(cw: discussion of academic hiring)

I am incredibly grateful to announce that I’m starting a position as an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at CSU Long Beach this fall! (thread)
http://www.cla.csulb.edu/departments/linguistics/welcome-assistant-professor-anna-bax/

I feel ridiculously lucky and privileged beyond measure, especially to join a strong faculty union @CFA_News and an institution that chose months ago to go online for fall. But I also feel a lot of disgust at the exclusionary nature of higher ed, especially the job market. /

Quite a few of my friends and colleagues applied for this same position. Every single one of them would have been a wonderful pick, and it’s frankly sickening to realize that because I managed to get lucky enough to grab the brass ring, many others won’t be able to. /

Sure, I’m a decent teacher/researcher, but there are SO many other grads, recent PhDs, & contingent scholars who amaze me with their brilliance&drive&passion. I don’t “deserve” this job more than anyone else & many would’ve 100% been better fits for certain facets of this job. /

Me getting this position is only partially to do with my academic identity; so much of it was about luck, timing, & undoubtedly a large amount of white, middle-class, US citizen etc. privilege that allowed me to access the hidden curriculum of how to present myself as “hirable” /

I am grateful. I am ridiculously fucking fortunate. I wish desperately that all PhDs who wanted to were able to access the kind of resources I am now able to access. I am furious that this system is so lopsided&inequitable and furious that many of my friends are being pushed out/

Academia has a massive disposability/eat-your-young problem. It’s fucked. So many passionate, visionary, brilliant people – a disproportionate amount of them scholars of color – are denied access for literally no good reason, bc of white supremacy and entrenched inequalities /

As a result, these scholars sometimes suffer devastating material consequences (ie, no $$). Our students suffer bc some of the very best teachers aren’t allowed through the door to teach them anymore. Research suffers bc the chorus of voices contributing to it is so thinned out /

Obviously I am relieved to have a job rn, and for *so* many reasons I am so happy it is in this particular department. But in a broader sense, I cannot bring myself to feel joy about “winning” the TT-job game, put on by a neoliberal capitalist hell-system in a failing society /

(Also, the academic job market is just as bad as they say. It will take months, if not years, for me to fully recover my sense of self and my emotional well-being. And I was only on the market for a single cycle. We *must* change this system, like yesterday.) /

I am now transitioning from being a precarious, underpaid PhD student to being securely employed, at a historical moment when that right (and secure income *is* a right that *everyone* should have) is even scarcer than usual. /

A personal pledge that I am stating here publicly for accountability is to refuse to be lulled out of solidarity with the precarious academic majority – who are my friends, my colleagues, my teachers, and my former students – by my shiny new TT privilege. /

Like white supremacy, capitalism, & the entire US, I will never forget that the academic system as a whole is rotten to the core. I will not let the ability to reap its benefits distract me from the vital necessity of radical transformation. /

I will engage in redistribution – of $$ resources, of academic opportunities, of knowledge and access – and reparations at every possible opportunity, both to other scholars & to the communities I serve. I will collaborate with other accomplices to multiply my power to do so. /

I will do everything I can to change this shit and then I will do more. /

I definitely feel survivor’s guilt – how could anyone not, especially right now? – but I know it’s unproductive and unhelpful to wallow in it. Still, if any more-senior securely employed faculty want to give me advice about how to move through that, I could honestly use it. /

This year’s job cycle is even more horrific than normal and I’m so sorry for those of you facing it. For what it’s worth, if any current students want my job application materials, DM me and I’ll send them all to you. Also happy to look over application docs for folks I know. /

Yes, teaching and research is the work. But leaving this system better than I found it is also the work. I am grateful to have learned from observing role models at @UCSB_Ling like @MaryBucholtz and @ACharityHudley and @lzimman as they work for institutional change. /

In conclusion: I feel like I narrowly survived a tornado and there’s broken glass and destruction everywhere. It’s time to grab a broom and get to work—not rebuilding the old pre-COVID academy, but reimagining this place from scratch. /fin