Redux

Today a fellow graduate student posted a comment about Stanley Fish's article in the NYT.

If you work in the Humanities, you know Stanley Fish. If you don't work in the humanities, think of a venerated, thoroughly established professor in your field. The one who actually helped to generate "new theory" in your field. That is who Stanley Fish is to the literary world. However, it's not necessarily who Stanley Fish is to the Rhetoric and Composition world.

This article is meant mainly to provide a book review for a former student, Frank Donoghue. In doing so, it must provide yet another description of how the University is not what it was...blah, blah, blah. Although, I think that Fish does a pretty good job of not falling too far into that trap. He does what he has to because the University if the subject of the book he is reviewing. It's good to see someone other than a rhet/comp person address the adjunct situation, but neither Fish nor Donoghue provide a solution.

Fish says of adjuncts, "Humanities professors like to think that this is a temporary imbalance and talk about was of redressing it, but Donoghue insists that this development, planned by no one but now well underway, cannot be reversed." It's true. I've spoken before about adjunct teaching and my desire to avoid that avenue, but let's face it, if it gives me a job, I'll do it. In reality adjuncts are now a part of the University system, which means two things. They need to be given some job security. In order to really do that the system of tenure needs to be revised.

From Fish's review, it doesn't seem like Donoghue addresses tenure, but it's a system that clearly needs an overhaul. Just think about life outside the University and you'll see that tenure no longer fits. It was designed in a time when people mostly stayed where they were...or, they went somewhere with the intention of staying. Now, even without the pressure of the job market, people move around more, change careers, etc. Tenure is designed to make sure you stay put in a world where that is not necessarily what people want.

I don't have a solution to the current issues with tenure, but it is something I wish Fish would have at least mentioned in his article. Until people like Fish, people who benefitted from that system can see, and say publically, that it no longer works there will be no impetus to change it.