Jan

29

Howard Zinn: A Public Intellectual Who Mattered

Category: administrators, current events, higher ed in the news, intellectuals are workers, proletarian thought, solidarity and a tiered workforce, youth is a category through which class is lived | 1 Comment

A guest post by Henry Giroux
In 1977 I took my first job in higher education at Boston University. One reason I went there was because Howard Zinn was teaching there at the time. As a high school teacher, Howard’s book, “Vietnam: the Logic of Withdrawal,” published in 1968, had a profound effect on me. […]

Jan

22

Kindle or Netbook?

Category: Uncategorized, current events | 4 Comments

Ebooks are here to stay, but how will you read them?
As sales suggest, dedicated reading devices–Kindles, Nooks, etc–have begun to meet the expectations of leisure readers and business travelers. (Those expectations have been changing as well, after the socialization represented by a quarter-century of reading on screen.)
Providing fast, inexpensive and even free access to many […]

Jan

19

Occupy the AHA!

Category: "job market theory" and why it's silly, "quality" and other fighting words, Precarity, academic freedom, academic labor system, feminization of the humanities, graduate education, proletarian thought, solidarity and a tiered workforce, youth is a category through which class is lived | 3 Comments

The stark contrast between recent imaginative actions by students and the decades of poor data, bad analysis, and foot-dragging by most academic institutions suggests a possibility. Could AAUP and the disciplinary associations could become the next target for the more radical students?
For today’s grads, socially conscious unionism no longer represents the left wing of political […]

Jan

8

History “Job Czar” Shuts Down Phd Production (PhD “Oversupply” Continues For Two Decades)

Category: "job market theory" and why it's silly, "quality" and other fighting words, Precarity, academic labor system, administrators, higher ed in the news, intellectuals are workers, solidarity and a tiered workforce, this blogging life, youth is a category through which class is lived | 6 Comments

Okay, let’s imagine the impossible of total supply-side control. Clamp off admissions to EVERY doctoral program in history immediately and what happens?
They all keep pumping out new PhDs at contemporary levels for ten years. Scratch that. They actually pump out higher levels, because fewer of those enrolled will drop out, believing that they have better […]

Jan

7

Who’s A Historian to the AHA?

Category: "job market theory" and why it's silly, academic labor system, graduate education, solidarity and a tiered workforce, undergraduate labor, youth is a category through which class is lived | 3 Comments

My piece questioning the supply-side bent to the American Historical Association’s 2010 job report has gotten thoughtful replies by historiann, Alan Baumler, Jonathan Rees, Ellen Schrecker, Sandy Thatcher and others, both here and at Brainstorm.
I really appreciate these thoughts, and want to emphasize how much I respect Townsend’s work for AHA over the years, including […]

Jan

6

At the AHA: Huh?

Category: MLA, Precarity, academic labor system, administrators, higher ed in the news, intellectuals are workers, youth is a category through which class is lived | 10 Comments

A funny thing happened on the way to the AHA this year — American Historical Association staffer Robert B. Townsend issued his annual report on tenure-track employment in the field. Unsurprisingly, he concluded that holders of freshly minted doctorates face grim prospects. What raised my eyebrows — and those of many others doing scholarship in […]

Jan

5

“I Re-wrote those Motherfuckers from Scratch”

Category: "quality" and other fighting words, Uncategorized, academic labor system, administrators, corporate university, real institutional sleaze, this blogging life | Leave a Comment

Bérubé How many submissions did you receive for The Institution of Literature?
Williams 385, not counting the nine essays you submitted, eight of which sucked, if you don’t mind my saying so.
Bérubé Not at all. I totally respect your opinion when it comes to essays of mine that suck.
Williams Well, they did. As did many of […]