The Problem of Non-Tenure-Track Faculty
To the Editor:
Having taught between 1989 and 1993 as an adjunct in the City University of New York system, I’m pleased that so much of the May/June issue of Perspectives was devoted to articles on the employment of non-tenure-track faculty. However, the articles by Mary Elizabeth Perry and Leslie Brown, as well as the American Association of University Professors statement, refer to adjunct instructors as “part-time” teachers. In fact adjuncts quite often carry teaching loads that are equal to or greater than the full-time loads of their tenured and tenure-track colleagues. At many schools it is entirely normal for adjuncts to have course loads that are at least two or three times as heavy as those carried by tenured or tenure-track faculty employed in the same department. Adjuncts quite often teach three, four, five, or even more courses per term. While adjuncts are paid on a piecework basis (only rarely above $2,000 per course), no one teaching four or five college courses should be labeled a “part time” instructor.
In the academic labor force today, “adjunct” usually means part-time pay for full-time work. The economic motives of both adjunct and other non-tenure-track professors, and of the universities and departments that exploit their labor, are fundamental to the entire problem. Today non-tenure-track faculty teach the majority of course sections offered in many departments. Yet the educational and professional problems posed by the rise of this exploitative two-tier system of professional academic employment have been largely ignored by departments, universities, graduate programs, and the historical profession as a whole. Sympathetic statements acknowledging the problem have rarely been matched by action.
I applaud Perspectives for calling attention to this vital issue. I urge departments, historians, the AHA, and faculty unions to actively and seriously support the demand that no more than 15 percent of the total instruction in a given department or university be conducted by non-tenure-track faculty. The problem will get worse until we change the economic forces perpetuating it.
Mark D. Higbee
Eastern Michigan University
Should the AHA Meet in Georgia?
To the Editor:
The juxtaposition of the two cover pieces in the latest issue of Perspectives was fascinating. The main article reports that the AHA paid $165,682 of its members’ funds so that our last annual meeting would not be held in Cincinnati after its voters passed an anti-gay ordinance. Next to that article was a lovely photo of the Swan House, noting that the next AHA conference will be in Atlanta. Have you seen our flag? It is primarily the battle flag of the Confederacy. The Georgia legislature adopted this flag in 1956 to demonstrate its opposition to integration and the civil rights movement and has rejected every effort since to alter this hateful symbol of the state.
I am baffled by the attitude of the AHA. It will not hold its convention in a city that passes an anti gay ordinance but has no problem with a city where the flag of slavery, racism, and terror flies proudly over its buildings and adorns the flagpole in front of the hotel where the next conference will be held. I guess that some forms of bigotry are worth losing a lot of money over, but others can be ignored. If there is an official explanation of this carefully reasoned distinction, I hope that you will publish it in this issue.
Michael Bellesiles
Emory University
Professor Bellesiles asks for an explanation as to why the AHA moved its 1995 meeting out of Cincinnati but did not change its plans to hold the 1996 meeting in Atlanta. First, in regard to the 1995 meeting, the AHA Council acted after it received several hundred requests to move the meeting from members who indicated their discomfort at the possible discriminatory effects of the Cincinnati referendum; the Council received no such requests from members concerned about Atlanta. Second, the AHA policy on convention sites, adopted by the AHA Council in January 1994 and published on page 16 of the February 1994 issue of Perspectives, prevents the Association from meeting in cities where members might suffer discrimination; the policy does not apply in cases in which symbolic reminders of past wrongs are the sole source of members’ discomfort. The Council will continue to monitor and review this policy and welcomes comments from members.
Members Respond to the Cincinnati Decision
To the Editor:
On page 1 of the May/June 1995 issue of Perspectives, AHA President John Coatsworth wrote, “I hope every member will contribute [to defray the Cincinnati costs], even those who had misgivings about moving the meeting site.” Fair enough, but his comment juxtaposes oddly with his predecessor’s statement on the Cincinnati situation that “there are limits to this invitation to entertain a diversity of views: I do not welcome disingenuous arguments …” (Perspectives, April 1994, pages 21–22). Is it now the AHA position to welcome members’ money so long as they keep their views to themselves?
Hubert P. van Tuyll
Augusta College
The AHA received a number of comments in support of the Cincinnati decision from individuals who contributed to the Association’s Cincinnati Fund. Among these were the following:
I fully support your decision—wish I had the resources to give even more.
Tom Bolze
Thanks for your willingness to take a stand on principle, particularly in the face of financial loss. It seems too few are willing to do so these days.
Emilye Crosby
I am sorry to not be able to afford more. I was proud of the AHA for its prompt and decisive action. What a shame the cost is so high.
Karen Mead
I’ve read that the AHA has paid a heavy fee for refusing to meet in Cincinnati due to the city’s recent attack on the constitutional rights of gays. While not an AHA member (I am a member of the Organization of American Historians and the Southern Historical Association), I want to contribute to help offset the loss as a token of my esteem.
Dennis J. Pfennig
