Stand By Your Adjunct Professors

The movement for the rights of contingent hires will never succeed until permanent faculty stop seeing these “others” as others, as a class beneath them, as qualified only to teach introductory courses, as warm bodies only and not as contributors to the life of the mind that we so grandly imagine for ourselves.

Few of us tenured professors are the master teachers of our own imagination. There are adjuncts who do much better jobs in the classroom than any of us, and who are qualified to teach even our most advanced courses. Few of us tenured professors have had to struggle the way contingent hires do, yet there are, among them, people whose writing and research is the equal of any of ours — and that is done in nearly impossible situations. We have it easy; they have it tough.

Aaron Barlow the executive editor of Academe Magazine, and an English professor at New York City College of Technology, wrote a blog post encouraging tenured faculty members to consider their adjunct professors as equals instead of “others,” and then to stand by them to “help make their work situations livable and financially viable.” Sounds reasonable!

Photo: Timothy Krause

Support The Billfold

The Billfold continues to exist thanks to support from our readers. Help us continue to do our work by making a monthly pledge on Patreon or a one-time-only contribution through PayPal.