As a (former) adjunct instructor (teaching simultaneously at 3 schools & still unable to eat or pay rent), I wholeheartedly agree with @zenahitz .

I don't give 2 figs for the current system. I am for saving the life of the mind, even if the mind has to find a new place to live. https://twitter.com/spkenn1/status/1277756945869336577

As I watch the argument unfold over the Zena Hitz piece, for sympathetic readers the main stumbling block seems to be the (admittedly radical) suggestion of doing away with contingent (adjunct) faculty. As a former adjunct, I did not take offense at this suggestion because...

...the article outlines a two-fold strategy: (1) eliminate the current contingency situation (aah!!!) and (2) give tenured faculty more teaching duties. This might seem like leaving adjuncts out in the cold, except...

...as I understand Hitz's argument, she argues for valuing **teaching** (a job currently outsourced to adjuncts) SO THAT universities will focus support, funding, etc. in that direction. This would mean...

...making teaching a full-time job, with benefits. Of course, if you replace 100 part-timers with 25 full-timers, that would seem to leave out the other 75, except...

...what you are actually doing is making teaching a more valued, high-stakes position. The 25 former adjuncts-become-faculty now get basic human decency and a concomitant salary, while the other 75 (like my former self) at least know where they stand...

...which is to say, they are not in the limbo that is contingency. This CERTAINTY (I can't express how much this matters to contingent / gig workers) may then have more clarity about the need for alternate houses for the life of the mind (my point above)...

...and my hope is that intellectual life OUTSIDE the university will become more of a real possibility when more people realize what is already true: most of us will end up outside it. Those hanging onto shreds of hope in The System will lack a reason to build alternatives...

...whereas those who get that 75% (or whatever) of "intellectuals" will be operating outside the uni will have reason to join forces to build alternative structures: various species of think tank, community creative incubator, public history organization, writing collective, etc.