"As deconstruction and political correctness were taking root in the academy throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Americans took little note. Humanities and political science departments were swinging dramatically leftward, imprecating American history and our founding. To speak of self-evident truths as anything but a cultural construct was a practical guarantee that one would not be hired to teach at a college or university. Were a doctoral candidate to write his dissertation on the seriousness of some aspect of our nation's founding, assuming he could assemble a dissertation committee that would accept the topic, he would find it close to impossible to find a starting job in academia. Many blithely dismissed this situation. Now we are reaping the effects of this foolishness."
-- William J. Bennett, Maddening Deeds at U.S. Universities
Well, I could think a few more reasons why someone might not find a starting job in academia. But this explanation has the virtue of simplicity: what Bennett calls "moral clarity."
And speaking of moral clarity, though he emphasizes that he has done nothing illegal, Bennett now admits: "I have done too much gambling, and this is not an example I wish to set. Therefore my gambling days are over."
The recent revelations ($8 million in gambling losses!) are a setback, of course, but I think he could still find a way to salvage his career as professional scold. He needs to join a chapter of Gamblers Anonymous, go through the twelve-step programme, and then come out with a public confession of his former guilt. America loves a repentant sinner, especially if he sheds a few tears in front of the camera. Then he could write another book, using his own confession/conversion narrative as a means of excoriating the vice of gambling.
But to do this, he really would have to quit gambling. Is he really ready to give it up?
ADDENDUM:
Commenting on Bennett's protestations that the gambling is his own business and that, in any case, he can handle it, Kieran Healy notes that this is not only "exactly the kind of narrow, privatized view of morality that Bennett himself has made it his vocation to criticize," but also "the bluster of an addict."
Bennett is probably right on why it's harder for a conservative to find a job in academia than a lefty. But, yes, there are all sorts of reasons why it's hard to get a job period.
I blogged on this a bit in the middle of a longish post on economics. The relevant portion:
But the bottom line is there are too many of us chasing too few jobs which means the employers can exploit us. Indeed, there are a ridiculous number out there working at near-poverty wages because of a bizarre job market for us.But, aside from some of the religious schools, there is especially a tight market for conservatives. And try being a conservative agnostic! Posted by: James Joyner at May 6, 2003 02:05 PM
I think it depends on the discipline. In the humanities, I'll admit that the default setting is more liberal than conservative. But it's not the hotbed of tenured radicalism that critics like Bennett like to suggest. Most academics are too careerist for that kind of politics.
You're quite right about the bottom line.
Posted by: Invisible Adjunct at May 6, 2003 02:18 PMIt is more accurate to speak of the academic job "market" as a "system." Most of us are working. There is no shortage of academic work relative to people with doctorates. In fact, many of us are teaching MORE than full-time. We just can't get a full-time commitment from a single institution. If our part-time positions we're cobbled together in a single institution, we would have more than one full-time job. But how would that serve the bottom-line interests of corporate-style administrators, or students who can barely afford college, or right-wing agitators who conceal economic issues with the dated rhetoric of the "culture war"? Bennett is right about anti-conservative discrimination in the academic mainstream, but he doesn't seem to know anything about the "job system." Or he pretends not to.
Posted by: Thomas Hart Benton at May 6, 2003 02:55 PM"Bennett is right about anti-conservative discrimination in the academic mainstream, but he doesn't seem to know anything about the 'job system.' Or he pretends not to."
I guess I'd be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt on this question, and assume that his ignorance on this point is sincere. After all, I know countless people inside the academy who seem to know very little about the job system, and they are inside the system. They continue to run large graduate programmes, and have convinced themselves that sooner or later the market must turn. Some of them are in denial, some probably don't quite believe their own reassurances, and some of them are genuinely baffled.
From one perspective, the two-tier system is a fairly efficient "course delivery" system. And I take your point that there is no real shortage of academic work. But I still think there is a supply and demand problem: ie, that the production of too many PhDs has cheapened the value of the degree (Why buy the cow?) and weakened the bargaining power of faculty. If there were less PhDs, wouldn't faculty be in a better position to insist on tenure-track rather than adjunct positions?
Posted by: Invisible Adjunct at May 6, 2003 03:49 PMOr, of course, if there were realistic expectations that people with advanced degrees were leaving the system. This is how the supply problem will ultimately correct itself: people "outside the hedges" will come to value the benefits that an individual with an advanced degree brings and will bid up the supply price.
The numbers will always be complicated by the sort of religious devotion that students (especially grad students) are taught to have to the academy. They do the same thing in secondary and primary education classes to prospective teachers, but that's not keeping the supply of teachers up in places where pay and job conditions are worst. This is probably the fate of the academy somewhere down the line if current trends continue, but it may not happen in my working lifetime.
Posted by: Ginger at May 6, 2003 05:25 PMLeaving the system: In some non-humanities fields, this may already be happening. I admit I only have anecdotal evidence to back this up -- a friend and her husband, both with Ph.Ds in toxicology, who simply never, not for an *instant*, considered academia as a career. My friend says they are not unusual, as their field goes.
Posted by: Dorothea Salo at May 6, 2003 06:14 PMTo the Invisible Adjunct:
Bennett would have to be pretty ignorant not to have even heard about the labor situation in higher education--but, alas you are probably right about most tenured academics, the ones who assume that their students don't get jobs anymore because they don't have the "Right Stuff," unlike the giants of old (like James McPherson, who got his first job in the Ivy League with a phone call from his advisor).
I think you are correct about the "job system" if we regard the it as based on supply and demand. But more and more teaching--maybe most college teaching--is now done by people without doctorates. As Marc Bousquet has said, Ph.Ds are the "waste products" of the labor system. I think we need to demand that college teaching be done by people who have completed their training (and who should, of course, be paid a professional salary). Even conservatives are likely to agree with the former in principle, though they may not agree with the latter (and Bennett wonders why academics discriminate against conservatives!?)
Posted by: Thomas Hart Benton at May 6, 2003 09:26 PMWe had a discussion about McPherson and the old boy network a few weeks ago (http://www.invisibleadjunct.com/archives/2003_04.html#000067). As Tim Burke pointed out, many of the old guys are quite candid about how they got their jobs; it's the first (and subsequent) generations of careerists (ie, from the early 1970s and on) who are the terrors, and who tend to think in terms of the job candidate's failure to secure a tenure-track job rather than of the failure of the job market/system.
"I think we need to demand that college teaching be done by people who have completed their training (and who should, of course, be paid a professional salary)."
I agree. Problem is, I think we've reached the point where the academic "professions" no longer have the bargaining power to make such demands. When there is a large reserve of cheap labour, it is rather difficult to press one's claims. Also, it is very difficult to convince tenured academics that the use of contingent low-paid labour is a threat to the profession. Indeed, as this recent thread indicates (http://www.invisibleadjunct.com/archives/2003_05.html#000092) it is difficult to convince people that the use of UNpaid labour constitutes a threat.
I keep meaning to write an entry about that article by Bousquet.
Posted by: Invisible Adjunct at May 6, 2003 10:39 PMBennett didn't lose eight million dollars, he bet eight million dollars over a period of years. He wagered most of it in slot machines, which typically pay out in jackpots about 97% of the money inserted. While this may be bizarre and antisocial behavior, the way it has been reported is extremely misleading.
Posted by: Chris at May 9, 2003 04:01 AMIt is not true that a leftist "radical" dissertation or monograph topic and philosophy automatically gets you a tenure track academic position. There are now * too many * of these "theory" leftists. It may have been true twenty years ago; as usual, the conservative right wing maintains an outdated worldview. A radical leftist dissertation or monograph, unless you are really adept with theory and a slick writer, is likely to delay dissertation completion or publication as you get bogged down reading Marxist or gender theory; this disadvantage has nothing to do with the politics involved.
Posted by: sara at May 20, 2003 04:46 AMIt is not true that a leftist "radical" dissertation or monograph topic and philosophy automatically gets you a tenure track academic position. There are now * too many * of these "theory" leftists. It may have been true twenty years ago; as usual, the conservative right wing maintains an outdated worldview. A radical leftist dissertation or monograph, unless you are really adept with theory and a slick writer, is likely to delay dissertation completion or publication as you get bogged down reading Marxist or gender theory; this disadvantage has nothing to do with the politics involved.
Posted by: sara at May 20, 2003 04:46 AM