Walking on woke eggshells
Definition of Adjunct professor:
"They may also be called an adjunct lecturer, adjunct instructor, or adjunct faculty. Collectively, they may be referred to as contingent academic labor."
The universities are a minefield. Try not to offend.
Good luck with that.
The leader of a small faculty group at Portland Community College, the Pathway Learning Community, sent this letter to his colleagues:
Dear Pathway Colleagues,
It has been brought to our attention that the use of the term majority faculty, as a way to respect our part-time colleagues, has associations with systems of power in a way that feels alienating to some faculty of color. Hurting colleagues is not acceptable. We apologize for the harm this has caused. We will return to the term part-time in the form, as we look for a better way to communicate respect. We commit to finding ways to communicate that are respectful and inclusive, especially for those educators in all employee classes who carry identities that have been marginalized.
The PLC Pathway Team
Interim Temporary Program Dean for Sciences
Pronouns: he, him, his
The letter is deadly earnest and sincere.
To explain: Adjunct faculty at the college had been described in earlier communications as "part time" faculty. Hierarchy is an issue because full time and tenured professors make a great deal more money than do the adjuncts, whose jobs are insecure and poorly paid. The difference in status is obvious to everyone, but it is impolite to acknowledge it with one's terms. The email author chose not to use the term "part time;" it embeds hierarchy, "part" being less than "full."
There was a respectful workaround. The college union used the term "majority faculty" to describe adjuncts, so it had apparently been vetted and found acceptable. Since there are more adjunct faculty members than full time ones at PCC, they constitute a majority of the faculty. The team leader substituted that term. Moreover, the word "majority" has the benefit of somewhat normalizing their status, thereby upgrading it. It was a good intention.
It backfired. Some people the email called "faculty of color" took offense. "Majority" implied to them inclusion in a racial group,` which at PCC would be White. They are not White. Therefore they are not majority. Including them in a "majority" denied their status as a disadvantaged racial minority.
The team leader heard their complaint and acknowledged he gave them harm and acknowledged their hurt.
He gave a full and compete apology, by the book. He said he had done wrong. He admitted he hurt others. He apologized. He said improvement was necessary. He committed to being better in the future.
His email is a window into a cultural phenomenon. I commend the email author on his effort to be respectful to his colleagues. He is coping with a treacherous environment where people are exquisitely sensitive to insults, micro-aggressions, and errors in categorization of identity. It is a minefield.
I have an impression I will share: What an oppressive environment. How difficult it must be to self-monitor so punctiliously. How stifling of communication.
I should keep quiet. By the rules of identity privilege and oppression, and the lens of "systems of power," I have no legitimacy to comment. I am a White, a cisgender male, physically able, heterosexual, and married. I am educated, financially comfortable, and live in a nice neighborhood. Therefore, I could not possibly understand the feelings of the oppressed, and have no basis for critiquing others' demands for a respectful, non-racist, work environment. I have no standing.
And yet I have not disappeared. I still live, earn and spend money, vote, and have opinions. My opinion is that it must be exhausting to be the author of that email, to need to walk on eggshells. My opinion is that stories about this academic environment have drifted out into public attention and it frightens people, including people on the left. It is too much. It is overboard. My opinion is that this level of attention to insult and terminology and identity, especially when error is called "harm," has a political dimension. The left is now very conscious of the authoritarian impulses of the political right. Those impulses frighten people. The left needs to acknowledge that there are authoritarian impulses on the left as well. Those, too, frighten people.
I wish the left would lighten up a little.