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A thread on the ongoing “freeze” (or collapse) in #HigherEd of faculty hiring in the #Humanities: ... 1/
Over the weekend, I learned that @NJBIZ and its Chief Editor @jkanige had named me to their annual “Education Power 50” list for the state of New Jersey: https://njbiz.com/presenting-2020-njbiz-education-power-50/ 2/
Of course, I appreciate the compliment—though any list that includes me with the word “power” in the title must be unfamiliar with my perennial efforts to secure $5k of funding from my own uni admin for the Medieval and Early Modern Seminar I help run. 3/ https://www.montclair.edu/medieval-and-early-modern-studies-seminar/past-speakers-mems/
But something else about the @NJBIZ “Education Power 50” list jumped out at me, perhaps especially coinciding as it does with a time of near total collapse of faculty hiring in the #Humanities across the #HigherEd landscape. 4/
Best I can tell, I seem to be the only active (as in not retired) college or university faculty member on the list who does not hold some form of administrative or “Executive Director”/President/CEO position: https://njbiz.com/2020-njbiz-education-power-50-slideshow/ 5/
That says a lot about a lot of things, including where the real “power” in Higher Ed lies these days, in New Jersey and more broadly. 6/
But it also, I think, flags up not just the nihilism but the nearsightedness at work in the decision of many such administrators around the country to put a “freeze” on hiring faculty in the #Humanities and even to suspend admissions to their own humanities graduate programs. 7/
Back in 2012, I was hired by @montclairstateu as an Assistant Professor at a time when, particularly in the wake of the 2008 economic downturn, many universities had already begun to decide that new humanities faculty were a luxury they could not afford. 8/
Looking back at the job openings for that year for English Departments around the country, @montclairstateu’s and @msu_english's ad for a professor specializing in “17th c. non dramatic literature, in particular Milton” (my field) was the *only* such opening in North America. 9/
Then as now, what few other job openings there were in my field of Renaissance or early modern literary studies mostly specified a desire for someone working, in whole or in part, on early modern DRAMA, especially Shakespeare and co. 10/
@montclairstateu ended up being the only offer to interview w/ anyone at the annual @MLAnews convention that I received that year, and through sheer good-fortune I wound up getting the job. 11/
It was my 2nd year on the “job market”, and I don’t know how many more years of looking for a faculty post (or even a stopgap fellowship or temporary visiting position, from all of which I’d also been rejected) that I had left in me. 12/
My now wife was in medical residency training then, coming off an overnight shift, and I still remember waking her up that afternoon with tears in my eyes to tell her I’d gotten the job @montclairstateu. 13/
We’d made the decision – mostly at my own stupid urging – that it would be reckless to get married before I even had a job someplace. (Side note: don’t do that! Never put the most important thing in your life on hold for any reason.) 14/
So a job, for us, meant knowing not just that I was going to be able to stay a part of a field about which I cared so much but, more importantly, that my wife and I could finally get started on living the rest of our lives together. It was a big, big deal for us. 15/
And do you know how much it cost @montclairstateu, at least in terms of what what my annual salary was when I started? $68,413.00. 16/
Now I don’t mean to pretend that’s not a lot of money for most people; it was more than twice what I’d ever been paid to do anything. I felt filthy rich when I saw that salary figure, and I more or less immediately ran out and bought the used @VW that I still drive. 17/
But without getting into uni budgeting minutiae, let’s just say that unis spend a hell of a lot more than that annually on all sorts of things less notionally central to their “core” mission than faculty researching and teaching in supposed core, #humanities disciplines. 18/
So how did that decision on @montclairstateu’s part to hire me at a time when so many other English Depts, colleges, and wider universities had decided they either couldn’t afford or just didn’t want to hire anyone working in my field whatsoever? 19/
3 years later – & on the back of several research trips to @SidneySussex in the UK that I funded entirely out of my own pocket – I announced the identification of what now stands as the earliest known draft of the King James Bible. 20/ https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/books/earliest-known-draft-of-king-james-bible-is-found-scholar-says.html
Here's a video of me (alas looking younger and thinner ... time comes for us all) on @MSNBC and @AlexWitt's show talking about the discovery 21/ https://www.msnbc.com/weekends-with-alex-witt/watch/oldest-known-draft-of-king-james-bible-found-546794051938
3 years after that, I was awarded a yearlong fellowship from @NEHgov to pursue my research further, making me one of very few faculty in the history of @montclairstateu ever to receive such an honor. cc: @humanitiesmag @EditorSkinner 22/ https://www.neh.gov/article/first-draft-king-james-bible
And one year ago nearly to the day I was named a @macfound Fellow. 23/ https://www.macfound.org/fellows/1045/
Depending on how one reckons it, I seem to be the first scholar of early modern English lit to receive a @macfound fellowship since Harold Bloom in 1985 and Marc Shell in 1990. (I try not to be Bloomian in other ways, I promise.) 24/ https://www.montclair.edu/newscenter/2019/09/25/english-professor-jeffrey-alan-miller-wins-macarthur-genius-grant/
I don’t say all this to pat myself on the back. I still find it more than a little ludicrous to have been selected as an @macfound fellow, particularly when I consider all the amazing work that’s been done by others in my field over the past two decades and counting. 25/
I also don’t think it’s anything like the main reason to hire faculty in the #Humanities: because you may turn out to win fame and glory for your institutions on the (very) cheap. 26/
The main reason to hire faculty in the #Humanities, including in my own field of early modern literary studies, is because research and teaching in those fields has shaped the world for millennia and continues to do so, as has the absence of such research and teaching. 27/
It is also vital that such humanities research and teaching not become predominantly restricted to just a handful of Ivy League and Ivy-League-adjacent universities. 28/
For one thing, the idea that students at institutions not conventionally so regarded are somehow inherently less capable or even interested in excelling at such “impractical” humanities disciplines is a pernicious delusion. 29/
I was an undergraduate @Princeton, and I also taught while a grad student @UniofOxford, and I would put the students I’ve had the pleasure of knowing @montclairstateu up against any of the students from those places that I’ve encountered. 30/
Except that, crucially, most of my students @montclairstateu don’t take it for granted that the study of someone like Milton is meant for someone like them, or that they of course *deserve* to be taught by the sort of faculty member who might win a @macfound fellowship. 31/
So that’s the main reason why it’s a nearsighted mistake – and one in which too many faculty and humanities depts themselves are complicit – to purge an entire generation of future humanities researchers and teachers through hiring freezes and suspended doctoral programs. 32/
But even if one wants to judge in the crassest possible terms the merit of hiring and training future generations of humanities scholars, it should not go unremarked that hiring #humanities scholars can actually be a good, cost-effective bet for universities to make! 33/
My own institution of @montclairstateu has gotten a lot of mileage (and free advertising) out of their decision to hire me in a bad economic time for more or less pennies on the dollar. And I’m glad they’ve reaped that reward! 34/
Though the whole thing is obviously a bit silly, it makes me proud that the only active, non-admin faculty member in the entire state of New Jersey on @NJBIZ’s so-called “Education Power 50” list is an early modern English professor @montclairstateu. 35/
But if I had actual “power” I’d be telling the sorts of people who make funding and hiring decisions both in New Jersey and at large that now is precisely NOT the time to put a freeze on hiring faculty in the #humanities or on continuing to fund grad programs in those fields. 36/
For one thing, for next to nothing in the grand scheme of uni expenditures, you stand a good chance of hiring someone in the #humanities who might go on to make your school look very good—in addition to helping educate, inspire, *and recruit* generations of future students. 37/
Or we can all just let hiring in the #Humanities go the way it’s been trending for the past decade or more, and it will not solely be those who already care about the humanities who will have let slip an enormous opportunity in the process. 38/38
