase cost for a grad school education and diminish university flexibility: these changes might work to the advantages of grad students, but they just as easily might not. And, in any case, there's a market factor at work. If the situation for grad students at unionized institutions such as Wisconsin and Michigan is better than at non-unionized schools, the better students will choose to go to these schools. It's not in the interests of elite institutions like Columbia or Harvard not to have the best grad students they can; faced with this market pressure, they would undoubtedly change policy. But that doesn't seem to have occurred.
David Lion Salmanson -
4/28/2005
Geez, Rick you had to bring up the hat. Seriously, the benefits were real and the drawbacks minimal. And when are you comming to Philly, Rick? Inquiring minds want to know. The Ann Arbor ex-pats miss you. (Me, Mike, Rebecca P. etc.)
Robert KC Johnson -
4/28/2005
Perhaps I wasn't clear. I don't believe that Berenson received a fair trial. Nor have literally thousands of other political prisoners around the world. The question is what does the PSC's decision to contribute union dues to Berenson and only Berenson among these thousands of political prisoners say about the mindset of their leadership, such as Lemisch. Unlike the cases of many political prisoners in, say, China, North Korea, Cuba, Burma, Egpyt, or Saudi Arabia, who have been imprisoned solely because of their political opinions, that's not the case with Berenson: she clearly was affiliated with the Shining Path, and she clearly participated in some of their activities. This, then, raises questions as to what criteria the PSC elected to use.
Louis N Proyect -
4/28/2005
KC makes it sound like endorsing Lori Berenson's human rights is tantamount to stockpiling molotov cocktails and subscribing to the Revolutionary Worker. In fact, Senators Ted Stevens, Joe Lieberman, Jim Jeffords, John Breaux were among 17 who signed a letter sent to the Peruvian government calling attention to violations of normal legal procedure on the Berenson case. The last time I checked, Ted Stevens was getting mauled in Counterpunch. The last thing I would think of is making her defense some kind of litmus test for genuine Americanism, but then again KC has his own peculiar yardsticks...
Rick Perlstein -
4/28/2005
David misremembers our experience together as graduate students and union members at Michigan. He forgets the molotov cocktails we used to throw between debates on deconstruction, the self-criticism sessions into which we pressganged helpless undergraduates, the legend inscribed upon his very own cowboy hat: all power to the intellectual proletariat...
Really, union recognition is the win-win solution here. It's quite simple.
Rick Perlstein -
4/28/2005
"I wish we could draw up an old-fashioned indenture, giving us a set period of time of funding, delineating how many years to be spent passing orals, how many teaching, and how many researching and writing."
Yes. They used to call these things "contracts." They were the product of negotiation between management and "unions."
All the concerns about the effect on undergraduates would vanish if Columbia would recognize the union. It is a win-win solution.
David Lion Salmanson -
4/28/2005
One of the big benefits that the graduate student union at Michigan offered was that it was instrumental in requiring teacher training for TAs before they hit the classroom. Some of it was required to be department based, and some by the University in general. This program (for which grad students were either paid or given credit) significantly helped those without classroom experience. The union was also exceedingly helpful to foreign students who were often required to be at the Univesity weeks before the semester started for testing or extra teacher training. The union helped arrange for housing and paychecks to start for these students earlier than normal. Although the University was aware of literally homeless foreign graduate students (some slept in the 24 hour library and showered at the athletic facilities)pretty much begging for food until the grad dorms opened and their stipend checks came out, they didn't seem to want to do anything about it until the union applied pressure.
Ralph E. Luker -
4/28/2005
I don't think I understand your point, Greg. What immoral actions did Brinkley take? Surely, if he intended to intimidate the strikers, he failed rather badly at it. The memo is an agenda for discussion of suggestions from many sources.
Greg James Robinson -
4/28/2005
I am coming to this a little bit late, but isn't the point that the Nation is making actually Brinkley's hypocrisy, in making public assurances that Columbia will not take contrary or retaliatory action, and yet privately organizing efforts to intimidate strikers. KC's argument about whether he should stand by or not is therefore besides the point--Brinkley evidently realized that the actions he was taking would be unpopular (if not immoral) and dissembled about them.
Caleb McDaniel -
4/28/2005
I agree: contingency plans and retribution are two different things. And without knowing much more than what the Lemisch and Nation pieces told me, I think Brinkley's response strikes (no pun intended) the right note. Actual retribution is different from contemplated retribution.
All the same, I can see why the memo would be upsetting to some, even if the particular charges aimed at Brinkley (that he is a traitor to liberalism, etc etc) do strike me (okay, that time the pun was intended) as hyperbolic.
Ralph E. Luker -
4/28/2005
I think that's right, Caleb. It isn't a knock-out argument against unionization or a strike. I would say, though, that it justifies the Provost and his deans in making contingency plans for making sure that the university's obligations to the undergraduates were met -- regardless of what the adjunct instructors did. That's where I think Lemisch is clearly wrong. It would have been professionally irresponsible of Alan Brinkley if he hadn't made contingency plans; and, as he points out, there's been no retribution against the striking instructors.
Caleb McDaniel -
4/28/2005
I agree with KC, Ralph and Rebecca that unionization at Columbia might not in itself improve the job chances of grad students there; the structural problems in academic hiring are too complex, as Ralph points out, to admit of such easy solutions. Still, it seems to me that one reason university administrators and the NLRB are nervous about strikes at one university is because it sets precedents for unionizing at other universities. While I'm not a labor historian myself, I at least know that all strikes start small and do not always give an immediate advantage to the aggrieved parties. Still, I take KC's point that grad student treatment and long-term hires may be variables that are too specific to particular universities for them to be used as general reasons for unionization.
One point that has circulated in this thread is that the strikers are hurting the undergraduates and the mission of the university. In some sense, though, isn't that why a strike is an effective bargaining tool? Of course an employer could always say to a picket line that the workers aren't doing right by the customers, but that's why the strikes do it--it's a way of calling the employer's bluff: is getting us back in the classroom important enough to you to concede some of our demands?
I guess that's why striking will always seem like blackmail to some. But in situations where institutions have little incentive to change (as Ralph points out, that's the case with universities who use graduate students as a form of cheap labor), workers have little choice. If the OAH shouldn't have told the San Francisco hotel workers, "You're interfering with the operations of the hotel where we planned a conference," then neither should critics of the student unions say, "You're interfering with the operations of our university."
I'm not saying I endorse everything that the Columbia students are demanding, mainly because I haven't read enough on the subject to say much more about it. All I'm saying is that I don't think pointing to adverse effects on undergraduates is a knockdown argument.
Rebecca Anne Goetz -
4/27/2005
The union wouldn't help get students tenure-track jobs--no one is arguing that. A union *might* make the process of getting the PhD so one can apply for tenure track jobs less exploitative. I star *might* because I don't know of any studies our there about the relative standard of living for unionized grad students as opposed to un-unionized ones. The point is, I think it is fairly clear that many Columbia grad students feel they are at the end of their collective ropes, and they feel the university should treat them more fairly.
Robert KC Johnson -
4/27/2005
I'd invite Sherman to track down this information--but, as far as I know, Columbia's full-time lines are trending up. Establishing a grad student union at Columbia isn't going to affect the overall job market in any respect.
On Berenson, I'm not sure I'd share the claim of her "wrongful incarceration of an American abroad"--even the Clinton administration dropped her case after her most recent trial--and the PSC's action went well beyond "decrying" to spending union dues. Regardless, my point was that of all the political prisoners in the world, the PSC's new leadership targeted only one--a figure connected to the Marxist Shining Path. This move gives some sense of their worldview, and their priorities.
Robert KC Johnson -
4/27/2005
With regard to the Columbia situation, I disagree with Jonathan's framing of the issue, on both sides. First, the only alternative to not having a union isn't "Walmart," even if we ignore the educational issues and address matters strictly in an economic sense. There aren't unions at Harvard or Princeton, for example, and yet both places have pretty good packages for grad students. Something of a market factor is at work: universities who want good grad students will have solid economic packages, to the extent it's feasible with their other economic requirements.
Second, the alternative to the current situation at Columbia isn't the idyllic Wisconsin environment that Jonathan describes. Last week, on the HNN homepage, one of the leaders of the Yale strike (which is being coordinated with CU's) described his goals: "Our current strike aims to safeguard these gains through union recognition, while also addressing remaining problems which restrict access to graduate school for parents, scholars of color, and those from non-elite backgrounds. Family healthcare and affordable childcare, improved family and medical leave policies, and a binding grievance procedure will go a long way toward making academic work a realistic option for a more diverse group of aspiring scholars. An additional demand of our strike is a change in the current teaching pay scale, which varies widely by department, and which penalizes experience by paying graduate teachers less as they advance into the final years of the program." The piece also discusses the need for decreasing post-docs at Yale. These might all be worthy goals--but they all involve questions that range beyond the strictly economic into the autonomy of individual departments' admission and hiring processes. I certainly favor ensuring that rules and regulations are followed in such matters. But I don't want a Yale or a Columbia where a graduate student union is making decisions on such issues. Lemisch, meanwhile, in his 2004 speech in favor of the Columbia strike, argued that the union offered a chance to go back to 1968, when, "after Columbia called in the police to bloody the heads of so many Columbia students, . . . honorable people were attending a counter-commencement." Columbia's decision to appeal to the NLRB, Lemisch argued, "is in symbiosis with the retrograde labor policies of the Bush administration," and instead the university needs to embrace a policy of "liberalism." I'm not a big fan of universities being "liberal" or "conservative," and, again, this vision seems to extend well beyond pocket-book issues into the educational realm.
In this respect, I think Columbia's and Yale's approach is a necessary one for the educational well-being of the institution.
On the NLRB question--yes, from what I understand, the 2005 strike was designed to force Columbia to negotiate with the union.
Robert KC Johnson -
4/27/2005
I agree absolutely here--I was only summarizing what The Nation article seemed to be saying. I think Harvard has been ahead of the pack in this regard: Ernest May started organizing workshops for PhDs interested in non-academic careers in the mid-1980s, not saying that they were a failure, but just saying that there might be other lines of work that people with a PhD would prefer to do.
Jonathan Dresner -
4/27/2005
I'm sure KC knows this, but I can't let it go past because it's a discussion that we need to keep having: there is a difference between being employed outside of academia and being unemployed. If memory serves, at least one third (sorry, I can't find the numbers quickly) of Ph.D.s in history find employment outside of academia, and the skills developed in the course of advanced history study are highly valued in the growing information and service economies.
It is the culture of "non-academics are failures" which creates some of the tension, and I would place a fair bit of the blame for that on the Faculty -- rather than administration or students -- who fail to take into account the possibility that they are not, in fact, the highest order of civilized life.
Jonathan Rees -
4/27/2005
Ralph:
I don't want it to seem that I'm splitting hairs here, but this distinction is important. The NLRB ruled that grad students aren't covered by the National Labor Relations Act. This does not mean that they don't have the right to strike. It only means that their employers are not REQUIRED to bargain with them.
Columbia can still choose to bargain with them any time it wants. I believe the graduate students are striking (or have struck if the action is over now) to give the administration motivation to go beyond what the law requires.
JR
Ralph E. Luker -
4/27/2005
I think that's right and conscientious undergraduate advisors have been saying for a long time: don't go there unless ... Given the current circumstances, with major research institutions having little incentive to operate any way other than as they do, I don't see what responsible individuals can do other than to give that sort of forewarning. It would help some if some marginal doctoral programs were closed down, but that doesn't get at the claims made by striking graduate students at Columbia and Yale.
Rebecca Anne Goetz -
4/27/2005
Agreed. What's really at issue, too, is the great confusion about what grad students are. We aren't solely students, like undergrads, nor are we solely employees, the way a professor or support staff would be. Since we straddle that divide, with some of our duties being teaching/employment (for which we should be fairly compensated) and some of our duties being learning/being students (taking classes and writing dissertations), we tend to fall through the cracks. We don't necessarily need the NLRB making policy pronouncements about our status, but administrators do need to recognize that we're caught between a rock and a hard place...
Ralph E. Luker -
4/27/2005
You are correct. Jon Dresner just pointed that out to me in an e-mail and I've asked the editor to delete my reply to Proyect. Of course, a part of what's at issue here is what graduate students/adjuncts' rights are. NLRB says they have no right to strike. The University has not penalized them for striking. Apparently because it is a private institution Columbia is in a stronger position to hold out against unionization of graduate student/adjuncts that is Jonathan Rees's graduate department.
Rebecca Anne Goetz -
4/27/2005
I meant to say, "I suppose if you decry the wrongful incarceration of an American abroad, you might support grad students' rights at home." Sorry.
Rebecca Anne Goetz -
4/27/2005
Actually, it is on topic...KC JOhnson's original post referenced Jesse Lemisch's union's support of Lori Berenson as a way of discrediting what Lemisch had to say.
"Lemisch is an activist in CUNY's faculty union--whose leadership started its tenure by sending union dues to the legal defense fund of Lori Berenson, the American convicted of terrorism in Peru. The sins that Lemisch attributes to Brinkley and Columbia are, perhaps, more explicable through this unusual perspective."
Seems to me that makes it fair game. I suppose if you support the wrongful incarceration of an American abroad, you might support grad students' rights at home? Peripheral point, yes, but germaine none the less.
Jonathan Rees -
4/27/2005
That depends upon why KC thinks a non-union Columbia is the best thing for the university. If the reasons are financial, that is the Wal-Martization of higher education. If KC's reasons are educational, as I suspect they are, then it's not. That's why I used the word "appears." I was trying to draw him out a bit.
Yet no matter what K.C.'s reasons, I believe the ultimate effect of his postion puts Columbia and Wal-Mart in the same boat. Education is not a commodity like toothpaste or soap, it's a social responsibility. The employees of an educational institution deserve the respect of a living wage and more control over the terms and conditions of their employment than Columbia is willing to give.
JR
Ralph E. Luker -
4/27/2005
Jonathan, That last line is a cheap-shot. If you know KC, you know that he isn't endorsing anything remotely like "the Wal-Martization of higher education."
Sherman Jay Dorn -
4/27/2005
I think KC's main entry glibly dismisses the concerns of grad students facing an awful market and, yes, being used by an administration for substantial teaching (which is the simple fact of it, whether or not the raw numbers of tenure-track faculty are trending up or down at the institution&151;I'm glad if it's trending up, but that doesn't change the situation of <em>grad students</em>). KC, you write, "I'd challenge that argument strongly about Columbia Ph.D.'s." Okay, show me some empirical data. What happens to English Ph.D.s from Columbia? History Ph.D.s? At least with English, there should be a reasonably recent MLA survey with hard department-by-department data on support of grad students, average stipends, though I don't know about debt load on leaving (including credit-card debt) or the percentage who won tenure-track jobs within a year of receiving the doctorate. I don't know if AHA collects that information, but it should.
Did the two Peruvian trials afford Lori due process?
No. Neither trial afforded Lori due process.
In January 1996 Lori was found guilty of treason and sentenced to life in prison by a secret hooded military tribunal while a hooded soldier held a gun to her head. There was no trial. These military tribunals have been condemned by the U.S. Department of State, Amnesty International, The Carter Center for Human Rights, and Human Rights Watch: Americas. In December 1998, the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights stated that Lori Berenson was deprived of her liberty arbitrarily and that the government of Perú must take all necessary steps to remedy her wrongful incarceration.
The verdict was nullified and the sentence overturned in August 2000 following a review by the Supreme Council of Military Justice that finally admitted that it lacked any evidence to support the charges. However, instead of releasing her, Lori's case was remanded to Perú's Special Civilian Courts for Terrorism. According to the U.S. State Department's annual country reports, trials in these courts "fail to meet international standards of openness, fairness, and due process." The Organization of American States, the United Nations, and other international organizations concur. Specifically, the Inter-American Court of the Organization of American States ruled in a case in 1999 that Perú's anti-terrorism laws violate due process and any trial held under these laws violate the American Convention on Human Rights. Lori's civilian trial was conducted by holdovers from the Fujimori regime.
Jonathan Rees -
4/27/2005
KC:
We've been through this subject before, and you've given me quite an education. Thank you. I often find myself echoing you when it comes to academic freedon discussions. But I still have a couple of bones to pick with you here.
First and foremost, just because graduate students are not covered by the NLRB does not mean that the University cannot bargain with them. We'd need a Columbia student here to confirm this, but I suspect the point of the strike is to get Columbia to do voluntarily what they don't have to do under the law. It's not like grad students are air traffic controllers or something.
I also object to the notion that what Brinkley ius doing is in Columbia's overall interest. There are, at a most basic level, two possible styles of employee management: Shortchange employees, save money, apply savings to the bottom line vs. pay good wages, offer good benefits, get greater productivity which will ultimately pay for the added labor cost. I had the good fortune to be a grad student at an institution where collective bargaining had been going on for twenty-five years [Go Badgers!]. I had decent wages, great health-care coverage and some recourse if the professor I was teaching for tried to make me work more hours than for what I was paid. This made me happy and productive, therefore vastly improving the quality of my students' education. Everybody won.
Graduate students are skilled workers. They deserve to be treated with respect. You, on the other hand, appear to be endorsing the Wal-Martization of higher education.
JR
Robert KC Johnson -
4/27/2005
I agree completely with Caleb that the system we've seen over the past 15-20 years with the decline in full-time lines and increased use of adjuncts is a terrible thing for higher education. But that's not the situation at Columbia--I'm not privy to their internal figures, but I'd be amazed if there's been a substantial decline in full-time, tenure-track faculty at Columbia since 1985. Unionizing Columbia grad students, then, would do nothing to meet the broader national problem, which affects universities far less wealthy than Columbia.
As Alan Brinkley posted in his response to Lemisch, Columbia ultimately decided against having the strikers do any make-up work. But, in response to Thane Doss' point, as I understand the CU situation, teaching is a part of the fellowship that grad students receive. Deciding to go out on strike--a decision that directly harms the school's undergraduates--has consequences. It seems to me that Lemisch argues that grad students should be free to strike with no consequences at all, which is absurd.
As for worries about the job market--absolutely. When I went on the market in 1993, I was worried as well, even more so because departments were regularly eliminating positions in my field. But the Nation article doesn't say that most grad students at Columbia are worried about not getting jobs: it says "most" grad students "are acutely aware that their chances of finding a secure full-time position in academia are slim."
Thane Doss -
4/27/2005
With respect to Robert KC Johnson's posting:
I find "But, of course, the graduate students are not covered under the [National Labor Relations] act" disingenuous, as they were covered under the act until the NLRB reversed itself after packing by the Bush administration.
I also feel that "or requiring strikers to teach an extra term to compensate for the time that they missed in teaching. (Apparently, strikers are supposed to get paid even when they don't fulfill their teaching responsibilities--a pretty good deal!)" skates by the idea of proportionality all too easily. Working an extra semester or year (as suggested in the memo) to "make up" for missing one week's worth of classes borders on bond slavery and/or prison wages.
RKCJ's response to Jesse Lemisch simply seems too dismissive of the details of the situation.
Rebecca Anne Goetz -
4/27/2005
I find myself agreeing with Ralph and Caleb too. Prof. Johnson makes a good point that Columbia has to follow federal law, but that doesn't mean that Columbia can't do more to help its graduate students. We may not be employees, as the NLRB says, but then, what are we? The decision left us in limbo, caught between the old formulation that we are apprentices and the newer view that we function like employees, just with fewer benefits and less job security and doubtful rewards on the horizon. Unforunately, the apprencticeship idea doesn't really work in today's economy, where employers seldom have any loyalty or sense of obligation towards employees. No wonder people are upset--we're admitted as trainees, treated like employees, and are given the rights and privileges of neither group.
I'll also say that grad students at Ivy League universities have the same job anxieties as anyone else. If Prof Johnson put his ear to the ground in Harvard's history department he would see that this is true--and he would be aware that some very talented Harvard history PhDs are finished but currently without jobs. Please, don't make light of our woes just because we supposedly have a more prestigious degree than other students do.
I wish we could draw up an old-fashioned indenture, giving us a set period of time of funding, delineating how many years to be spent passing orals, how many teaching, and how many researching and writing. Let's say, seven or eight years. (The average,I understand from Perspectives, is actually nine years.) Health insurance and a salary to live on would be guaranteed for that time, provided a committee of faculty determined that the student was making good progress towards the degree. It would be expensive for universities but they would only admit as many as they could fund. The exploitation would be taken out of the process, as well as the ulcer-inducing year-to-year struggle for funding. I imagine the need for unions would dry up, and the oversupply problem of PhDs would be much reduced.
Ralph E. Luker -
4/27/2005
I find myself agreeing with both KC and you, Caleb. The piece in the Nation would have been good fodder for long discussion by the followers of Invisible Adjunct. I don't see how one can disagree with KC's main point that Columbia's administrators have a responsibility to the University's undergraduates to be sure that they continue to be well taught, even in the face of a strike by graduate instructors and that it's hardly the "collapse of liberalism" for Brinkley and others to make contingency plans.
Your point, that the system of adjunct graduate student instructors is exploitative and that they get co-opted into sustaining a system that serve institutional purposes but keeps the employment market grim, is well taken. It's a problem that single institutions have little incentive to resolve and our professional organizations have done little to address. It's simply inconceivable that the AMA or the ABA would not have addressed it more effectively if it afflicted their professional practice in any way so severely as it afflicts us.
Caleb McDaniel -
4/27/2005
... get a (different) job? I hope there's more hope for solving the hiring crisis than that.
I think it's important to read the line in the Nation article after the one you quote about students feeling that jobs are scarce. "Worse, they know that by allowing universities to exploit their cheap labor, they are helping to eliminate the very full-time positions for which they are purportedly being trained. Today, roughly 50 percent of the faculty in higher education teach on a part-time, contingent basis."
I think that gets closer to the worries that most grad students have about heavy TA and adjunct loads -- it's not that they are not willing to work for uncertain rewards, but that their working in these short-term jobs actually helps make the rewards more uncertain.
