Adjuncts, Class, and Fear
Must read AND comment AND share post by Maria Maisto on class and fear as factors in organizing adjunct faculty
The biggest obstacle to organizing adjunct (part-time and full-time non-tenure-track) professors, who now comprise 75% of the faculty in higher education, with part-timers working for $2700 per course on average — is fear. Most people assume that adjuncts fear retribution for boat-rocking of any kind. That worry is not unfounded, since examples of such retaliation abound.
However, many adjuncts feel paralyzed by a deeper, unspoken fear, one that is primarily internal and fraught with complexities that Working-Class Studies can help illuminate and overcome. This fear stems from the tension, well-documented and long-discussed, between adjuncts’ nominal professional status and the actual workplace conditions that place us in the category of the working class.
The intense debate surrounding Duquesne adjunct French professor Margaret Mary Vojtko’s life and death has placed this tension in an unusually prominent light. For many adjuncts, as for members of other professions, talk of organizing instills fear not…
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As the Adjunctiverse Turns 