Today in Professional Ethics we're discussing an article about ethical failures in accounting. The author criticizes "academic accountants" for failing either to develop a theory of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or to take an active role in critiquing the accounting practices exemplified by the scandals involving Enron, Worldcom, and the accounting firm Arthur Andersen. The research they do, according to this author, is mainly methodological, and mainly read only by other academic researchers. In other words, the research does not serve the public interest.
The question follows: whose interest does it serve? I can only conclude that it serves the interest of the academics themselves.
Publishing, in academic fields with which I'm most familiar, primarily serves the purposes of advancing a claim to deserve tenure or promotion. It is always carefully--not to say obsessively--recorded in a c.v. and in tenure/promotion "files" (which tend to be muliple enormous three-ring binders containing every piece of anything that academic has touched). At major research universities, the benefits of tenure and promotion are often significant financially and in terms of prestige and job security. At most levels of higher education, the financial and prestige rewards are more modest, but job security is highly prized.
This has the result that the article suggested was endemic to academic accounting research. In class, I used academic philosophy as an example. In this field, there is a tacit but near-universally recognized division between publication that "counts" and that doesn't count. The publication that counts includes publication in peer reviewed professional journals, monographs published by academic presses, and, to a lesser extent, book chapters published by invitation of the editor of an anthology.
In my view, academic publications in philosophy are, for the most part, dead letters--better yet, still born. At the moment of publication, the thoughts and ideas expire. Unless you are a highly prestigious academic, if the publication is read at all, the only response it is at all likely to elicit is to be cited somewhere. I have received no response whatsoever to the most significant article I've published (academically speaking).
Yet it is vital for candidates for tenure or promotion to generate these publications, in order to advance their careers. The situation for tenure candidates is the most dire, since career survival is at stake for many: publish or perish.
Thus it comes as no surprise that I have heard so many newly-tenured faculty say, "now I can research things I'm interested in!"
This is the price of job security. For six years of probation, and likely for several years prior to that, academics in many fields sacrifice their freedom of expression, thought, inquiry, and behavior. By the time they have tenure, how many of them have atrophied capacities for free inquiry or free expression? How many of them have been emotionally, socially, or physically crippled by the bloody-minded pursuit of security?
I am in my 16th year since completing my Phd. I am, for that and a variety of other reasons, a very poor candidate for a tenure-track position anywhere, and getting poorer by the day. The only job security I have had is a three-year appointment, from which I can be laid off with 45 days' notice.
I will never say, "now I can research things I'm interested in." I have no incentive to research anything but what I'm interested in, because the only reward for my research is the research itself. I have never had to hold my tongue, never had to attend a dinner at the campus president's house. As I've stated before in this space, I probably do not have academic freedom, but neither do those on the tenure-track; however, I have the advantage of academic license.
I am more free. I am also in a more precarious situation. So I wonder, now, whether precariousness is the price of freedom, just as freedom is the price of security.
Showing posts with label tenure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tenure. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 03, 2012
Friday, April 06, 2012
performativity, tenure, and administrative power
Reading excerpts of The Postmodern Condition with my class, I was reminded of Lyotard's claim that the drive toward system efficiency has gaps - spots where the efficiency criterion creates inefficiencies. I tend to think of the lack of content in education as one of those efficiency gaps. From the system's standpoint, my job is to generate enrollment. Beyond that, what I actually do in my classes is irrelevant.
So, I might teach a fairly standard curriculum on Professional Ethics or Logic or whatever, or I might spend almost all of class time on radical political thought, leading several of my students to become loud activists against exploitation. Oops! The performativity criterion created the potential for counter-performative discourse.
There's another area where this is happening. Tenure has long been identified as a source of inefficiency. Tenure is a check on the maximization of arbitrary administrative power. Faculty with tenure are supposed to have a right to due process with regard to decisions to terminate them. If this is true, then administrators would have to invest resources in the effort to fire tenured faculty they want fired. An obvious solution to this problem is not to hire tenure-track faculty, and indeed, this is exactly what university administrations have done for 35 or 40 years.
Tenuous-track faculty have no due process rights worth speaking of. Perma-temped faculty are fully commensurable units of managerial power, and hiring them in lieu of tenure-track faculty has the added effect of minimizing the number of tenured faculty who offer any institutionally-protected resistance to that power. From one standpoint, this could also look like an erosion of protection of academic freedom, on the hypothesis that tenure protects academic freedom.
The problem with that interpretation is that, under performativity, tenure does not protect academic freedom at all, since in order for a faculty member to earn tenure, that faculty member must produce according to the standard of performativity. The research areas must be sanctioned by performativity, the teaching and other work the faculty member does must meet efficiency standards, etc. No faculty member has academic freedom.
The perma-temping of university faculty continues apace. But while this is going on, the real performativity standard applied to university "teaching" - generating enrollment - creates the very spaces needed for the subterranean discourses of dissent. This is because, from the system efficiency standpoint, education has no content - or, rather, the content is irrelevant. The faculty in the best position to produce these discourses are the faculty the system considers most efficient as "teachers."
Of course, we're doomed anyway, but the tenuous-track faculty are in a much better position with regard to that, too, since we have never imagined we were anything but doomed, while our unfortunate tenure-track colleagues dangerously misrecognize their own positions and roles, and waste so much of their energies insisting upon academic standards for managerial decisions that can no longer be relevant.
So, I might teach a fairly standard curriculum on Professional Ethics or Logic or whatever, or I might spend almost all of class time on radical political thought, leading several of my students to become loud activists against exploitation. Oops! The performativity criterion created the potential for counter-performative discourse.
There's another area where this is happening. Tenure has long been identified as a source of inefficiency. Tenure is a check on the maximization of arbitrary administrative power. Faculty with tenure are supposed to have a right to due process with regard to decisions to terminate them. If this is true, then administrators would have to invest resources in the effort to fire tenured faculty they want fired. An obvious solution to this problem is not to hire tenure-track faculty, and indeed, this is exactly what university administrations have done for 35 or 40 years.
Tenuous-track faculty have no due process rights worth speaking of. Perma-temped faculty are fully commensurable units of managerial power, and hiring them in lieu of tenure-track faculty has the added effect of minimizing the number of tenured faculty who offer any institutionally-protected resistance to that power. From one standpoint, this could also look like an erosion of protection of academic freedom, on the hypothesis that tenure protects academic freedom.
The problem with that interpretation is that, under performativity, tenure does not protect academic freedom at all, since in order for a faculty member to earn tenure, that faculty member must produce according to the standard of performativity. The research areas must be sanctioned by performativity, the teaching and other work the faculty member does must meet efficiency standards, etc. No faculty member has academic freedom.
The perma-temping of university faculty continues apace. But while this is going on, the real performativity standard applied to university "teaching" - generating enrollment - creates the very spaces needed for the subterranean discourses of dissent. This is because, from the system efficiency standpoint, education has no content - or, rather, the content is irrelevant. The faculty in the best position to produce these discourses are the faculty the system considers most efficient as "teachers."
Of course, we're doomed anyway, but the tenuous-track faculty are in a much better position with regard to that, too, since we have never imagined we were anything but doomed, while our unfortunate tenure-track colleagues dangerously misrecognize their own positions and roles, and waste so much of their energies insisting upon academic standards for managerial decisions that can no longer be relevant.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
still temporary after all these years
I was informed on Friday that I am not a finalist for the tenure-track position in my department. I have heard that I "deserve" a tenure-track position, as well. Just, you know, apparently not here.
This is very strange, given my 13 years of contributions to the department, the university, and my active records of scholarly achievement in academic philosophy. I am not a great scholar of the era by any means, and would never claim I was, nor that I aspire to be, but I also think that I'm impeccably qualified for tenure at Cow State Santa Claus.
Anyway, this is not a disappointment to me, because I had no expectation of being a finalist for the position, and certainly no expectation that I would get it. That's why my application's soundtrack included Cee Lo Green. (There's a history, a history which apparently became more common knowledge during the review of my application.)
Many folks know I'm a big Marxist. One of my favorite Groucho quips is that he would never join an organization that would have someone like him as a member. Being a member of the non-tenured majority is very much like that, and on the whole, it's the untenured majority I'd rather join.
This is very strange, given my 13 years of contributions to the department, the university, and my active records of scholarly achievement in academic philosophy. I am not a great scholar of the era by any means, and would never claim I was, nor that I aspire to be, but I also think that I'm impeccably qualified for tenure at Cow State Santa Claus.
Anyway, this is not a disappointment to me, because I had no expectation of being a finalist for the position, and certainly no expectation that I would get it. That's why my application's soundtrack included Cee Lo Green. (There's a history, a history which apparently became more common knowledge during the review of my application.)
Many folks know I'm a big Marxist. One of my favorite Groucho quips is that he would never join an organization that would have someone like him as a member. Being a member of the non-tenured majority is very much like that, and on the whole, it's the untenured majority I'd rather join.
Monday, March 14, 2011
academic freedom, freedom of speech
In two of my classes this semester, we've been spending an inordinate amount of time on an article about academic freedom, its distinction from freedom of speech, and the way economic pressures threaten academic freedom. The article defines academic freedom as the right to teach and to research as an academic sees fit, without undue pressure to conform to some extrinsic production measure.
I woke up this morning wondering about the meaning of academic freedom in my life and in the economic and political environment of contemporary academia. Some basic truths, of a sort, came to mind.
No one actually cares what I say or do in my classes, as long as it doesn't subject the university to liability or otherwise damage the university's public image. Almost nothing I might say about my actual field makes any difference to the university from this standpoint. Nobody much cares if I teach a bunch of crazy radical stuff in my classes, unless and until a student complains about it. In my own experience, what students are likely to complain about is personal conflict, not course content. Students complain about course content tactically, in order to attack faculty.
No one actually cares what I say or argue for in anything I publish, as long as it doesn't similarly endanger the university's currency interests. Administrators aren't going to read what I present at conferences or publish in journals or books. Most of what most faculty publish is in technical jargon that administrators wouldn't grasp, of course, but the main reason they don't read it is that they have absolutely no concern about what's in it - only how much of it there is, and whether it's peer-reviewed.
Which means that the university isn't particularly interested in curtailing the content of my exercise of academic freedom. The content of my speech concerns them much more when I speak as a private citizen, because as a private citizen I might freely criticize the university in a way that could endanger the university's currency interests. That is, the university has a fairly strong interest in curtailing my freedom of speech.
This is how it looks from my perspective, as a non-tenure-eligible faculty member who has a contractually guaranteed position until I either grossly violate university rules or a layoff is declared. It would likely look very different, ironically enough, if I had tenure at risk.
After all, there are tenure-track but not-yet-tenured faculty who are scared shitless to write anything as benign as this blog and post it somewhere. (I guess I mean this particular post.)
Academics argue for tenure on the basis of the claim that it and it alone can protect academic freedom. I wonder if what they mean to protect is freedom of speech, instead.
I woke up this morning wondering about the meaning of academic freedom in my life and in the economic and political environment of contemporary academia. Some basic truths, of a sort, came to mind.
No one actually cares what I say or do in my classes, as long as it doesn't subject the university to liability or otherwise damage the university's public image. Almost nothing I might say about my actual field makes any difference to the university from this standpoint. Nobody much cares if I teach a bunch of crazy radical stuff in my classes, unless and until a student complains about it. In my own experience, what students are likely to complain about is personal conflict, not course content. Students complain about course content tactically, in order to attack faculty.
No one actually cares what I say or argue for in anything I publish, as long as it doesn't similarly endanger the university's currency interests. Administrators aren't going to read what I present at conferences or publish in journals or books. Most of what most faculty publish is in technical jargon that administrators wouldn't grasp, of course, but the main reason they don't read it is that they have absolutely no concern about what's in it - only how much of it there is, and whether it's peer-reviewed.
Which means that the university isn't particularly interested in curtailing the content of my exercise of academic freedom. The content of my speech concerns them much more when I speak as a private citizen, because as a private citizen I might freely criticize the university in a way that could endanger the university's currency interests. That is, the university has a fairly strong interest in curtailing my freedom of speech.
This is how it looks from my perspective, as a non-tenure-eligible faculty member who has a contractually guaranteed position until I either grossly violate university rules or a layoff is declared. It would likely look very different, ironically enough, if I had tenure at risk.
After all, there are tenure-track but not-yet-tenured faculty who are scared shitless to write anything as benign as this blog and post it somewhere. (I guess I mean this particular post.)
Academics argue for tenure on the basis of the claim that it and it alone can protect academic freedom. I wonder if what they mean to protect is freedom of speech, instead.
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