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For every academic success story, there are hundreds more that involve equally qualified academics who are “trapped in academia’s permanent underclass.” #AcademicTwitter (1/8) https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1212931
And the coronavirus may only make the situation for these educators, who are effectively gig workers cobbling together several positions to survive and who are most often people of color, worse as mass layoffs are underway. (2/8) https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1212931
“If schools have engineering & African American studies on the table & have to make a decision, engineering is going to get the focus,” @kayewhitehead said. “We were the last ones to come in, the last departments to be founded...I’m wrestling w/ that reality as a professor”(3/8)
Hiring freezes will also hurt diversity among college faculty. At Harvard University, for example, the search for faculty specializing in ethnic studies has been indefinitely postponed due to the pandemic. (4/8) https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1212931
This decision comes as a suckerpunch to students who've been urging the school to institute a department focusing on such scholarship 40+ yrs.
For context: I wrote about the aftermath of after an Afro-Latina prof was denied tenure last year. (5/8) https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/uproar-after-harvard-s-only-latina-professor-tenure-track-denied-n1095871
For context: I wrote about the aftermath of after an Afro-Latina prof was denied tenure last year. (5/8) https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/uproar-after-harvard-s-only-latina-professor-tenure-track-denied-n1095871
While the over reliance on contingent faculty has routinely been described as an open secret, the instability of this labor framework has been futher illuminated by the pandemic & scholars (cc: @TenureForCGood & those behind the #cutcovidnotcuny movement) are pushing back. (6/8)
Diversity is important for innumerable reasons, but given how the crisis is disproportionately affecting communities of color, now seems like the time we should be championing it among college faculty, versus dismantling it. (7/8) https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1212931
And a thank you to @AdamHSays for his groundbreaking piece on Thea Hunter, a brilliant black scholar who was a “perennial adjunct professor.” His story put a human face to this issue & has stayed with me since last year. Be sure to give it a read. (8/8) https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/04/adjunct-professors-higher-education-thea-hunter/586168/
