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December 2, 2004

Rotten Fish: Living off the Labor of Others

With the ease of a faculty now before him, former Dean/current academic Stanley Fish wants faculty to realize "how lucky they have it." In “What Did You Do All Day,� published in Careers: Chronicle of Higher Education (11/25/04), Fish writes:

One of the many complaining questions that faculty members ask, the one I used to hear most often was, "Why do you administrators make so much more money than we do?" The answer is simple: Administrators work harder, they have more work to do, and they actually do it."

After recounting the burdens of being Dean (excepting his extended summer vacations as part of that burden)," Fish writes:

The burden of those duties has now been lifted, and I come and go as I please. No one checks up to see where I am and what I am doing. I could, if I were asked, give the all purpose, expected, and perfectly acceptable answer: "I always work from home." ...

The wonder is that faculty have such a high opinion of themselves and of the nobility of what they do -- and of the rightness of not doing what they decline to do -- and such a low opinion of what administrators do, although they wouldn't last two days if they tried it.

This vision of faculty loafing about is only further affirmed by "Tireless Research Assistants" written by First Person (a pseudonym) also appearing in Careers. In this essay, the reader is allowed to witness the great lengths that a graduate student willingly goes to gain his faculty employees favor:

If a professor had asked me to locate a 19th-century graffito scrawled somewhere in the sewers of Paris, perhaps below water level, I would have had it done in 24 hours.

Luckily for the Professor, the research assistant wanted to curry favor somuch, he would misrepresent the hours worked:

If it took me three hours to verify a short quotation, I might report the time as 30 minutes.

After reading this essay, one might ask what is it about academy that produces or attracts students to imagine such a subservient and degrading role to their "teachers"? Indeed, the only criticism the RA has in response to this situation is that after all this work, faculty seem too lazy to even read what the work that has been produced -- blaming the RA for mistakes in publications.

Apparently, the academy is only full of lazy and ungrateful faculty.

What an easy target.

The truth, of course, is not quite so simple. While Fish is enjoying his summer off and his empty date book, while First Person is searching our Paris sewers, many faculty are working as part-time contingent laborers. These faculty work without benefits, without summers off, and without research assistants. Yet they do most of the teaching labor that enables Fish to succeed as both a Dean and a scholar. Their labor also insures that First Person can be freed from teaching to fulfill his own subservient role. Both are suffering, it seems, from what Donna Strickland calls the “managerial unconscious� – an inability of some to see how privilege is based upon exploitative management structures.

After these two editorials portraying faculty as slugs, Careers follows with hundreds of “career opportunities.� In that spirit, here is an imaginary add reflecting the lives of many real faculty:

Wanted: Composition Instructor to teach four to five sections of first year writing course at several different colleges simultaneously. Must be able to teach multiple syllabuses and juggle different conceptions of good writing/pedagogy simultaneously. Ability to not be noticed or speak up about working conditions required.

Fish challenges faculty to try the live of an administrator, noting, “they wouldn't last two days� if they did. So here is a challenge for Stanley Fish: Why not try two days of being a part time instructor at multiple colleges, preparing for classes while driving to the next class? Better yet, why not try living off the wages of a part-time instructor?

Such an experience might demonstrate that not all faculty live in luxury and that for many who do, they do so off the labor of part-time and contingent faculty

Posted by sparks at December 2, 2004 9:32 AM

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Comments

Stanley Fish is such a twit. I've been a dean for 9 years, a faculty member for 40. Administrative work is demanding, especially when you are in direct contact with faculty who need various kinds of support. On the other hand, administrators spend 15 hours or so a week in meetings with other administrators planning more meetings. Anyone who teaches writing to undergraduates works as hard or harder than any dean.

Posted by: jocalo at December 6, 2004 1:41 AM

I think what is particularly offensive is that Fish seems to have spent most of his time at rather elite or well off institutions and extrapolates from that experience about the profession as a whole. Having done a fair amount of administration and university partnerships, I like to think it teaches you the particular nature of your own situation -- i.e. that its a complicated institutional educational terrain out there. To imagine your situation as "common" is not particularly useful.

Posted by: Steve Parks at December 6, 2004 7:31 PM

I think it is probably quite accurate that Fish doesn't work hard as a faculty member. How many sections of freshman comp does he teach? Or basic writing? The man probably can't remember the last time he graded a paper or exam since I would imagine he has TA's to do that for him (except, perhaps, when he teaches grad students). The problem is that the managers in my community college system will read this article and have all their feelings about faculty confirmed.

Posted by: cindy at December 6, 2004 10:13 PM