It’s also an attempt (which, ultimately, can only fail) at preserving the status quo in much of society. People who come from those races, classes and genders for and by whom the histories are written can, paradoxically, afford to be ignorant of those very histories, at least for a while. And, people who “made it” without knowing certain things don’t understand why anyone else would need to know them. Hence the de-evaluation of research in history as well as other areas of the humaniites. If a man can become a billionaire without knowing about Louise Labe or Ines de la Cruz, why does anyone else–especially a woman, who should be home making dinner and babies, anyway–need to know about them? Or so the thinking seems to go. Yet that woman who’s barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen is the one who really will find power in knowledge of those poets, or of Fannie Lou Hamer or what “Moms” Mabley and Billie Holiday experienced. I’ve actually seen it happen.

I have recently taught in a college in which 80 percent of the students are black. I always told them to take history personally, and that ignoring it is signing their own death warrant. A few understood that before I verbalized it for them, but most never before thought about their history that way. Or at least that’s what they told me.

@Jonathan – here in LA, we *are* firing tenured faculty and inviting them back as adjuncts. It started in the northern part of the state, in the hard sciences. Now it has spread to some points south.

We’re down three lines in the last two years. We’ll be down a fourth come July 1. None of these are being replaced. I expect that they think that distance ed courses will solve all our problems. That, and returning to the old days when we taught regular overloads for nothing!

True! We’re here, aren’t we?

And as you say, the humanities are the essential light against barbarism. The sciences are tools, which means people (well, some people) can see their utility. But it’s not in them to light the way.

Tom, I think you’re exactly right about the separation of teaching from research among our adjuncts. That’s the thin edge of the wedge.

There’s a Paul Krugman column today about the budget shennanigans in congress and in the WH now that I think sheds light on what we’re all discussing here. He describes what he calls “eating the future,” (h/t TalkLeft) and I think that’s what universities have been doing for the past 15 years as we’ve seen the erosion of tenure and tenure track positions and the institutionalization of casual academic labor instead. Asking people to teach 4-4 and 5-5 loads and evaluating them only on their teaching rather than requiring or rewarding research is like eating our intellectual seed corn. Sure, it gets the job done in an era of precarity, but it can’t continue indefinitely.

We have a very strong professional development committee, which runs everything from workshops to funding grants. My department gives me $1000 a year for professional development and research and I can apply to the committee for another $3000. The faculty here publish books, articles, conference papers, attend national workshops and conferences and pursue other creative projects.

We are not major researchers and we are not expected to produce like faculty at 4-years schools but we are expected and encouraged to continue our growth in our fields.

How this translates to the classroom is open. We are not expected to crank out sameness and the freedom we have to develop whatever we feel works best for our students is huge. Having taught in 4-year schools I have to admit the lowly CC has been the most liberating and innovative place I have worked.