OBAMA'S HISTORICALLY BLAND ADDRESS AT MOREHOUSE IGNORES EDUCATION

Ok, I admit to a bit of dead horse beating here, but what the hell?

How can this horse be dead? Where's the work ethic anymore?

President Obama had at least one good joke to begin his address at the Morehouse College commencement this morning: 

I know some of you had to wait in long lines to get into today’s ceremony. I would apologize, but it didn’t actually have anything to do with security. These graduates just wanted you to know what it’s like to register for classes.

Ha ha. Really. I like it.  

Didn't say anything about adjunct faculty, though, which, while it isn't funny, is important if you’re like me in thinking that the ongoing enfeebling of the nation's faculty is the real problem with higher education. 

Not funny at all.

President Obama did have a few words going on about responsibility, leaning on some remarks by Benjamin Mays, Morehouse president from 1940 to 1967, noting that the college should aim to produce graduates "who are sensitive to the wrongs, the sufferings, and the injustices of society and who are willing to accept responsibility for correcting [those] ills.”

"Live up to President Mays’ challenge," U.S. President Obama urged.  "Some of you may be headed to medical school to become doctors. But make sure you heal folks in underserved communities who really need it, too."

That was a prelude to softsell marketing of Obamacare. Obamacare? I’m a fan, in principle, but did the President take what was a golden opportunity, at Morehouse this morning, to point out that some unscrupulous employees—that’s probably a zillion colleges and universities, unfortunately, have been using Obamacare as an excuse to further injure the livelihoods and lives of America’s majority faculty?

No. Why did I even ask?

And, by the way, President Obama didn't say anything at all to any of Morehouse men who might be thinking about a career in high ed.

There must have been some. I wonder if they were thinking about the majority higher education faculty in this country—the faculty that already, being the "super-majority" in the community colleges and "lesser tier" 4-year colleges, knows quite a lot about serving "folks in underserved communities." A shame the current President, of the United States, seems so unaware of that.

Now, also get you to the Hofstra AAUP adjunct site, which has a very good post. 

And go comment-here's mine:

Hi folks-thanks for posting this. It’s a shame isn’t it, that we weren’t able to mobilize even more noise around this classically hideous example of institutional inequity, but at least we got some of it going. I tried to find some sort of info on whether or not there would be higher ed union or other supremos at this event– some published itineraries perhaps, of leadership types who might have been in the good seats– with a view to doing a twitter thing and twitting them for their fecklessness in the face of an obvious pr opportunity…but ran out of gas, not least of all because I had to/still have to, write a new final exam for a new course… To give tomorrow. But, again, it’s great to see this post, thanks.

And, of course, also visit the New Faculty Majority Blog, which has all manner of current adcon news going on-Thank you, Vanessa!

And then get to the New Faculty Majority Facebook page as well.

I really think the White House should be all tied with adcon tweets and so-forth...don't you?


_________________________________________

May 16, 2013  Ok, I'm sorry. I was wrong. 

Look: MorehouseCollege Won’t Shut Adjuncts Out of Obama’s Speech After All

 

So this crow was just helping me out, ok? Nothing bad happened to this crow.

And here is a comment from Kathleen Rand Reed, in which she explains the whole misunderstanding:

I spoke with Karen Miller, Chief of Staff, for President John Silvanus Wilson, Jr., at Morehouse and several other knowledgeable persons.  No slight was intended toward the adjuncts.  Usually the "full-time" faculty sits on the stage during commencement. Normally, some members of the faculty are not present --whether away on a vacation, choice not to come, whatever the reason.  This time because of the historic significance of the President speaking at a commencement--in Georgia, at Morehouse an HBCU, etc, almost every faculty member this side of Alabama and any other state wants to be and plans to be on that stage in full regalia.  This situation left a full stage, issues  around fire codes, no room for everyone on stage, security and the like.  Morehouse goes out of its way as an institution to teach its students "compassion, civility, integrity and even listening".  They are not about to go back on that commitment to its students, its faculty (all of its faculty) and the public and especially POTUS. Please do not project onto a revered institution some malevolent intent when the full story has not been told.

Let's hear a loud round of applause for the Morehouse coup of having Obama as the commencement speaker.  Wow!

Kathleen Rand Reed

I know, right? Wow. Now I'll have to eat that crow, probably with egg on my face. Disgusting.

See, Dr. Reed seems to be a nice person, and an anthropologist too, so I’m sure she knows that the American Anthropological Association, through its association with Coalition for theAcademic Workforce, for instance, is VERY SERIOUS about raising the profile of adjunct and contingent faculty.

And, furthermore, she’s clearly someone who commands respect within the academic establishment, because I found a recent post of hers, for instance, on the  "BLOG OF ACADEMEMAGAZINE," where I also read that "OPINIONS PUBLISHED HERE DO NOT REPRESENT THE POLICIES OF THE AAUP."

What a minute! What’s wrong here! Yes, I knew it! I knew the AAUP wouldn't stick up for the excluded adjuncts down at Morehouse College! And where’s AFT, come to think of it! Or NEA!

Are you kidding me!  Shame! Shame!

So, glad I could clear that up. I have three grading deadlines on me. Gotta go.

 ****************

 
May 13, 2012 -- Hi there—you may not be able to read this very good article by Peter Schmidt in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education, because it’s behind a paywall, but you can read it below because, well, I’m not sure, but somehow it just appeared here.

BTW, Morehouse College doesn’t have THAT many adcon faculty-only 50 or so (half are part-timers), so you’d think that seats wouldn’t be THAT hard to come up with….

(That’s all for now: I am still grading 24 gazillion tests and papers—Alan Trevithick)

Adjuncts May Be Shut Out of Obama's Speech at Morehouse College

ByPeter Schmidt

[Update (5/15/2013, 11:15 a.m.): Morehouse College announced on Wednesday that adjunct faculty members would each receive one ticket to be in the audience at the commencement ceremony because additional tickets became available after students’ ticket needs were met. The adjuncts will not, however, be able to sit with full-time faculty members on the stage.]

The original CHE article did not feature this poignant illustration, by the way, and, also, not all adjunct/contingent faculty dress like this. I do, of course, but I'm hardly putting myself out there as representative. Many of us who routinely get kicked to the curb in this way manage to do so in a a stylish, indeed, elegant, manner.

Despite all the time they spend in its classrooms, part-time faculty members at Morehouse College are at risk of being kept away on Sunday when President Obama delivers this year's commencement address on the campus green.

Faced with overwhelming demand for seats at the event and the security concerns associated with a presidential visit, the historically black private college decided in February to deny tickets to its roughly 50 part-time faculty members. It has since reversed itself to the extent that it is at least trying to find a way to let adjuncts attend, but Elise Durham, a Morehouse spokeswoman, said on Tuesday that "we just don't know yet" if that will be possible. "We are making every effort to do what we can," she said.

The Atlanta institution clearly is dealing with exceptional circumstances surrounding the first appearance of a sitting U.S. president to deliver one of its commencement addresses. Nevertheless, its decision to deny tickets to its part-time faculty—while seating full-timers onstage—is being perceived by some national advocates for adjunct instructors as emblematic of how colleges often give that population second-class treatment when it comes to inclusion in campus events or access to campus facilities.

"It is so common for adjuncts to be excluded from things," Maria Maisto, president of New Faculty Majority, said on Tuesday. She said even those adjunct faculty members who hold full-time jobs outside academe, and therefore are not as unhappy with their pay and benefits as adjuncts who try to make a living by teaching, "will get very upset about these kinds of exclusions, because they are an insult and they are disrespectful."

"This is just more of the same," said Debra Leigh Scott, who teaches part time at Temple University and is co-producing the documentary Junct: The Trashing of Higher Ed. in America. Calling adjuncts "the invisible people" on college campuses, she said, "It is not at all surprising that the administration would make a decision to further erase the existence of adjuncts at this type of thing."

The Chronicle was unable to reach any Morehouse adjuncts on Tuesday afternoon who were willing to talk about their exclusion from the commencement ceremony, first reported last week in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But Keith Hollingsworth, a professor of business who is chairman of the college's Faculty Council, said, "They are not happy, of course. I don't think that is a big secret."

"Normally," Mr. Hollingsworth said, "we have a very open graduation ceremony," with seats in the front reserved for students and their families but others open to anyone who wanted to attend. "This is the first time we have had to restrict it," he said. "The whole emphasis is to try to have as many tickets for the students as possible."

Ms. Maisto said that at some colleges commencements pose a much different problem for adjuncts because they are required to attend the events without being reimbursed for their time.

At Morehouse, President Obama's scheduled appearance at the commencement has generated high demand for seats, security concerns limiting the number of seats available, and an exceptional level of scrutiny for the college. Morehouse's president, John S. Wilson Jr., already has come under criticism for reducing the role played in its graduation ceremonies by the Rev. Kevin R. Johnson, a Morehouse alumnus who leads a Baptist church in Philadelphia and had recently criticized President Obama in an essay in The Philadelphia Tribune.

In past years, Morehouse had set out about 10,000 seats for its commencement, with no ticket requirements, and let about 3,000 additional people stand in the back. This year, for security reasons, it has had to remove a section of seats, reducing the number available to 9,500, and to require everyone in attendance to have a ticket. It has offered one ticket each to its 170 full-time faculty members, who will have to go through background checks before being seated onstage; one ticket each to members of its staff; and 12 tickets to each of its students.

Ms. Maisto of New Faculty Majority said the situation at Morehouse is an example of how adjuncts "are often reminded of our status" by being given inferior treatment, even when equal treatment would not cost the college any additional money. "It is as much about academic culture as it is about economics," she said, "maybe even more so."

Adcom Mayday: Be Bright, Be Loud

I’m looking for a good hook here, but why bother when I can use this:

Mayday! This is an emergency call for help! We face a dangerous crisis in higher education. It affects almost every university, college and community college. It is not limited to any city, region or state. It is called contingency: the majority of teachers in higher education today are grossly underpaid, at-will employees, lacking any meaningful job security and the academic freedom essential to quality education.

That’s from the 2013 Mayday Manifesto endorsed by lots of solid adjunct/contingent groups—the Executive Board (statewide, New York) of United University Professions (UUP), New Faculty Majority: The National Coalition for Adjunct and Contingent Equity, the new Adjunct Faculty Association in Pittsburgh organized by the United Steelworkers, and many others.

So go sign that now. And sign this as well, the Adjunct Justice Petition. You'll feel better, and this movement will be moving ahead. 

And then look at the NFM blog which will give you a info on Mayday adcon-related events, including one sponsored by the Ohio part-time Faculty Association, from which group I’ve taken the graphic above.

And the SUNY New Paltz UUP  site, from which I’ve taken the one below—SUNY New Paltz is the place where the excellent language of the 2013 Mayday Manifesto was developed.  

So, as you can see, tomorrow, May 1^st, there are many events planned around advocacy for improved working conditions for the majority higher education faculty in this country—adjunct and contingent faculty.

Ok, let me try that again: tomorrow, there are actually too few events planned specifically to protest against the vile four-decades-old scandal in higher education that is the raw exploitation of academic labor through the use of poorly=paid, job-insecure, no-or-low benefit faculty—adjunct and contingent—who are keeping higher education afloat in this country.

A final note: as you don your red clothing tomorrow, emblazoned with the appropriate slogans, I suggest you keep it simple, so that non-specialists can follow. Avoid, for instance, such things as “Say no to Vampire Weasels” or “FTT Shadow Failure: Shame!”

Stay with something simple, like “Learning=Earning? Ha-ha-ha!”

However we’re able to do it, let’s cast some light up what Maria Maisto of NFM has called Higher Education’s Darkest Secret. And while we’re lighting up that darkness, let’s also turn up the volume.

How to Attack and Destroy Higher Ed Labor Evil: The Secret revealed

Read this post, commit it to memory, and destroy, ok? 

Top secret.

Cadmo Totally Kills this Dragon

The SEIU Local 500 Coalition of Academic Labor Fourth Annual Forum on Part-time Faculty Unions, Caste and Classes: Contingent Academic Labor Confronting Inequalities in Higher Education

The Prime Hypocrisy of Higher Education Now

A trio of strong speakers, in remarks moderated by New Faculty Majority President Maria Maisto, opened up with powerful views about education. Speakers railed against the current intolerable conditions of the majority faculty, preached on the need for alliances between adcons and other communities—both more and less exploited—and robustly defended higher ed's true character as a public right and a public good--the only context in which the rights and working conditions of adjunct and contingent faculty will be genuinely addressed. 

It was wonderful.

Gary Rhoades, of the Center for the Study of Higher Education, at University of Arizona, started out with enthusiasm for the wonderful promise of SEIU's Metro DC strategy, discussed below, and called out the "prime hypocrisy" of an academy in which 2/3 to 3/4 of the faculty are not living any kind of that much ballyhooed "dream" that's supposed to be connected to higher education. He reaffirmed his well-known commitment to higher education for the least served communities, and made a case that contingent faculty are the faculty with the most creativity, energy, and informed commitment to students. 

And then Pablo Eisenberg, Senior Fellow at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, weighed in with an appeal to all of us to be in support and dialogue and action with other-than-adcon groups in our nation who are being driven "down the ladder." He surveyed, with clear and grounded authority, the state of play of "living wage," and other campus-based social justice that ought to be running at full steam and in concert with drives for adjunct/contingent equity. And are not. He called the assembly—and they were ready to be called, I think—to renew their efforts against the selfish and self-injuring indifference, of too many adcons, to the problems of other workers. 

After which, Wayne Langley, Director of the Higher Education Division for SEIU Local 615, pumped out some fine material of the sort we just sometimes want, real bad. Like, current higher education practice is "driving a stake though the heart of the American dream." That I liked, and also the insistence that "All education is public"—Maria, Gary and Pablo had all said this in one way or another, but Wayne also offered us a new bit, or one I hadn’t heard before in this formulation: "You get a 4-year critical thinking education," he said, if you're a member of that shrinking number of citizens who are going to be allowed to develop the tools they need to be informed, and critical, and empowered to advocate and act for the public good. 

Otherwise, if anything, "you get trade school." 

Now that's the "vision" you get, isn't it. A few folks allowed into the critical thinking club. Trade school for the rest. That’s the vision from that bunch Wayne dubs "Mandarins pretending to be leaders." I like that too.

Later on, he examined a question he’d heard while organizing Harvard’s janitorial and cleaning staff: “Why should a janitor care about higher education?” Everybody at this conference, SEIU or not, liked the answer, which sums up, I think, the goals of this first panel which was, after all, about "Caste and Classes, and "linking our struggle for the rights of contingent faculty to the larger struggle to maintain a middle class, ensure access to quality education for all, and save the dignity of work for everyone from professors to janitors." 

The answer, basically, is that janitors can figure it out, can figure out what higher education really means. Check here for another version.

Fighting Back with Data? Yes!

Some folks yawn when they see this sort of thing, and/or, reach for a mallet, a can of Metricide, but my advice is, don't. 

We can use numbers too, and it’s a way of fighting back, and fighting hard, as we heard from the next panel, “Professor Staff Organizes – addressing contingent faculty working conditions, student impacts, and education policy.”

To begin, New Faculty Majority's Esther Merves brought us up to date on the design and use of the "Back-to-school" survey instrument. Then came Dan Maxey, researcher from USC and the Pullias Center for Higher Education and Delphi Project (Adrianna Kezar is associate director). 

I cannot now completely analyze either the “Back to School” survey strategy, or the strategy associated with the Pullias Center, but I will say this: I’m convinced that both are going to be sucking devoted participation, in sci-fi tractor-beam fashion, from ever-increasing numbers of sin-sick administrators who would not otherwise be open to the saving grace of the true gospel, by which I mean four-square adcon-liberation theology. 

Again, read this, commit to memory, and burn, bothers and sisters. Those who are ready will see: meanwhile, mum’s the word, though I wouldn’t discourage you from walking around campus while leafing through a Back-to-School instrument or one or another Delphi Project report.

In this same panel, finally, Michael Best of SEIU, and Thomas Vadakkeveetil, adjunct at George Washington University and Strayer University, showed us some appalling numbers about public monies in private for-profit higher ed, and detailed how some of these were put before a Congressional committee investigating abuses.

Again, there are those who get annoyed at the thought of "another study," and I am sometimes one of them, but in all three cases here, we could see the pragmatic nature of the collecting enterprise, and I think it is key part of taking back our authority—the authority of the faculty. And we’re getting better at it.

Students Support for Adjunct Faculty Organizing

I have been slow to grasp the value of this, and slow to recognize opportunities when they arise, but now I see the light. We were all impressed. The support of the students on this panel, for adjunct and contingent faculty, was certainly evident, in their specific presentations, and in videos about American University and Georgetown University where adcon organizing is/has been underway. Also, their terrific energy, autonomous drive, and splendid grasp of the natural linkage with other social justice campaigns, which dovetailed wonderfully with what Pablo Eisenberg had counseled earlier, was an education unto itself.

Ethan Miller, an activist at American University, and an articulate and skilled blogger on high ed ed issues, spoke about the AU campaign. (He was also, I think, the most accomplished conference tweeter, and taught me a few things, which I'll probably forget: old dogitude syndrome).

KB Brower, of United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), was a fine analytic presence as well, and I very much liked her advice to us that we never lose an opportunity to "inoculate" students against some of the noxious ideas to which they are sometimes susceptible: living wage campaigns, for instance, presented as potent tuition-hike drivers. (The annual USAS conference agenda, by the way, can be seen here.)

Marissa Allison, also on this panel, brought her particular graduate student point of view to the table. As a prime mover in the George Mason University Graduate Student Sociological Association, and as an observer of grad student challenges as they mesh with structures of control and direction, formally or otherwise, she was able to sketch out for us the linkage between at least one style of contemporary grad experience and the adcon dilemma. I don't have her whole argument to give you here, but the title of just one of her projects will give you a flavor of her commitment and analytic perspective: "Media Rhetoric on the Feminization of Higher Education: Uncovering a Paradox of Neoliberalism in the Academy" I'm ready for more of that.  

I've got Several Day Jobs 

So, look, you know what? I have to get my laundry out of the drier, and then do some class prep. And I believe I have a class observation tomorrow at LaGuardia Community College, so I'd like to get all freshened up pedagogically, and just, you know, presentable.

So, I will hope to get the rest of this wonderful conference described later--by Wednesday? In the meantime, here are the higher-ed journalism accounts, from Chronicle of Higher Education, and Inside Higher Education.

I think the Peter Schmidt piece in CHE is better than the Colleen Flaherty in IHE, but, you be the judge. Neither of them seem to feel, as I do, that history is being made. I suppose it's not their job to feel as I do. Could that be true? For us, though, I'm urging that we be on the case, following the comments, contributing our own comments, and generally not allowing the usual troll population to run amok.