This was a difficult story to write. My latest on Thea Hunter, a promising, brilliant scholar (and truly remarkable writer) and what academia is doing to scholars like her.
"She was a black woman in academia, and she was flying against a current. Some professors soar; adjuncts flap and dive and flap againâuntil they canât flap anymore."
Please make time for this necessary, beautiful, heartbreaking piece by @aharris
Thea Hunter is someone you may not have ever known about had it not been for @AdamHSays, whose education journalism has been superb and essential. This is him at his best, elevating the story of an adjunct whose life and work were sunk by a ruinous system.
"It is more like the lowest rung in a caste system, the one that underrepresented minorities tend to call home." Read this devastating story from @AdamHSays on the death of Thea Hunter & how the job of adjunct professor hurts people of color in particular
Thea was killed, in part, by the academic labor system. "Thea was exploited by a system that consumes thoughtful, committed academics like our beloved friend, even as it is reluctant to admit itâcolor compounding the oppression one-hundredfold.â @adamhsays
"If adjuncts were birds, they would be fighting the drag of the air, exerting bursts of energy again and again and again. "
Thea Hunter was on the cutting edge of the field of historyâand then the realities of academia took hold, writes @adamhsays
Thanks to @AdamHSays for writing this moving story in the @TheAtlantic about the unexpected death of my beloved friend, @drtkhunter. I am relieved to know her name & details of her life have been added to the archive. RIP, Thea. â€ïž.
"Now roughly three-quarters of faculty are nontenured. The jobs that are availableâas an adjunct, or a visiting professorârest on shaky foundations, as those who occupy them try to balance work and life, often without benefits."
There is so much in this story, but mostly, I just feel an unbearable sadnessâfor the teaching and scholarship we all lost with Thea Hunterâs passing, and for all the others like her being chewed up by a brutal system. Thank you, @AdamHSays, for this
The adjunct "position is often inaccurately described as akin to a form of slavery....It is more like the lowest rung in a caste system, the one that underrepresented minorities tend to call home." theatlantic.com/education/arch⊠via @AdamHSays
Absolutely heartbreaking story by @AdamHSays about the impossible life -- and death -- of an adjunct professor trying to make it in academia. She had a PhD from Columbia and, ironically, studied slavery.
âFrom 1993 to 2013, the % of underrepresented minorities in non-tenure-track part-time faculty positions in higher ed grew by 230%. By contrast, the % of underrepresented minorities in full-time tenure-track positions grew by just 30%.â[email protected]
A sobering article from @TheAtlantic on adjunct professors. "Nearly 80 percent of faculty members were tenured or tenure-track in 1969. Now roughly three-quarters of faculty are nontenured."
"She was on the tenure track, and then she wasnât. She had a promising job lead, and then it wasnât so promising." Beautiful piece from @AdamHSays on what the adjunct life does to humans
"From 1993 to 2013, the percentage of underrepresented minorities in non-tenure-track PT faculty positions in higher education grew by 230%. By contrast, the percentage of underrepresented minorities in full-time tenure-track positions grew by just 30%."
Adjunctification is an issue that has a solution: teaching track appointments. Don't let anybody fool you, universities that ignore this are profiting from a system that they can (and should) change.
@adamhsays
"Thea was exploited by a system that consumes thoughtful, committed academics like our beloved friend, even as it is reluctant to admit itâcolor compounding the oppression one-hundredfold.â
â 'Thea was exploited by a system that consumes thoughtful, committed academics like our beloved friend, even as it is reluctant to admit itâcolor compounding the oppression one-hundredfold.' â theatlantic.com/education/arch⊠#adjuncts #highered #employment
As sad and terrible as this story is, even more terrible is the very real idea that there are likely scores of untold stories out there very similar to this one.
At the memorial service for historian Thea Hunter, friend Ruth Henderson âinvoked the Japanese idea of karĆshi: worked to deathâ, reports @TheAtlantic. "Thea was exploited by a system that consumes thoughtful, committed academics," said Henderson.
This beautiful piece reminds me of something a MacArthur fellow once told me: "if you think there's a real difference between those who fail and those who succeed, you are kidding yourself."
Finally properly reading this article and I have a thought about this quote
âJust as the doors of academe have been opened more widely than heretofore to marginalized groups, the opportunity structure for academic careers has been turned on its head,â
***This article is a must-read***. In my graduate & prof life (CS & Business @ CMU & UCSD) I've had little contact w. the adjunct teaching system. But in some depts & universities, higher ed crushes a permanent underclass of uninsured workers til they snap
The Death of an Adjunct. Thea Hunter was a promising, brilliant scholar. And then she got trapped in academiaâs permanent underclass buff.ly/2GShtqDpic.twitter.com/lXKSZNHa7X
This article has been making the rounds every few weeks, and I think it's misleading. The adjunct system is terrible in every way. But this isn't a good case for that argument. Bad career choices, maybe. But adjuncting was at the end, not the beginning. /1
âJust as the doors of academe have been opened more widely than heretofore to marginalized groups, the opportunity structure for academic careers has been turned on its headâ
"To be a perennial adjunct professor is to hear the constant tone of higher educationâs death knell. The story is well knownâthe long hours, the heavy workload, the insufficient pay..."
"Academia is not an easy road for anyone to take, but especially not for women of color, and especially not for those who have been consigned to the adjunct underclass." Such a sad story.
The vocational call of science--of purity, reason, objectivity, and knowledge for its own sake--is the worst instrument of torture we could have ever constructed. Banality of evil, exponentiated.
Please read every horrifying, heartbreaking word of this story. And then realize that it is a tragically common one.
We must work to end the exploitation of adjunct labor. Now.
This is a great article about a form of exploitation which is an absolute disgrace to academe. Though I wish they hadn't tried to drag race into it, kicking & screaming.
From 1993-2013, underrepresented minorities in non-tenure-track part-time faculty positions in higher education grew by 230%. The percentage of underrepresented minorities in full-time tenure-track positions grew by just 30%. #AcademicTwitter