As is the case with many contingent faculty, blogger Adjunct Whore was a long-term graduate student, pursuing her dissertation while working. She is also part of a faculty couple, and just scored a tenure-track job when her institution adopted a moderately enlightened partner hiring policy:
mr. whore just went through tenure. in August, the institution published and distributed an official policy (yep, in print even) about partner hiring (in addition to some other much needed policies such as maternity/spousal leave for birth, etc.). we, of course, were beside ourselves with glee. was it actually possible that we ended up in this bizarre parallel universe whereby the university actually recognizes how this could be useful to it? (of course, it wouldn’t recognize its value for those individuals/families involved) jumping for joy at our good fortune, mr. whore initiated the process whereby he requests that the dean and department consider my hire. but before this could go very far, the dean issued a blanket warning to all of those interested in such a move (and apparently there was an immediate and amazing number of such requests), that a partner hire would be considered only if the faculty member (mr. whore) received a job offer.
despairing and angry–how is this any different than any other institutional practice but for the confusing policy on paper?–mr. whore and i went out full force on the market…
Even though I’ve already given away the ending, read the whole story. It’ll do your heart good. Also of interest may be this discussion of partner hiring with a HTUW reader.
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Comments
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 7:54 pm and is filed under Precarity, academic labor system, faculty couples. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
This is great for her, but does giving a tenure-track job to a partner of another academic, while leaving someone else to live off food stamps in the adjunct position, really represent a more enlightened policy than giving the other person the tenure-track job and letting the parter of the other academic live off food stamps in the adjunct position? Seems about equal to me.
This is a fair point, and one which I might well have anticipated you and others raising.
The one thing I’d say in response is that the goal is to move beyond the false and deeply oppressive logic of ‘there’s one pie; fight each other for a piece.’ I’m not saying that you’ve fallen into the trap at all, just that the importance of Adjunct Whore’s story is the policy implications–which is why I urged her to propagandize the tale on IHE and CHE. Solidarity, M
thanks, marc, for linking me….i plan to continue writing about the implications of the process and to submit to IHE or CHE, but alas, i am still an adjunct whore and thus pressed for time.
i’m also in the midst of reading yoru book and will post a review/discussion prompt when i’m finished. so glad to be in conversation with you.
Hmmm…Can’t “adjunct whore’s” story proffer more than one important message?
Wouldn’t the best way available to us, if we are to “move beyond false and deeply oppressive logics” include the choice to not so swiftly close down reasonable commentary? “Ann Arbor is overrated”’s point remains a thoughtful and reasonable one. It’s a worthwhile thread in this bulky sweater of injustice. (Sorry.)
Again: Looking at the big picture–through the lens of solidarity–is it fair that one’s partner should get the job before another equally (or more) qualified candidate simply because she’s married to a tenured professor already at that institution? (It’s also troubling that the majority of such couples are white and heterosexual, unless there’s some bizzaro twist in the overall statistics which buck the contemporary hiring trends in general; I’d love for my anecdotal assumption to be corrected here–where are the stats here to argue against white privilege?) It’s simply not good enough to so swiftly deny this point without demonstration. Also– is such practic fair in a grossly competitive job market–one that can’t be described in any other way than grossly competitive?
Why should this (old economy?)practice be retained in such a market?
Am I living in false consciousness by attempting to better understand the ethics of these hiring practices? If so, step me through the logic of my failures more concretely, rather than abstractly proclaiming us on the edge of falling into “the trap,” (of the Man?) whatever that means….
One shouldn’t close down this conversation so easily–it surely is not merely about “policy implications.”