Solidarity and the Future of Academe

The word “solidarity” has been making the rounds in discussions of the future of higher education lately. The adjunct union movement has been talking about it for some time, seeking to find allies and develop support as they band together to fight casualization in what is, to my mind, the single most hopeful force in higher education at present. Among ladder faculty, however, the meaning of solidarity is a bit more contested. In particular, A.W. Strouse’s recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education attacking the work of Rebecca Schuman has tried to draw lines in the sand that would distinguish “an ethics of solidarity” from more harsh forms of critique—forms which, according to Strouse, are more destructive than constructive (see also Rosemary Feal’s attempt to draw the same line over the angry responses to the MLA task force report on graduate programs). Karen Kelsky has already examined the extent to which “tone-policing” resembles the discourse of white privilege (Kelsky’s target is Claire Potter, but we can see the same thing happening in Strouse’s essay and Feal’s defense of the MLA report, and in countless other places–just look through responses to criticism of the MLA report, or responses to pretty much anything Schuman writes); and Marc Bousquet has pointed out the patent contradiction in calling for “solidarity” while taking a hachet to one of the strongest voices in the fight to improve higher education. What I want to add to this discussion is more a comment about strategy, to make the case for a more inclusive definition of solidarity.

There’s a storm a-brewin’ in higher education. More and more articles are being published on the crisis of student debt and on out-of-control administrator salaries. And now the government is increasingly trying to look like it’s taking on the problem of student debt (a crisis the government in fact perpetuated, but that’s for another day), while noise about rethinking accredidation and the rules for receiving federal funding is building in the background. The more information becomes available about how badly university funds have been mismanaged—that is, about how administrators and boards have continuously raised tuition to ridiculous levels and used that money for purposes other than the educational mission of the university—the closer we move to the moment when parents and students stand up and demand accountability from these high-priced institutions. And when that happens, faculty have a choice: we can show that we are part of the problem, or we can be part of the solution. That choice will determine the fate of academy, and the role of the professor within it.

The only line we should be drawing in the sand is between those who want to uphold the mission of the university as a place where students can learn and where new knowledge is produced, and those who want to interfere with that mission. Anyone seeking to diminish the quality of university education by, for instance, not giving faculty the resources they need to do their jobs (like, you know, office space, or a living wage), or by looking for ways to cut research funding, or by looking to pit faculty against each other in a war that no one wins (except administrators)—these people are the enemy. If and when the shit hits the fan and higher education gets restructured, these are the people who should be held accountable, by which I mean that these are the people who should be fired. The question for faculty, it seems to me, is this: if and when this happens, do we want to be standing next to those who have turned higher education into a business at the expense of the university’s mission, or do we want to be on record as having fought vigorously against and publicly criticized those people and their efforts to undermine the university?

How we answer this question matters. Reform, if it comes, will be driven by a rhetoric of fiscal accountability and responsibility to students and to the public good the university is supposed to serve. The problem is that some of the people most adept at wielding this rhetoric are politicians and corporate “reform” types, all folk who at best don’t know what they’re talking about, and at worst know exactly what they’re talking about and are skilled at getting people to believe that up is down. Only if we as faculty have a clear, demonstrable track-record of fighting against initiatives that interfere with our educational mission will we convince a broader audience that we, the faculty, (1) know what we’re talking about, and (2) are truly on the side of the students and the public good. Let’s face it: the popular image of the college professor isn’t one that the average Joe warms to. And to people outside the university, we’re likely to be seen more as part of this broken system than as beleaguered heroes struggling to shield our students from the worst depredations of management. We have to prove that we’re on the right side of history here if we’re going to convince the forces pushing for reform that we deserve to stick around. And we should have to prove it; because, if we can’t, then maybe we really are part of the problem.

Going easy on the problem isn’t going to save us; it’s much more likely to end us as a profession. If we want to survive to do our work, we’re going to need to be vocal about criticizing power—including, for us ladder faculty, our own. Instead of trying to police the tactics of the least powerful among us, we’d be much better served to think about the ways in which our own behavior helps enable the exploitation of our colleagues and our students, and to strategize ways to fight back. And by throwing our support behind the noisy critics of this unsustainable system, we can demonstrate to the rest of the world—and most importantly to our students, who ultimately foot the bill for these problems—that we are not willing participants in the perversion of the university system. This, it seems to me, is what solidarity would look like—and not like trying to redefine “solidarity” so that it encompasses only that critique that makes us comfortable (which is to say only that critique that doesn’t threaten our own power).