Hutchens

Interview with Dr. Hutchens
research manuscript: “‘Flipping’ the Tenure Debate and the Continuing Need to Protect Academic Freedom,” Counterpoint, Vol. 517; Colleges at the Crossroads: Taking Sides on Contested Issues (2018) p 67-78. 

Summary: 
Hutchens looks at tenure for one of its most important incidental benefits: academic freedom. He shows how tenure is a twentieth century invention to help secure the ideal of a life of the mind in  universities, long held to be  dedicated spaces to think and reflect as opposed to places to produce specific, tangible goods or services. But tenure as we know it is being diluted—by a diminishment of tenured positions through the ever-expanding percentage of contingent faculty—and simultaneously eroded— by laws that seek to constrain the landscape that tenure encompasses. These threats to tenure imperil academic freedom, the ability to say and think and research as one will without regard to those who hold the purse strings. “Currently, uncertainty encompasses the available mechanisms to protect professors’ academic freedom,” (p. 70) and “failing to support academic freedom i higher education undercuts the kind of intellectual and scientific advancements that have made American higher education a model looked to by the rest of the world.” (P. 72). The answer, he suggests, is by extending those protections of academic freedom—explicitly and without regard to tenure—to all employees of the university, thereby rendering the so-called “tenure debate” toothless while also re-elevating the university campus to its ideal, and some might claim rightful, place as a place to think and to reflect.

During the interview, I asked Dr. Hutchens what led him to tie the two threads of academic freedom and tenure together in the particular way that he did. He told me of his origins as a history student, and then a law student and how he initially thought that he would focus on the K-12 education and the law, but then found himself fascinated by higher education. He was intrigued by the, admittedly medieval in many ways, notion of an entire system dedicated to the life of the mind, while at the same time seeing the many legal and cultural efforts to dismantle it. He said he feels we might well be at a “windmill and Don Quixote moment” culturally, given the recent political efforts to dismantle what is arguably a crown jewel in many of the states that are striving hardest to constrain tenure and the university itself.

He talked about how the foundations of the academy are precarious and eroding, and how they have been since the 70s but that recent efforts are nothing short of astonishing, seeming to be the epitome of cutting one’s nose off to spite one’s face. We spoke of union efforts on campuses, a coalition between collective bargaining and traditional law, and he said that recently the AAUP and AFT are joining together to enter the conversation on unionizing and other protection efforts. 

I asked him what the role of SACS and other regional accreditation agencies is in light of universities  removing standard majors such as history or philosophy, or closing whole departments such as English. He said that though the agencies were originally regional, they aren’t any longer, and a university can now shop around until it finds an agency that will provide credentials, and the credentials are only meaningful for student aid. He can see a bleak time when these less rigorous agencies will hold a place of preferential status, wherein a governor might decide that only certain agencies are relevant for accreditation credentials, and that could lead to a dismantling of the contemporary university. 

What then? I wondered. Ideological conformity is threatening decades of university building, and where does that leave us—academics, specifically, but American culture more generally—if even only some of these efforts succeed? He agreed that there would be long term and far reaching consequences to whatever we think of as American culture. 

Reflections:

Despite the grim and gloomy nature of the topic, I found Dr. Hutchens upbeat and engaged. He truly loves the idea of university and loves the universities themselves, embattled though they are. We discussed the professorate and the role and possible responsibility of the university in being forthcoming about how many positions are available for faculty, which is merely a small fraction of the graduates produced each year.  I mentioned the meager stipend often afforded to teaching assistants, and noted how I had opted to take on dogsitting instead, earning nearly as much as a TA position at University of Kentucky, while somehow also failing to make what seemed to be expected and appropriate steps for my off-transcript resume. I confessed that while I wasn’t approaching my doctoral studies as a path to a career, it was good that I wasn’t, because by not doing these materially bad and laborious off-transcript steps, I was gravely diminishing my chances of employment anywhere. Are we all to become public philosophers? I asked. I told him of reading Kim Tolley’s collection Professors in the Gig Economy, (2018) and how it cemented my view that while I love universities, I think I don’t have any place there and am much better off hosting philosophy talks at the local public library while wearing my regalia, once I’ve earned them. And in many ways, doing so would feel as though it were a return to the more ideal, albeit quasi-medieval, role of the university itself, the life of the mind made manifest.

Neither of us expected to talk as long as we did, going on for over an hour. I asked him to send me something short and digestible if he had anything like that handy, and he mentioned a column he recently wrote. I look forward to talking with him again, and feel there are many rich threads left to explore at the intersections of higher education, the law, and the culture of the mind.

Class Struggle, the City, and the Willing Worker

David Harvey presents a lovely picture of the unique framework that cities present to enact a recreation of ourselves through our cities, a rebirth that reflects who we are in terms of our interactions and our values. This rebirth, he holds, is a right, a “common rather than individual right,” and  “one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.”1,2

Harvey holds that cities are predicated on the “concentrations of surplus product,” a dead giveaway to his Marxist underpinnings, and to a point I agree with him. I certainly stand with his identification of urbanization as a “class phenomenon.”3 But I’m not certain I can join him when he identifies the mechanism of classist interactions and control to be that of control of distribution of that surplus. While he is right that control lies in the hands of the few and affects the lives of many, there is something else going on here, and it’s not only about urbanization, though -- we have brought this forward since medieval times: control of access to avenues of power.

The focus on control over the distribution of surplus as the hallmark of class issues misses the mark a bit and is, to my mind, a bit short-sighted in that it focuses specifically on the more modern human collective expression of urbanization. I find that control of distribution is but one piece, and a relatively new one given that there is a surplus, but that since the Middle Ages we have, as a Western Society certainly, held control of inclusion, of access to avenues of power, as the hallmark of class struggle. As Western society has become cash-based and production-oriented over the last half-millennium, the tools that bestow power and legitimacy have shifted, but the desire to control access to them has gotten fiercer than ever.

By limiting and controlling access, the class itself is protected and nurtured, insulated from the shock of social change that seems to explode on the scene more frequently than ever before. This insulation also protects the ruling class from having to worry about competition, at least in the near term, as exclusion has long been used to mitigate the pressures that competition or scarcity of resources -- natural, labor, or production -- can create for production and management of wealth, with as money or as social capital.

Harvey does identify the role of the state in promoting an unlevel playing field in the realm of competition, certainly.  But he doesn’t seem to identify the role that we, the workers, are having in shaping a corporate reality through working for what are more and more often corporate cities. Corporations are creating and maintaining their bottom line through the creation of corporate cities -- controlling the labor force and the municipality in which they operate in order to reap the mega-profits that are available in the twenty-first century economy, whether mining diamonds or data.

Class organization as a social justice tool is only as good as the pressures workers feel; it has been said by more than one labor attorney that the way to prevent workers from organizing is to treat them well. If the current workforce isn’t desperate for better wages and conditions, then organization and the change that Harvey identifies all die on the vine. We of the white collar, no less yoked and caged, are willingly eschewing organization in trade for coffee bars and game-stocked employee lounges, ignoring the social ills that are perpetuated outside the halls of our air-conditioned, gym-sporting office complexes. Our youth-driven greed is being stoked by corporate America, a small price for producers to pay to avoid the costs of really dealing with the inequality that persists and grows, largely in direct proportion to the white-collar, high-tech workforce and what it produces.

1. Harvey, David, “The Right to City,” New Left Review 53, Sept-Oct 2008, p. 23.

2. Please note: I am a utilitarian. I do not discuss rights this way, but I certainly allow others to do so and can follow the line of reasoning from this point of origin. For more on my perspective of responsibilities instead of rights, contact me and we will hold a symposium; there just aren’t enough symposia these days. 3. Harvey, David, “The Right to City,” New Left Review 53, Sept-Oct 2008, p. 24.

Full employment and the new economy

A full-employment vision for the twenty-first century can and must look different from the full-employment realities of the postwar era. Nor is the call for full employment necessarily bound up with assumptions about the virtues of work and the vices of idleness.

At the end of The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, John Maynard Keynes surveyed the dire political-economic scene of the mid-1930s and summed it up in a single, incisive phrase: “The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.”

Consider a snapshot of the situation young people face: the unemployment rate for workers under age 25 is 18.1 percent; unemployment for black people who have not graduated from high school is 82.5 percent; the people most likely to be shot by police are black 25–34-year-olds; the national student loan debt has surpassed $1 trillion; and the only jobs lucrative enough to pay off college loans are in the financial industry that detonated our economy or Silicon Valley companies deregulating working-class industries.

The future doesn’t hold much hope either, with median household income declining 12.4 percent between 2000 and 2011. Having a family is simply harder to afford now. Meanwhile, each new year sets another low record for union density, meaning we have few levers for turning those income numbers around. Unlike most wealthy countries, the United States lacks universal childcare and maternity leave, so women are stuck with the same old debates over an impossible work-life balance.

This is an age when the power of the boss is so ascendant over the power of the worker that we can be shuffled around to match precisely the needs of capital. Department stores and retailers now use apps that will inform an employee midway through a workday if their services are no longer needed to match customer demand. About half of early-career hourly workers learn their schedule for the week less than one week in advance. A full day’s work, or a “steady” job, is a thing of the past. This is a chronically unstable way to operate in the world, picking up bits of knowledge work, service work, or manual labor as needed.

100 years ago: Profiles in greatness and courage

On January 5, 1914, the Ford Motor Company took the radical step of doubling pay to $5 a day and cut shifts from nine hours to eight, moves that were not popular with rival companies, although seeing the increase in Ford's productivity, and a significant increase in profit margin (from $30 million to $60 million in two years), most soon followed suit.

The Union of the United States of America

Last night I ran across a rant about people buying steak and lobster with food stamps. This was my response. [Apparently I vented my spleen on someone else's post, something I usually don't do. Apologies to Tree, and many thanks to her for bringing the whole situation to my attention, since I clearly needed to get this out of my system.]

Now, I have never been on food stamps, so some people will say I don't have a right to an opinion; that has never stopped me before, so feel free not to read on if you think I'm out of line.
Basically I would rather see them spend it on steak and lobster to celebrate than on junk food. Call me crazy, but wholesome food is a good thing for tax dollars to buy. In European countries, the real first world, families are given a stipend to help support young children; health care and education are free and available; daycare is subsidized. These are not perks or entitlements; this is a country that ensures the well-being of its citizens, which, if you think for a minute, is the Prime Directive of government. There is no excuse for belittling someone for paying for food. Other people need to sit down and shut up and reconsider why their noses are out of joint.
If I had my way, we would have thirty hour work weeks (including lunch, not excluding it) and six weeks of vacation for everyone. Infants would be subsidized at one-half the poverty level each year from birth until five (yes! Each and every one of them!). Minimum wage would be determined by the poverty rate, which would reflect the real cost of basic food and housing and gasoline, so that if you work a minimum wage job you can support a family [PovertyRate/1500=MinimuWage; it's not rocket science here]. Public schools and libraries would be palaces and teachers, librarians and police/emergency responders/military would be amongst the highest paid professions. Why? Because our citizens deserve to be through with worrying about bread and shoes and need to focus on learning, have time to be creative, and focus on being whole with themselves and their families.
Don't tell me we can't afford it. We spend more bickering with each other than other countries do on being decent. And this is The United States of America. We have every reason to expect to be able to hold our heads high as the wealthiest is the world.
If you think taxes are class warfare, you are absolutely right. Our founding fathers levied huge taxes on the wealthy, and plundered the hoard reflected in large estates with good reason - they were deliberately undermining the ability to create and maintain an aristocracy, for they knew first hand the evils it causes and brings. And most of them were not the poor huddled masses but were quite wealthy themselves. It was a matter of understanding that in this New World, no one would be hungry. No one. Not because of race, color, creed, or gender. Adams, Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton and Henry knew from the inside of the upper class the wrongs and dangers of allowing the very rich to sneer at the very poor, and there is only one way to ensure the basic necessities are not trampled: do away with the lower class altogether; dismantle extreme unearned wealth of inheritance; throw open the lanes of access to all that life has to offer; let the only dividing line amongst citizens be a matter of brains and hard work. Never would they have imagined the way we have mucked it all up. It is about what you do once your access is unfettered - a citizenry with no excuses would be an amazing sight to behold, a beacon to the rest of the world, and we are betraying their vision by impeding anyone from basic necessities.
Please feel free to send this to those who want to marginalize the citizens of the United States. I wonder why some people cry so loudly against taking care of our own.