An academic disgrace

The adjunct run-around. We ought to be ashamed. The Guardian explains how bad the adjunct game has become: professors living in poverty, homelessness, and even turning to sex work to make ends meet. This is simply not right, and yet universities are openly exploiting the people who should be the most important workers in their institutions. Why do they allow it to continue? Money.

Adjuncting has grown as funding for public universities has fallen by more than a quarter between 1990 and 2009. Private institutions also recognize the allure of part-time professors: generally they are cheaper than full-time staff, don’t receive benefits or support for their personal research, and their hours can be carefully limited so they do not teach enough to qualify for health insurance.

This is why adjuncts have been called “the fast-food workers of the academic world”: among labor experts adjuncting is defined as “precarious employment”, a growing category that includes temping and sharing-economy gigs such as driving for Uber. An American Sociological Association taskforce focusing on precarious academic jobs, meanwhile, has suggested that “faculty employment is no longer a stable middle-class career”.

This behavior is blatant capitalistic criminality, and it has to end. I have a few suggestions.

The accreditation agencies are playing a role in allowing the exploitation to continue. They are supposed to be assessing the quality of the educational experience at a university; when half the faculty are part-time, paid on a shoestring, and are receiving no benefits for their work, that says that the teachers at that university are disrespected and are not provided the resources to do their work, and they should not be accredited. When a big name ivy league university is told their degrees will count for nothing unless they increase the percentage of full-time faculty, they will change.

Make it illegal to hire faculty for less than some high percentage of full time (with exceptions; some part-time medical leave, for instance). It is absurd that anyone has to take on 3 or 4 piddling little teaching appointments to make ends meet; that says right there that there is enough work for a full time person, but they’re artificially breaking it up to avoid paying benefits. Sometimes you do have to hire faculty purely for teaching, with no research option, and that’s OK — but do it with an integral number of teaching lines, instead of breaking it up into dribs and drabs that are not fair to the people you hire. When my wife was working as an adjunct, it meant driving all over eastern Pennsylvania to piece together enough work. She would have been thrilled with a job at one place, with an office and some acknowledgment of her existence, even if it involved just as much teaching.

My tenured and tenure track colleagues have a part to play, too. Are the contingent faculty in your department treated in the same way as everyone else? Are they asked to attend faculty meetings? Do they have a say in the curriculum and course offerings? Or are they told to come in, teach their one course, and then get out of the way and disappear? Are you telling your administration to create teaching lines, or are you simply lobbying for individual courses to be staffed? Are there part-timers in your department that you are used to seeing show up briefly and disappear? Do you talk to them?

Parents of prospective students: do you ask about how classes are staffed? How likely is it your first-year student is going to meet or be taught by tenured faculty? If their classes are all taught by a temporary faculty who is also teaching part time at a local community college, you might as well start your kid in that community college. They’re getting the same education, from the same person.

We treat too many people in this manner of prolonged cruelty. It really needs to stop.

Callie Wright vs Mythcon

Callie Wright interviews the guys who are putting on Mythcon. They’re terrible. Here’s the reason they justify inviting Carl Benjamin aka Sargon of Akkad to be a speaker there: he’s an entertainer. Atheist conferences need to bring in new, exciting speakers.

I’m just wondering what is entertaining about Carl Benjamin? They compare him to George Carlin and Sarah Silverman.

They also point out that attendance at atheist conferences is down, and we need to spark new interest, so they’re looking for novel voices in the entertainment industry. If they’re dredging the bottom of the barrel to find people, I don’t think that’s going to help stimulate interest.

Jesus. Benjamin is an “entertainer” now. Gosh. Let’s bring in “entertaining” Nazis to conferences, too.

Early warning signs of bad behavior: take note and act

You may have heard that the founder of AintItCoolNews, Harry Knowles, is being accused of sexual harassment. His little entertainment empire is collapsing fast in the wake of some serious problems.

Melissa Kaercher was acquainted with him and has been attending his events for years, and she has written up an honest analysis of Knowles’ problems. It’s clear how the pattern evolved. Start with a few crude jokes — we’ve all been there. Graduate to gross-out humor. Notice that sexual abuse gets the strongest response. From there, you’re off to the races, and start thinking you can do whatever you want to people. It’s funny!

We have all been there, at least at the early stages. But most of us learn early that we can repel people easily with such behavior, and we tone it down and work to extinguish it. But if you’re famous and popular, if you have rewards, like Knowles’ special, private events, people are less likely to speak out in the early stages, and you’ll also find that other privileged, nasty people gravitate towards you — it’s asshole magnetism. And before you know it, you’re living in a little clique where the decent people try to look the other way, while the similarly bad people are egging you on, until you cross a line that no one can ignore anymore.

It’s tough to handle. People tend not to respond well to criticism. If you do catch them early, and tell someone that, for instance, you don’t appreciate their rape joke, you know what’ll happen: “It was just one little joke! I’m a good guy! Why are you so tight-assed?”, and it all comes back on you. And they don’t invite you to their super-cool party.

But it needs to be done. Don’t let your friends slide down that easy, slick path to abusiveness. Snip it off early.

Ghosts of Cuba

I’m glad some people are skeptical about the so-called “sonic attacks” on the American embassy in Cuba. It’s absurd.

It’s also easily tested. If bad guys are pumping energy into embassy rooms with some kind of mysterious device, that’s testable. We’ve got wackaloons running around claiming they can detect non-existent ghosts with simple electronic gadgets — real physicists could easily place real recording devices that are sensitive to a wide range of frequencies in these rooms and get concrete evidence of a real phenomenon, if it exists. Why haven’t they? You’d think the first thing they would do, on suspecting that they’re getting zapped by sonic rays, is call up the NSA or the signal corps, and they’d stick a few widgets around and detect any anomalous signals.

Have they? If they have, we’d know and have specific measurements to pin the fault on something. If they haven’t, it means they’ve got nothing but ghosts. And ghosts don’t exist.

Hypocrisy in Silicon Valley, again

I’m not one of the people who follows Donald Trump on Twitter — I get more than enough second hand Trump without mainlining him. I’m kind of appalled that he’s still allowed on Twitter, frankly, since he’s abusive and bullying and vile, but of course, that’s never been a reason to close a Twitter account. And now we have it straight from Twitter itself that they’re never going to ban him.

The actual statement is about Trump’s tweets being “newsworthy,” with Twitter claiming that letting him stay on the platform helps keep people “informed about what’s happening in the world.” This justification helps absolve Twitter of any responsibility for what Trump does, and it saves the company from having to take any specific stand against anything he might do or say. Also, the thread says that Twitter holds all accounts “to the same rules,” which is funny because it’s definitely not true.

That’s such a pile of bullshit. You could say exactly the same thing about Andrew Anglin, the racist who runs the Daily Stormer. Rising racism is “newsworthy”, and we should be “informed about what’s happening”. Your more mundane stalker/harasser, likewise…if he’s significant enough that you’re complaining, then he’s “newsworthy”, and hey, don’t you want to keep informed about what he’s doing?

Twitter has banned some people, at least temporarily. They slapped down Anglin, for instance. But it’s only when their behavior becomes embarrassing to the company. Apparently, two petty maniacal tyrants taunting each other into nuclear war, or the white nationalist leader of a country fomenting racial hatred in the populace, are not at all embarrassing. That’s good business. It won’t be their fault if a few million people get killed because they enabled a tantrum.

Here’s a reason to ban him anyway, though. You’ve heard of all the football fans burning their team jerseys and season tickets to protest football players who don’t exhibit sufficient worshipfulness to a flag? Imagine if Twitter banned Trump: millions of outraged Trumpkins would delete their accounts in protest; all those people with frog avatars and swastikas would vanish. It would become almost paradisial. The majority of users would be overjoyed, and be gushing over the improved quality of the communication. It would be the one simplest, easiest thing they could do to diminish their asshole problem. So it won’t happen.

Born in the wrong century

Why don’t we have elevenses anymore?

You’ve had an excruciating work day. Your boss moved your deadline up, an irate customer yelled at you over an expired coupon, or maybe your desk mate smacked through an egg salad sandwich with his mouth open. Happy hour couldn’t come soon enough.

In the 19th century, you wouldn’t have had to wait. Start drinking before lunch, why don’t you? The tradition of “elevenses” meant it was customary for workers to take a break at, you guessed it, 11 a.m. In most cases, the respite was synonymous with a tug from the ol’ bottle.

This semester, most of my lecture classes are scheduled for mid-day, and I’ve got labs in the morning from 9-11. Eleven o’clock is the perfect time for a break, I’m realizing. I know how a hobbit would celebrate elevenses, but the American tradition is different.

Boozing wasn’t very taboo at first. In our new “alcoholic republic,” people (mostly men) passed the bottle at all waking hours. Employers were actually expected to provide hooch throughout the workday. It made sense that the mid-morning break now common in modern work environments naturally paired with whiskey. Thus, the American definition of elevenses was born.

Hmm. I should float this suggestion by the division chair, or even the chancellor. Except…this is a very bad idea in a commuter culture. Daily alcohol consumption before the drive home sounds like a catastrophe in the making, and it’s a good thing this custom faded away.

But wait! I don’t have a commute! I live across the street from my workplace. Surely nothing could interfere with a daily tipple for me, so maybe we can make an exception for people who live within walking distance of work.

Except then I’d become that “fun” professor who is oddly discursive and talks funny and occasionally falls down in class. So maybe that’s a bad idea.

I guess I’ll stick to 11:00 tea.

I hope the university marketing department is paying attention

The first issue of our student paper, the Morris University Register, has come out, and it includes a full page guide for first year LGBTQIA2S+ students. I have a favorite part.

Don’t hide. Morris is a super gay school, so no one will treat you differently.

Hear that, everyone? UMM is super gay. That’s an excellent reason to come here.

Second favorite comment is “The College Republicans have a history of being purposely inflammatory, especially towards our community. Just ignore them.” That tells you how relevant conservatives are here.

We also have a Queer Devil Worshippers for a Better Future club on campus.

Morris does have some short uplifting slogan on billboards advertising the school, but I have to say…I can never remember what it is. It’s so airy and inoffensive and positive that it’s also utterly forgettable. Now ads that cheerily declared that “Morris is a super gay school!” — those would stand out, and draw in applications from the kind of student we want to encourage, and scare away those we’d rather not see.