“…What can tenured and tenure-lined faculty do to support adjuncts? Actions to encourage structural change might include the
following:
§
Join the union and the American
Association of University Professors. Advocate for adjunct unionization and
representation.
§
Educate yourselves on union laws in
your state and attend a protest or rally in support of local unions.
§
Openly support adjunct unionization.
Write (or sign) a letter of support and deliver that letter to your
administration.
§
Address adjunct concerns with your
professional organization. Most organizations send out a member survey after
the large annual conference. Might your university not subsidize adjunct travel
costs? Suggest that your professional organization offer generous, multiple
funds for adjuncts, not for extra professional development workshops but simply
for attending the meeting. Maybe give these funds on a rolling basis so as not
to create an onerous application process?
§
Observe whether adjuncts have
representation in your professional organization’s leadership. Are adjunct
concerns considered frequently and publicly or are panels about 'the adjunct
experience' given the last time slot?
§
In department meetings, recognize, out
loud, that not every department member is there. Decisions made in department
meetings affect teaching-only faculty, who rarely have a voice in department
culture but who may teach a majority of the students in the department -- or
who may fulfill your department’s service course obligations to the university.
Although actions that might change structural conditions, if
successful, will offer the most long-term benefit to adjuncts (other than doing
away with adjunctification as a whole, which might be the ultimate solution but
seems unattainable), I would have benefited enormously from the following interpersonal
ones, as well:
§
Offer adjunct faculty the same physical
resources as tenured and tenure-line faculty. Having a working printer, copier
code and business cards is not only a way to help adjuncts feel at home in the
department; such resources also make a real impact upon adjuncts’ professional
lives.
§
Ask adjuncts about their research and
teaching with the idea that they might actually teach you something. They may
have published articles and books, and especially if they have worked on other
campuses and you have not (or have not for a long time), they may well have a
better perspective on pedagogical interventions, assessment and course
organization.
§
Invite adjuncts to speak about their
research. And, of course, pay them to do so (travel and an
honorarium). Promote their work whenever possible to the faculty.
§
Compensate adjuncts for their time
outside the classroom. An 'inviting' culture does not feel inviting when some
people at the meeting are worried about how to pay for their ride home, since
it will be too dark at the end of the meeting to bike.
§
Punch up. Adjuncts and tenure-track
faculty, especially minorities and women, have similar interests in the
university structure. Humanities departments are hit by some of the same forces
that keep adjuncts in subservient positions. Complaining is normal, but
complain up, not down. Adjuncts are not your audience; they can be
your allies” (A Formal Adjunct Looks Back by Sarah Ellen Zarrow, Inside HigherEd, Aug. 24, 2018).
Unfortunately, most full-time faculty do not sympathize with the adjunct faculty’s plight. Adjunct faculty are generally without help in their hardship. The “tenure-adjunct divide has bifurcated the faculty between the older craft producers and… [low-] waged laborers. [Privileged] tenured faculty, whatever their stated level of solidarity or sympathy for the struggles of… proletarianized academic workers may be, are reluctant to directly intervene or ally with them…” What is more, most tenured faculty are unconcerned about the slow moral dissolution of higher education and the threats to their own security, even though these debasing administrative trends and practices persist.
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