Transforming Academia: Challenges and Opportunities for an Engaged Anthropology 3x816p976

Table of contents :
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
I: Introduction and Overviews
1. Anthropology in a Changing Academy: Crisis or Opportunity?
2. Toward a Proactive Anthropology
3. Anthropology and the Academy: Historical Reflections
II: Ethnographers’ Analyses of the Current Situation
4. Sweatshopping Academe: Capitalism and the Part-Time Academic in U.S.Universities
5. Race, Class, and the Limits of Democratization in the Academy
6. New Voices of Diversity, Academic Relations of Production, and the Free Market
7. Restructuring and the Changing Roles of Faculty
8. Restructuring, Downsizing, Surviving? The CUNY Case
III: Administrative Vantage Points
9. Schism and Continuity in the Academy
10. Whither the Comprehensive Land-Grant University?
11. Good Fences Make Good Neighbors: Keeping Anthropology’s Subfields Alive and Growing in the 21st Century
12. Will Inclusion Be More than an Illusion in the Academy of the Future?
IV: Preserving Anthropology’s Space in Academia
13. Marginal Natives: Anthropology in Undergraduate Institutions
14. The Forgotten Undergraduate
15. Howard University: A Minority Institution Refocusing for Century Twenty-One
16. Playing the Anthropologist in Public
17. Challenge to Community College and University Departments: Survive or Thrive through Collaboration
18. Back from the Brink of Death: The Revival of Anthropology at UTEP
V: Extending Anthropological Practice beyond Academia
19. Professionalism and Perception
20. Anthropology as Agent of Change: Anthropology in Corporate Structures
21. Integrating Anthropologists into Nonacademic Work Settings
22. Invisible Anthropologist in Advocacy and Social
VI: Reflections and Conclusions on the Anthropological Stance
23. Critical Reflections
24. Comments: Crisis as Opportunity
25. Comments: The View from the Third World
26. Comments: Anthrpology in the Next Millennium. A Case Study on Service Learning and Ethnography at California State University, Monterey Bay
27. Concluding Comments
References Cited
Contributors

Citation preview

Transforming Academia: Challenges and Opportunities for an Engaged Anthropology

Linda G. Basch, Lucie Wood Saunders, Jagna Wojcicka Sharff, and James Peacock, editors Roberta Jill Craven, consulting editor

American Ethnological Society Monograph Series, Number 8 Mary Moran, series editor

Copyright © 1999 by the American Anthropological Association All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Production editors: Todd Reitzel, John Neikirk ISBN 0-913167-92-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Transforming academia : challenges and opportunities for an engaged anthropology / Linda G. Basch... et al. ; Roberta Jill Craven, consulting editor. p. cm.—(American Ethnological Society monograph series ; no. 8)

Includes bibliographical references (p. ). ISBN 0-913167-92-4

1. Anthropology—Study and teaching (Higher)—United States. I. Basch, Linda G. (Linda Green). II. Craven, Roberta Jill. II. Series.

GN43.T73 1999 301'.071'173—dc21 99-30178 CIP

Copies may be ordered from: American Anthropological Association 4350 North Fairfax Drive, Suite 640 Arlington VA 22203

http:/ /www.aaanet.org

Contents Part I: Introduction and Overviews | 1 Anthropology ina Changing Academy:

; Linda G. Basch 3 Crisis or Opportunity?

James L. Peacock , 21

~ 2 Toward a Proactive Anthropology

. Eric R. Wolf 32 3. Anthropology and the Academy: Historical Reflections

Part II: Ethnographers’ Analyses of the Current Situation 4 Sweatshopping Academe: Capitalism and the Part-Time Academic in U.S. Universities

Jagna Wojcicka Sharff and Johanna Lessinger 43 5 Race, Class, and the Limits of Democratization in |

Karen Brodkin | 63 the Academy

6 New Voices of Diversity, Academic Relations of

Faye V. Harrison 72 7 Restructuring and the Changing Roles of Faculty , Production, and the Free Market

Tom Greaves | ; 86

8 Restructuring, Downsizing, Surviving? The CUNY Case

Lucie Wood Saunders ~ 99

Part III: Administrative Vantage Points

Judith Shapiro 113

9 Schism and Continuity in the Academy

- Art Gallaher 123

- . 10 Whither the Comprehensive Land-Grant University? _ 11 Good Fences Make Good Neighbors: Keeping Anthropology’s Subfields Alive and Growing in

the 21stT. Century Peter Ellison , | 130

12 Will Inclusion Be More than an Illusion in the Academy of the Future?

Niara Sudarkasa 134

Part IV: Preserving Anthropology’s Space in Academia

13. Marginal Natives: Anthropology in Undergraduate Institutions

Miriam S. Chaiken — 155

14 The Forgotten Undergraduate , ,

Richard I. Ford 161

15 Howard University: A Minority Institution Refocusing

for Century Twenty-One Arvilla Payne-Jackson 169 16 Playing the Anthropologist in Public | | J. Anthony Paredes. 180 17. AChallenge to Community College and University 7 Mark S. Lewine — , 193 Anthropology at UTEP David L. Carmichael 202 | Departments: Survive or Thrive through Collaboration

18 Back from the Brink of Death: The Revival of

Part V: Extending Anthropological Practice beyond Academia

19 Professionalism and Perception

Cathleen E. Crain and Nathaniel Tashima 213

20 Anthropology as Agent of Change: Anthropology in ~ |

Corporate L. Structures oe Madeline Ritter 221

21 Integrating Anthropologists into Nonacademic

Cris Johnsrud 239

Work Settings

_ Mary Ann Castle , 253

22 The Invisible Anthropologist

Part VI: Reflections and Conclusions on the

Anthropological Stance

Sydel Silverman 271

23 Critical Reflections

Madeleine L. Tramm 275

24 Comments: Crisis as Opportunity

June Nash 280

25 Comments: The View from the Third World

26 Comments: Anthropology in the Next Millennium. A Case Study on Service Learning and Ethnography at

Steven F. Arvizu 283

California State University, Monterey Bay

27 Concluding Comments Linda G. Basch, Lucie Wood Saunders, Jagna Wojcicka

Sharff, and James Peacock 288

References Cited 293

Contributors 308

Acknowledgments . This book reflects the vision, perspective, and generosity of several people who participated in various stages of this project. In many ways, the work involved in producing this volume, from the conferences that provided the basis for the essays in the volume to the book’s completion, has been a collaborative project, and we want to extend deep appreciation to our various collaborators along the way. First, we gratefully acknowledge Sydel Silverman, president of the Wenner-Gren Foundation, who supported the idea of the 1996 conference “Restructuring Academe: Implications for a Proactive Anthropol-

ogy” from the outset, met with us early on to help give shape to the project, and provided the funding to host the conference at the New York Academy of Sciences. We also express deep thanks to our colleagues on the Advisory Committee of the Anthropology Section at the New York Academy of Sciences, who encouraged us to go ahead with this confer-

ence and provided us with the necessary space and logistical support. We thank also the New York Academy of Sciences for providing a program for disciplinary sections in the sciences, which enabled us to hold this meeting at the academy. In the same spirit, we thank Jon Anderson, program chair of the 1995 American Anthropological Association (AAA) annual meeting, in Washington, D.C. Jon Anderson and Jim Peacock collaborated in organizing three “presidential” panels: “Whither the Academy,” “Whither Anthropology within the Academy,” and “Whither Anthropology beyond the Academy.” The first featured anthropologists who are also university or college administrators, the second, chairs of departments, and the third, practicing anthropologists. These panels helped develop the themes of this volume and were the source of some of its essays. In addition, we acknowledge the panel “Sweatshopping Academia,” held at the 1993 annual meeting of the American Anthropological | Association, at which ideas presented in some of these essays were first articulated. Some of those contributions were published by the American Anthropological Association (through its Society for the Anthropology of Work section) in a theme issue of Anthropology of Work Review

(Sharff and Saunders 1994). _ |

Wealso want to thank the several anthropologists who participated

in the meetings at the New York Academy of Sciences and of the

| | vi

American Anthropological Association, whose ideas contributed to the thinking that created this volume but whose essays are not represented:

Larry Breitborde, Elizabeth Briody, Michael Cernea, Bette Denich, Carol

Eastman, Judith Friedlander, Karen Hanson, Gwendolyn Mikell, YoJanda Moses, Anya Peterson Royce, Forrest Smith, Karen Strier, and

Saskia Sassen. | |

A very special expression of gratitude is due Jill Craven, assistant to Jim Peacock, who edited the contributions and added her insights,to this volume. She showed respect for the authors’ perspectives through-

out, yet her sense of what would bring clarity to the arguments was enormously helpful in completing the work and enhancing the book’s usefulness. We also thank Mary Moran, the editor of the American Ethnological Society (AES) monograph series, for her patience, for her interest in the project, and for her general support. We are appreciative of the willingness of the AES and the AAA to publish this work and of their recogni-

tion of its importance for anthropology. We are grateful to the anonymous readers for their perceptive reviews and suggestions for sharpening the analyses, which helped us clarify our arguments. We also thank Rick Custer, former AAA director of publications, Todd Reitzel, former AAA production editor, Julie Philpot, current director of publications services, and John Neikirk, senior production editor, for helping to bring this book to publication. And lastly, we acknowledge the continuing support and interest of our families: John C. Saunders, Florence and Sophie Peacock, and Sam, Ethan, Arielle, and Abi Basch.

vil

We wish to acknowledge the inspiration of Eric Wolf (1923-1999),

to whose memory we dedicate this volume.

I

Introduction and Overviews

1

Anthropology in a Changing Academy: Crisis or Opportunity? LINDA G. BASCH At first glance, the climate of the 1990s has been one of critique, transformation, and, at times, crisis in higher education, one that has

drawn much of academia into a period of intense questioning and rethinking. The process began with a critique of shortcomings within the field of higher education. While the initial critique came from the periphery of the academic sector—from policy makers, government officials, and the corporate world—the ensuing process of reflection reached into

the heart of academia to engage academic leaders, administrators, and

, faculty (see Chandler 1995; Pew Higher Education Roundtable 1994). The rethinking generated has been all encompassing, addressing the - scope, scale, and organization of higher education, as well as, in many cases, its mission. As one analyst observed, commissions to explore the

(Levine 1996). ,

shortcomings of higher education have become a cottage industry

The intensity of the reflection has crested and ebbed, and the policy and programmatic responses have been uneven. Yet the responses have

- generated a number of changes.that are likely to alter profoundly the shape of higher education in the 21st century. They have included a decline in federal and state funding for higher education; the application of market values and profit/loss criteria to education; a devaluation of research and scholarship that does not have clear policy or instrumental

implications; a questioning of faculty “worth,” accompanied by reassessments of what constitutes productivity; an increased reliance on low-paid, part-time faculty in many institutions, especially in nonresearch public institutions and community colleges; and a decrease in funding for student aid, which has had a particularly deleterious effect on economically disadvantaged students. This volume grows out of the diverse experiences of the four editors during this period and our concerns about what these changes in the modus operandi of higher education might mean for anthropology as a discipline. Our different positions within academia—as dean of a small

||3

4 Transforming Academia comprehensive college undergoing several reorganizations; as the chair

of an anthropology department in a large, urban, public, nonresearch university experiencing academic restructurings; as a part-time faculty member in that same university system who is concerned with the - growing casualization of academic labor; and as the former president of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and former chair of the academic senate in a large public research university—have exposed

us all to different aspects of the critique, rethinking, and ensuing responses. Yet despite our diverse localized experiences, we all noted that, within this market-driven climate, anthropology and the social sciences

in general seemed to be losing their ground; that on many non-elite campuses course offerings in anthropology were declining and research waning; and that in some settings the discipline was becoming isolated.

At the same time, we were aware that conditions producing alarm in some settings were catalyzing innovative strategies by anthropologists in others, in both academic and applied contexts. In other words, what some were perceiving as crisis, others were interpreting as opportunity. Our different positions led us to recognize the nuanced analyses that can arise from diverse perspectives; our responses were to organize symposia and meetings in different settings to examine the changes taking place and ways for the discipline to address them. Basch, Saunders, and Sharff organized a symposium at the New York Academy of Sciences entitled “Restructuring Academe: Implications for a Proactive Anthropology” in

1996, while Peacock organized a series of panels at the 1995 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association under the rubric “Whither Anthropology ...?” This book builds on the analyses and insights developed at these meetings and includes selected articles shaped for the most part from papers presented in each.’ Our goal for the volume is threefold: to develop an understanding of the present rethinking and transformations taking place in higher education using the tools of anthropology, to probe the challenges and opportunities current circumstances offer for anthropology as a discipline, and to identify proactive strategies anthropologists have created to respond to current conditions. The contributors to the volume are all anthropologists, although they represent a diversity of experiences as full-time and part-time faculty in liberal arts colleges, comprehensive urban and land-grant institutions, and research universities; as college presidents; as college and. university chief academic officers and deans; as department chairs; as leaders of faculty governance groups; and as applied and practicing anthropologists. All draw on their anthropologists’ skills of measured observation and analysis which allow them to make connections and comparisons across intellectual, conceptual, and cultural boundaries to produce new understandings of the situation. In

Anthropology in a Changing Academy , 5 - their articles, they reflect on the transformations taking place in academia and the external environment and, within that framework, identify

directions for a more engaged anthropology, an anthropology that brings a critical eye to diverse contexts and builds collaborations within

and across disciplines and institutions.

Despite the different insights the authors’ redefinitions of the issues provide and their different chartings of directions for an engaged anthro-

pology, the articles concur in large measure that anthropology has _. important insights to contribute to the present situation in academia.

the issues. -_

Some even suggest resisting current definitions and urge a reframing of

Dimensions of the Present Situation | The main argument of this book is that the present turbulence in higher education must be viewed within the context of forces linked to the increasing globalization of the world economy and late-20th-century capitalism. The book identifies four key elements in this force field: the pressures for economic restructuring occurring worldwide, the ascendance of a corporate ideology in which capital is becoming consolidated in fewer hands and “the market” is increasingly seen as a major mediating force, the dramatic changes in the demography and racial composi-

tion of the country which lead to new demands for inclusion, and the

rapid developments in cyberspace. These combined forces pose sharp , challenges to both higher education and the ways academic institutions operate. More specifically, they raise questions about the size and organization of academic institutions, the breadth of academic programs,

cal practice. |

faculty roles, and the shape of curriculum. Both these forces and the challenges they generate constitute the present context for anthropologi-

The Political Economy, Higher Education,

and Anthropology The effects of global economic restructuring have been well documented (see Alexander and Mohanty 1997; Basch et al. 1994; Gordon 1996; Harvey 1989; Holland et al. 1999; Sassen 1991). In the United States,

economic restructuring has led investors to look toward global interests and investments in activities that generate additional capital. This redirection of capital has meant a reduction of investments in a number of sectors of the U.S. economy. As operations are relocated overseas (where

6 Transforming Academia conditions are perceived as more favorable to corporate capital), the closing of manufacturing and industrial sites in this country is becoming all too familiar. Previously blackened industrial cities such as Pittsburgh

and Birmingham are being refashioned into glistening, clean, if less populated, towns; federal and local tax bases are being eroded as corporate interest in the U.S. economy recedes; and funds available for public services, from welfare to health care to education, are rapidly diminish-

ing.. This stripping of public and corporate funds, as several of the authors in this collection point out (Gallaher, Nash, Sharff and Lessinger, Tramm), has affected the financial matrix of higher education.

Within this context of shifting resources, a corporate mindset emphasizing the marketplace has taken hold. Established models for managing academic institutions are being challenged as newer models are increasingly sought in business and management research and practice - (see Kotter 1990). Measured against management yardsticks applied to business, colleges and universities are perceived as inefficient and noncost-effective. As one scholar of management noted earlier, colleges and universities, “one of the largest industries in the nation,” are “among the least businesslike and well managed of all organizations” (Keller 1983: 5).2 Beginning in the early 1990s, public officials, corporate leaders on academic and foundation boards, and others who professed concern with inefficiencies in higher education launched several efforts to bring new values and practices emphasizing market share, niche, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency to the academic sector.° Some contributors to this volume point to the similarity between the

market orientation presently driving higher education and that powering other social, cultural, and economic sectors such as health care, human services, and the arts. Comparing higher education to health care, Tramm calls attention to the emerging hegemony of corporate ideologies in health care, which is leading to a devaluing of basic research,

the use of technology to enable downsizing, and the proletarianization of various categories of workers including medical specialists, who

increasingly are relegated to the role of technicians and stripped of decision-making authority over the direction of their work. Nash makes a comparison between the fragmentation of work, enforced flexibility, heightened bureaucratization, and downsizing occurring in academia and the downsizing and debasement of work she studied in declining manufacturing facilities in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The present critique of higher education heralds a shift away from

an earlier ethos that cast education as a tool for advancing the public interest to a view of education as a private good. In this volume, Gallaher links the new ideology to globalization pressures; he contrasts the present to the post-World War II period, when the rush to create a skilled,

Anthropology in a Changing Academy 7 educated workforce to enhance the competitive edge of the United States led toa democratization and expansion of higher education (see Brodkin 1994, this volume; Silverman, this volume). By comparison, as the interests of capital become more global and more able to rely on an educated

and often inexpensive international labor force, higher education is being conceived more narrowly, as a tool to enable individual personal advancement. In keeping with these economic and ideological reconfigurations, the present national agenda, expressing the needs of global

-_ corporate capital, emphasizes privatization, an ideology that discourages public support for services and selectively reassigns the costs of those services to the private sphere and individuals (Edwards 1994; Pew Higher Education Roundtable 1994; Thompson..1994). Within the parameters of this agenda, the earlier inclination toward growth in higher education has stopped (Glidden 1995; Levine 1996). In contrast to the past, when changes in higher education were achieved through “adding on” programs, personnel, and activities, in the present era of shifting public resources replacement, not growth, has become the operative

word.

Beyond its impact on the funding base of higher education, economic restructuring is altering both the student base and the circumstances of faculty. The present economic situation is drawing more students into academia, yet the needs of many of these students are different from those of past students. In contrast to the jobs in manufacturing that dominated an earlier era, positions in the new technology and financial service fields require advanced education; for these positions, __ a college degree is more often a necessity than an option. But because the shape of positions in these fields is constantly changing, the need for retraining is also growing. Hence workers who might not have needed _ tertiary education a generation ago are looking to higher education for

particular skills. Moreover, many of the workers entering academic institutions for the first time and others returning for additional training in freshly minted occupational fields are beyond traditional college age.

While these shifts in economy are creating new recruits for higher education, the goals and expectations of these new students are, in large

| part, vocationally or professionally focused. And because the resources to support their studies are minimal—for example, there are no G.I. Bills

today, and other forms of financial aid to support education are dwindling—academic institutions, in search of revenues, are developing evening and weekend colleges, continuing studies departments, educational programs at work sites, and “cyber-courses” to accommodate full-time and part-time workers, as well as those casually employed. Aware of the fluidity of knowledge and skills required in a changing

economy and the tenuous nature of many newly emerging fields,

8 Transforming Academia academic institutions are hiring part-time faculty or faculty on limited contracts to give them more flexibility in uncertain and unstable times. These shifts in economic conditions and public ideology are gener-

ating deep changes in the structure of many academic institutions, , leading several, and especially those dependent chiefly on public funds,

to narrow their foci and downsize academic programs and faculty. Various articles in this volume argue that these changes create large disparities in the social status of faculty differentially located across the academic sector and lead to a deprivileging of faculty status generally. A central feature of this deprivileging, as Sharff and Lessinger point out, is the growing use of part-time and temporary scholar-workers, a phe- nomenon occurring in all types of academic settings—in elite as well as non-elite colleges, research universities, and public and private comprehensive institutions. Part-time work is alleged to be the fastest-growing form of work in the U.S. economy, creating a two- and three-tier wage

structure among many segments of the labor force (Edwards 1994: , 27-28). Yet as Sharff and Lessinger argue, the scholarly training and professional identification of academics mask the marginality and precariousness of their work situations. Sharff and Lessinger show that, despite the growing pervasiveness of part-time faculty, they are especially prevalent in large urban public institutions, community colleges (where part-timers in some institutions constitute close to 75 percent of the workforce), and smaller comprehensive private institutions with limited endowments. In part, the intensification of this practice is influenced by declining and uncertain budgets, but it is also related to institutional interests in retaining the flexibility to

capitalize on opportunities that might gain them a favorable market niche in a fluid, unpredictable global economy. Drawing on strategies similar to those adapted by the corporate sector in its quest for maximum flexibility of the workforce (Gordon 1996), these institutions hire faculty part-time or on limited contracts. The present focus on market share is leading institutions to define

their missions more specifically and to tie faculty work and rewards more closely to institutional mission. In some institutions this redefinition means.a revamping of criteria for promotion and tenure, especially where teaching is viewed as the prime mission and opportunities for research are diminishing. On the one hand, this shift in the reward system to align work expectations more closely with the actual nature of work will create more realistic and manageable situations for faculty.

For faculty with heavy teaching loads, the requirement to produce theoretical scholarship is often neither realistic nor achievable. Yet this

shift can have mixed implications for anthropology and other disciplines. On the positive side, by tying the content of what faculty actually

Anthropology in a Changing Academy 9 _do to the reward structure, faculty are likely to be less fragmented professionally, more able to succeed within their institutions, and (as the

articles in this volume by Chaiken, Carmichael, and Payne-Jackson suggest) more able to concentrate on advancing anthropology as a discipline within the specific contexts of their institutions. Some worry, however, that the de-emphasis on scholarly production in institutions

with scarce resources, heavy teaching loads, and administrative tasks can remove faculty in these institutions from shaping the intellectual ~ discourse within their fields, making the production of theory even more

} the preserve of elite institutions. Such a scenario, they argue, also carries the potential to create further hierarchy within disciplines. But as several articles in this volume demonstrate (see Arvizu, Chaiken, Carmichael, Lewine, Payne-Jackson, Peacock), this reevaluation of faculty work can also expand the discourse so that anthropologists begin to consider ways of becoming more broadly engaged within institutions, with surrounding communities, and with the public, joining their research and scholarship to activism at all these sites. ;

The changing political economy and ensuing changes in the academic enterprise raise important questions for anthropology as a discipline—about its intellectual shape, its structure, the interaction between its subparts, and also about the reproduction of the discipline. The article by Ellison and the editorial introductory note raise concern that current pressures to reconfigure higher education and to emphasize distinctive institutional missions can erode the discipline’s holistic four-field approach. This undercutting of anthropology’s integrative character can be ,

detrimental to both the intellectual shape of the discipline and the intellectual climate of departments. Arguing that it is important to retain anthropology’s broad intellectual foundation, yet at the same time allow the subfields to radiate in new and creative directions, Ellison’s essay about the Harvard department offers its solution: loosely linked, semi-

autonomous units that interact selectively within a larger context of independence. However, this model requires resources to allow the administrative duplication attached to such autonomy.

Greaves’s article raises questions about the future shape of the discipline which need to be considered by anthropology as a whole and by the AAA. Greaves points to the continuing dominance of academic anthropology within the discipline—and as the career choice of recent Ph.D. graduates—despite current conditions of small growth; this he sees as having a static impact on the discipline. In part, the continuing

privileging of academic anthropology over anthropological practice may be linked to the belief by some anthropologists that the increased production of anthropology undergraduate degrees (which Greaves documents in his article) augers well for the growth of academic anthropology

10 ) Transforming Academia in the next century. Yet several observers of higher education (Gallaher this volume; Glidden 1995; Levine 1996) question the likelihood of such growth, especially in the present market-driven political climate. Future uncertainty about job opportunities in academic anthropology, plus the growing vibrancy of practicing anthropology described in the articles in section 5 of this volume, pose questions about future directions within the discipline that need to be addressed. For example, how can the AAA

and anthropology in general create opportunities for the discipline to embrace practicing anthropology and for academic departments to orient well-prepared Ph.D.s toward practice? And how can opportunities for interchange between the worlds of academia and practice be encouraged?

Changes in Cyberspace Cyberspace is another force expected to make a profound impact on the shape of academic institutions, on faculty roles, and on teaching. The

information revolution in cyberspace provides the possibility for enhancing classroom pedagogy through interactive CD-ROMs, studentand faculty-created videotapes, and other electronic innovations. It also expands the potential pool of students by delivering education to remote

areas through “virtual teaching.” But cyberspace will also have an impact on faculty size, roles, and stratification. For example, cyberspace faculty in one institution can teach students in another, and clusters of institutions can pool courses and faculty. Some analysts are predicting cyberspace will lead to a reconceiving of the role of faculty as facilitator

and guide vis-a-vis the new technologies, which could eliminate the need for much classroom lecture material (Plater 1995:28). Others are concerned that unharnessed technology can lead to even greater stratification among faculty, as some become star performers and others are

designated workers/facilitators. Although none of the articles in this | collection address the implications of developments in cyberspace for academia or anthropology, it is important to begin to consider, address, and forecast the implications of distance learning, teleconferencing, and the Internet for the structure of academic institutions, for faculty roles, for curriculum, for student learning, and for the discipline of anthropology.

Racializing Practices The recent demographic shifts in the United States, generated by changes in immigration policies in the mid-1960s, have created a more

racially and ethnically diverse population than at any time in U.S.

Anthropology in a Changing Academy 11 history. These shifts have led some to predict that by the year 2050 there

will no longer be a discernible racial majority in the United States | (Glidden 1995:7). As these demographic changes interact with both the economic restructuring taking place within the United States and its bias toward a professionally trained workforce, people of color, immigrants,

and women of European background are increasing among student populations and applicants for faculty positions. But within the present hegemonic context in which market ideologies and profit/loss criteria

_ predominate, the presence of new voices of diversity within academia are challenging the racial ordering of the United States. This ordering, in which whiteness is privileged, becomes more brittle during moments of economic insecurity and tension. As new racializing practices of exclu-

sion and inclusion are engendered, contentious issues are raised. The passage of Proposition 209 by voters in California in 1996 and Initiative 200 in Washington in 1998, which ended race and gender preferences in the states’ affirmative action programs, and similar anti—affirmative action legislation pending in other states, are examples of the strength of the present backlash.

Higher education has always been a major gatekeeper for class mobility in the United States, and, as Brodkin points out in this volume, it has been a contested terrain between those supporting the “elite social mission” of higher education and those advocating education’s newer “professional training mission.” Throughout this century, as those previously excluded from passing through academia’s portals took advan-

tage of new educational opportunities in ever-increasing numbers, _ simultaneous efforts were mounted to sustain the earlier “social hue” of higher education through the imposition of educational hurdles difficult

for the newcomers to surmount. Within this historical framework of social and racial exclusion, Saunders’s analysis of the struggles at the City University of New York (CUNY, an institution that historically served an expanding population of immigrants and first-generation college-goers, who since the 1970s have been mostly of color) has particular salience. Saunders documents how in both the 1970s and the early 1990s, as the economy of New York City began to contract, conservative backlashes were mounted against the university’s more race- and classinclusive policies amidst efforts to consolidate departments and downsize faculty.

Sudarkasa’s distinction between “integration” and “inclusion” sheds light on the interaction between exclusionary and more inclusive practices in U.S. higher education and society. Building on this distinction, Sudarkasa, the former president of the historically black Lincoln — University, presents other options for African American students and for educational policy. According to Sudarkasa, “integration” (enrolling

12 Transforming Academia black students at predominantly white institutions) is far different from “inclusion” (encouraging the full participation of black students in campus life by enhancing their opportunities for achievement—often by providing extra support for underprepared but capable students). In her

view, the recent anti-affirmative action legislation and reduction of resources allocated to higher education mean that all institutions cannot develop and support inclusive practices. She argues that in the face of this shift in ideology, resources need to be directed toward those institutions with a track record in preparing African American students. For example, although historically black colleges and universities only constitute 3 percent of U.S. higher education institutions, they enroll at least 27 percent of all African American undergraduates and award slightly more than 27 percent of all the baccalaureate degrees earned by African Americans. Initiatives within the anthropology department at Howard University, which incorporate experiences and curricular content that faculty believe will make the discipline more relevant to students, illustrate the shape inclusionary practices can take. The only historically black college

or university with an anthropology department, Howard has summer field projects in countries with heavy concentrations of African-descended populations and has also developed projects on African burial sites. According to Payne-Jackson, these projects, focusing on cultural issues

and areas grounded in African experience, make anthropology more palpable to students of African background. As several articles in this volume show, however, there are other dimensions to inclusion, which within the changing demographic context need to be addressed by all institutions. They pertain to the new

voices entering the academy demanding that their histories and experi- : ences be expressed for all to hear. Sandra Morgen has argued that those

in “marginalized subject positions are more likely to generate critical perspectives and to see what is invisible or ignored by those [in] dominant ... positions”; in fact, changes in the “composition of credentialed knowers have reverberated in vast changes in how and what we know in anthropology” (1997:1, 4). While those previously marginalized are bringing new insights to our understanding of society, culture, and the way social relations are structured, in the process they are also challenging traditionally taught bodies of knowledge and modes of analysis. In other words, they are sparking efforts to reshape the canon. But canon

setting is a process embedded in complexly layered, institutionalized relations of power and authority (Harrison 1991:7). And the growing conservative backlash associated with the present economic restructuring, with its emphasis on downsizing, is undermining demands that new voices of diversity be incorporated within the academy.

Anthropology in a Changing Academy 13 According to Brodkin in this volume, the continuing dominance of -whites—and males—within academic departments and institutions has been important in discounting the new voices of diversity within academia and anthropology. Confronted with the erosion of their own posi-

tions under current economic conditions and with threats that their course offerings will be downsized, they often have not been receptive to contributions from African Americans, Asians, Latinos, or women to the canon. One result has been the channeling of voices of diversity,

-under the rubric of “multiculturalism,” into areas of the curriculum ~ segregated from the mainstream—into women’s and various racial/ “ethnic” studies departments that are in general weakly supported by institutions. Brodkin also argues that the continuing failure to incorpo-

rate new voices into the central curriculum—or to analyze their absence—is related to a liberal intellectual tradition that historically has ignored the societal impacts of both class and capitalism and failed to ‘ develop an analysis of the political economy of race. It is this climate of race avoidance on majority campuses, which includes assaults on affirmative action along with restrictions on special

admissions programs and “race-based” institutional aid, that leads Sudarkasa to argue that over the coming years the “dual system” of higher education in the United States will be strengthened at the expense of increasing the inclusion of African Americans at majority institutions. Drawing on the theories and methods of anthropology, the articles

in this volume shed light on the present crisis in higher education by deconstructing some of its key elements: the corporate hegemony linked

to economic restructuring that shapes relations of power and the alloca- | tion of resources across economic sectors, the redefinition of faculty positions and roles currently taking place, and the reformulation of racialized practices of inclusion and exclusion expressed in the declining

resources allocated to public education and also in canonical debates.

These conditions are the backdrop to the diverse efforts to constitutean engaged anthropology described in this volume.

_. Toward a More Engaged Anthropology The literature on the history of education tells us that change and crisis have been central parts of the education movement in this country historically and have been responsible for creative institutional transformations at various critical moments—for example, the creation of landgrant universities; comprehensive institutions; and professional programs in business, social work, and so forth (see Berberet and Wong 1995; Boyer

1994). Although present changes in the external environment and the

14 Transforming Academia accompanying intense questioning of “taken-for-granted” academic practices are creating a sense of disjuncture within academia among many faculty members and administrators, several contributors to this book see opportunities now for the discipline. In their analyses and the efforts they describe, they provide a beginning framework for a more proactive and engaged anthropology. The strategies they identify emphasize four key areas: (1) laying claim as anthropologists to new spaces

for active engagement within the curriculum, within academic institutions, and within society in general; (2) bringing anthropology’s critical and analytic perspectives to these spaces; (3) building coalitions and collaborations within the discipline, with other disciplines, and with external institutions; and (4) opening the discipline to new voices. Several of the contributors identify anthropological knowledge and insights they think can make important contributions to their academic and applied work and to contemporary issues. Shapiro, for example, argues that anthropology’s theoretical and methodological traditions can counter the “social science illiteracy” that fuels the anti—affirmative

action debate and enhance knowledge of diversity by showing that cultures are not separate islands and that cultural identities are inherently relational. She argues that these attributes should enable anthropology to play a central role within academic institutions, especially at this moment of curricular rethinking—both within general education and interdisciplinary programs and with new initiatives such as “service learning.” She urges anthropologists to be both alert and responsive to the more collaborative approach to teaching that these initiatives and also the advances in cyberspace require. Shapiro emphasizes the “social contract between faculty members and their institutions” (p. 120), which she sees in tension with connections faculty feel and maintain to their

disciplines. .

Wolf also identifies tools of anthropology that he believes can make important contributions to both theoretical and public discourses. These include the critique that anthropology can bring to historical and contemporary issues in analyzing how power is organized and wielded. As Wolf says, “We need to be bolder about expanding and asserting anthro- —pology’s capacity for the analysis of power, and bring it to bear on both

the theoretical issues and societal challenges before us” (p. 37). This understanding of the genesis and operation of both power and hierarchy

stretches across the four fields of anthropology. The shared understanding of concepts possessed by all anthropologists enables us to collect and to analyze data in a coherent and powerful way, regardless of whether we are positioned at NYNEX, as academic administrators, or as faculty in large public or small elite institutions and whether we are trained as archaeologists, physical or social anthropologists, or linguists.

Anthropology in a Changing Academy 15 Academic anthropologists have become increasingly concerned that concepts developed and defined by anthropology such as culture, ethnicity, and race are being appropriated by other disciplines, with anthropologists often excluded from the discussion and from shaping interdisciplinary initiatives around these concepts. Peacock is particularly concerned with the marginal position of anthropology within both academic and applied settings and in his article reflects on methodological and ideological factors within the discipline that have led to its more

esoteric focus and marginalization. Peacock and other anthropologists would also argue that anthropologists need to bring their critical insights to these conceptual areas and problematize popularly accepted premises. The concept of “multiculturalism” is a case in point. While multiculturalism as a concept has led to an elaboration of courses and programs focused on specific ethnic and racial groups—and anthropologists on

several campuses have lamented the fact that these programs have sprouted too often without their input—several anthropologists would _ argue that discussions of race, ethnicity, and culture cannot be separated from the analysis of power, class hierarchy, and the state. Moreover, the implicit essentialism in this strategy and the marginalization from mainstream curriculum that frequently accompanies these programs have not been sufficiently addressed.* As Silverman points out, the challenge for an engaged anthropology is how to position ourselves as a discipline to be able to draw on anthropology’s critical insights without being seen as such naysayers that we remove ourselves from the conversation. The articles by the applied anthropologists in this volume similarly

emphasize the many ways they draw on anthropology’s critical perspec- , tives in their work. In her article describing her work with a women’s reproductive health care agency, Castle calls attention to how understandings of the management of “power and authority” and “conflict and compromise” contributed to her efforts to democratize her agency

, and bring about social change. Johnsrud, a director of research and strategic planning at a NASA industrial applications center, argues that the ability to provide critical thinking is essential in both industry and government, along with the concomitant skill of suggesting ways to “fix

, it.” Ritter points to ways she used anthropological understandings of bureaucracies in her work at NYNEX, and Crain and Tashima emphasize the importance of bringing anthropology into the “skill set” of practicing

anthropologists. |

Several contributors to the volume (Brodkin, Carmichael, Chaiken, Ellison, Ford, Harrison, Payne-Jackson, Peacock, Saunders, and Shapiro) address the discipline’s marginalization within academia and emphasize the importance of building coalitions and collaborations with other

disciplines and with administrators which cross present institutional

16 Transforming Academia and disciplinary borders. Confident in the contributions anthropology can bring to these collaborations, they see this as an important strategy for both self-protective and visionary reasons. Such alliances, they pro-

pose, will serve to make the discipline more central within academic . governance structures, will enable anthropologists to contribute to the reshaping of curriculum, and will inject an anthropological perspective into many of the premises guiding higher education and institutional agendas. Several of the articles document successes for anthropology programs that have been built on such coalitions. Carmichael and Chaiken, both reporting on experiences in compre_ hensive, undergraduate institutions, emphasize the benefits that have come to their programs through active networking with other disciplines and programs, which has led to cross-listed courses, new service courses, interdisciplinary research, more students, and generally more resources

and respect for anthropology as a discipline. Both Carmichael’s and : Chaiken’s strategies, along with Payne-Jackson’s efforts to augment the position of anthropology at Howard University, are anchored in the missions of their specific institutions. These anthropologists are also attempting to attract both nonmajors and majors to their programs. Lewine reports on a network in Ohio comprising all anthropology programs in the region—public and private four-year institutions, graduate programs, and community colleges—which has helped make a place for anthropology in institutions where the discipline is submerged, such as the community college where he teaches. In addition, the diverse pro-

grams that the regional network was able to generate have brought public attention to anthropology throughout the region. _The articles by Ford and Ellison indicate that strengthening the

discipline within academic institutions and building collaborative bridges are concerns of anthropologists within elite institutions as well. Based on the experience of Harvard’s large and diverse anthropology department, Ellison’s article describes the kinds of bridge building that can be necessary both. within the discipline and across anthropology’s

diverse fields to maintain a strong department. Ford addresses the emphasis that the anthropology department at Michigan has given its

undergraduate program as it strives to make anthropology a more central player in Michigan’s undergraduate liberal arts curriculum. Several of the articles argue that to fend off marginalization anthropology also needs to build bridges to the public. These articles demonstrate how anthropological analysis can enlarge understanding of the recent dramatic changes in the national economy, ideology, and demography. But an even larger challenge for anthropology is how to bring these analyses to public attention in ways to shape the public discourse. In his article, Peacock urges anthropologists to become more engaged in

Anthropology in a Changing Academy 17 public arenas and suggests strategies for them to join a sophisticated ~ analysis to public issues through op-ed pieces in local newspapers, ‘public lectures, and other advocacy work that can make a legislative impact. Paredes wants anthropologists to use “global, holistic comparisons” to elucidate “local problems” (p. 190). Harrison encourages anthropologists to reach out and build bridges to the public. Only then, she argues, will anthropology be poised to join in the intellectual debates that inform political decision making. She rightly contends that in addi_ tion to being fruitful to disciplinary development, this cross-fertilization

a with outsiders will create alliances that can be politically expedient to anthropology’s well-being within academic institutions. But she also cautions that for anthropologists to actively intervene in the public sphere, they must not restrict themselves to academic circles: “We have to overcome the biases academic purists and elitists have about advocacy, political engagement, and popularization” (p. 85). The task of building bridges to the public has frequently been left

to the realm of applied anthropology. While applied anthropologists have promoted public understanding of and respect for the discipline, their efforts have been largely confined to their work contexts. Several of the articles in this volume (by Crain and Tashima, Johnsrud, Peacock, Ritter, and Tramm) argue that potential public efforts mounted by both academic and applied anthropologists suffer from divisions within the discipline and that bridges need to be built within the discipline. Crain

and Tashima urge academic and practicing anthropologists to come together to agree on acommon vision and on what to communicate. This

collaboration, they insist, will enhance the public image of the field and also enable practitioners, who often feel marginalized from the discipline, to remain connected and motivated to participate in collective efforts. Johnsrud argues that the integration of academic and applied anthropology is urgent, for only through this collaboration will students be able to expand their horizons for career possibilities. Further, “[i]f anthropology is to survive and flourish outside the academy, it must be strongly and enthusiastically endorsed by anthropologists within the

academy” (p. 248). |

While several of the articles offer solutions and activist strategies for

_ the discipline of anthropology in response to present assaults on higher education, many also take a more critical stance on the present situation in higher education. In fact, some of the articles argue that by illuminat-

ing issues surrounding the present crisis, anthropological analyses can , supply insights to reframe some of the premises and definitions guiding higher education agendas. They also show that such engagement on the

part of anthropologists can enhance the position of the discipline on particular campuses. Saunders, for example, argues that the market

18 | Transforming Academia models presently guiding the education agenda nationally need to be tempered by the educational considerations of faculty. She urges anthropologists to be active in discussions about the direction of higher education, to provide both an analysis of the implications of present directions

and a platform from which to argue for the value of anthropology as a : discipline. Her case study of the CUNY system demonstrates how a proactive stance by anthropologists combined with strategic alliances both within and outside the discipline successfully moved the discipline out of the target zone of downsizing efforts. This outcome was facilitated by Saunders’s role as chair of the faculty senate on her campus at the

same time that she was department chair, which allowed her to bring her analysis of the situation as an anthropologist to public attention. Peacock’s experience as the elected chair of the faculty at the University of North Carolina had a similar impact. Representing 2,300 faculty, he could act as a “kind of labor union leader and spokesperson vis-a-vis the administration, the legislature, and local society” (p. 28). In both situ-

| ations, Saunders’s and Peacock’s leadership positions made anthropology a credible player and active stakeholder in the deliberations taking place.

Beyond reframing the issues, Sharff and Lessinger argue that anthropological analyses can enable faculty to actively resist current definitions of the situation. They urge academics, including tenured full

professors, to develop an analysis that locates them as workers, not 7 privileged professionals, and that is inclusive of all faculty whether employed full- or part-time. Only with this kind of analysis, they argue, will faculty be able to form alliances across disciplines and institutions

and to resist the increasing proletarianization of all faculty and the |

downgrading of faculty work. | Organization of the Book

The book is organized to capture the insights of differentially located anthropologists about the present state of higher education, the challenges and opportunities it presents to the discipline of anthropology, and strategies anthropologists are identifying to construct a more engaged anthropology. It is divided into five sections. The first section presents two distinct but complementary perspectives on the role an engaged anthropology can play within academia and within society. Wolf, emphasizing the power of anthropology’s critical perspective, argues that a “built-in critical stance comes out of our understanding that theories and notions have to be tested against the multitude of scenarios that make up the ethnographic and historical record. This critical stance,

Anthropology in a Changing Academy 19 at its best, goes beyond naysaying; we have a lot of ideas about how better explanations can be reached” (p. 38). Peacock charts a different direction for an engaged anthropology, which he terms a “proactive anthropology.” He advocates a public anthropology, which he sees as a current professional imperative. His view is encapsulated in the motto “public or perish”; anthropologists must use their knowledge and critical understandings to shape policy and take on leadership roles in public service and “public intellectual arenas.”

. The next two sections provide analyses of the present situation within academia: in section II by faculty acting as ethnographers and in section III by anthropologists occupying leadership and management positions in academic institutions. The articles in section II analyze the

dramatic yet intertwining changes shaping higher education: the role of , economic restructuring (Sharff and Lessinger), the effect of new voices entering the academy in the past (Brodkin) and present (Harrison), and the impact of these changes on academic institutions (Saunders) and faculty roles (Greaves, Sharff and Lessinger). While both sections iden-

tify the structural and ideological factors shaping the present situation, , the strategies they present vary. Those in section II, from faculty, for the

most part suggest ways of redefining and reenvisioning the present situation. The articles in the third section, by anthropologists serving as college presidents (Shapiro, of an undergraduate women’s college, and Sudarkasa, of an historically black college), as the chancellor of a state university system (Gallaher), and as an associate dean and department chair (Ellison), suggest ways anthropology can respond to and maximize >

current circumstances. : Sections IV and V identify proactive strategies and entrepreneurial

efforts mounted by anthropologists in undergraduate anthropology departments (in section IV) and within the applied sector (in section V). Despite their seeming differences, the analyses and strategies of the two groups are surprisingly similar. For example, the articles in section [IV about anthropologists carving new spaces in academia outline efforts of anthropology faculty to apply anthropological concepts in cross-disci-

plinary contexts in much the same way that applied anthropologists _ have attempted to pave a path for anthropology in settings external to academia. Similarly, the articles in section V examine ways anthropological theory and methods guide applied and practicing anthropolo-

gists. The two sections describe a diversity of contexts. Section IV encompasses a community college (Lewine); a large, private, historically black university (Payne-Jackson); a small private college (Chaiken); and a branch campus of a large university system which caters to a specific

ethnic category (Carmichael). Section V offers case studies of a large for-profit corporation, NYNEX (Ritter), a nonprofit health care agency

20 Transforming Academia (Castle), a health care consulting firm (Crain and Tashima), and a gov-

ernment agency, NASA (Johnsrud). ,

Section VI contains comments and reflections by anthropologists

, from academic and applied sectors, from the editors, and from an anthropologist whose perspective is informed by her leadership of a major anthropological foundation and her earlier work as a department chair of both undergraduate and graduate anthropology departments. Despite the different approaches and experiences of the contributors to this volume, what joins them together is their concern to bring the theory

and methods of a critical anthropology to their work and to create amore

inclusive and engaged discipline. : Notes | 1. The one exception is the article by Mary Ann Castle, which is based on a

| paper presented at a New York Academy of Sciences 1997 conference entitled “Praxis and Politics: Anthropologists in Non-Academic Settings.” It has been included because it illuminates many of the issues addressed in this volume. 2. According to Donald Kennedy, president emeritus of Stanford Univer-

sity, these factors limit the ability of universities to capitalize on evolving opportunities (Abelson 1993:487). Kennedy has identified some of the special properties of academic institutions that lead them to operate dissimilarly from corporate organizations: for example, universities cannot easily bring in new faculty to replace others, tenure prohibits rapid change, and academic freedom concentrates the power of appointment within local faculties.

3. See Soley 1995 for an analysis of how in this political climate large corporations, because they are increasingly paying the bills for university research, are influencing definitions of the mission of higher education. 4, Anthropologist/administrator Judith Friedlander, in her presentation at the New York Academy of Sciences.symposium “Restructuring Academe: Implications for a Proactive Anthropology” in 1996, pointed to the general cowardice of anthropologists in the multicultural debate in not invoking cross-cultural understandings to counter the essentialism underpinning this concept.

2,

Toward a Proactive Anthropology JAMES L. PEACOCK For anthropology, both opportunities and dangers loom as we enter

the new millennium. Opportunities are significant because our discipline is well equipped to grasp issues of cultural complexity and diversity ina time of globalism. Dangers are also great because contemporary

and emerging social forces undermine academic endeavors, particularly , those of a humanistic cast. What strategy should we pursue? To survive in this promising yet ominous environment, anthropologists, first and most fundamentally, must be strong in scholarship; the deeper and more penetrating our insights, the better. One strategy is to focus on scholarship and leave to others—administrators, legislators, business—the task of determining the fate of our scholarly understandings and ourselves. For many anthropologists, perhaps most, this is the chosen path, if not always at least during most of one’s career. But there is danger in leaving our fate entirely in the hands of others. If anthropology is to survive to

contribute maximally—to human knowledge, to the human condi-

tion—then at least some anthropologists must take responsibility to deploy their knowledge of the discipline for the good of the discipline

and thus, supposedly, for the good of the wider society. We must diagnose the situation, and then plan and implement ways to sustain the

discipline and to enhance its contribution. Thus, the editors present

Proactive Anthropology. |

How should we be proactive? Essentially two complementary ana-

lytical viewpoints present themselves: critical and constructive. For discussion, it is useful to distinguish these, to exaggerate the difference between them in order to sketch and compare broadly and quickly the _ logic of the arguments. In practice, it is necessary to interweave the two so that both come into play as aspects of a single effort.

The Critical and the Constructive Viewpoints , The critical strategy takes a hard look at current social forces, considering their consequences and motives. In the United States and, to a certain extent, in the global society, the focus of critique is on the 21

22 Transforming Academia capitalistic or postcapitalistic corporate system. Academic institutions are viewed as part of this system, thus subsumed under larger trends such as downsizing, reduction of workforces to temporary laborers, and replacement of human knowledge with technocracy. In this view, the post—cold war global market system with capitalistic values and profit motive dominates, and all else, including such services as health care and education, is subject to its doctrine of the bottom line. Professionals,

including academics, are reduced to labor, their special contributions

trivialized by administrators acting as pawns of the system whose _ interest is primarily cost-effectiveness. To earn the most while investing the least promotes reliance on “temps,” threats to tenure, and the other

trends perceived as undermining the academic endeavor. In such an analysis, a political dimension is added to the economic by constructing

a market system guided by cartels of corporate power elite instead of by ,

the nebulous “invisible hand.” }

: The constructive strategy accepts much of this critical analysis. It, too, analyzes predominant social forces and highlights the same post—cold

war global market/corporate system and consequences for academia and. other endeavors; however, it also emphasizes additional aspects. For example, it focuses on the reasons for the shifting relationship between academe and society. Historically, there has been an enormous outlay of

support—economic as well as political, social, and cultural—given to higher education during the past three centuries and especially during the post-World War II era in the United States and to a lesser but rising degree elsewhere. Federal, state, and private support has been, and remains, huge. Why? One argument might be termed the social contract: society supports higher education because higher education contributes

to society—enormously. Why, then, the current criticism and withdrawal of support for certain aspects of higher education? The social contract argument answers: it is because higher education has diminished its contribution to society. Universities turned inward, overemphasizing their own academic concerns over societal needs. Research in highly specialized topics expanded at the expense of teaching, especially of undergraduates, and of public service and public contributions. Tit for tat: since universities fell short on societal contribution, then society diminished its support. A university education became defined as not for public good but for private gain: a good job. Hence now the private citizen pays for his or her own education, thus shifting the cost from the

state to the consumer. The result: diminished state support and huge | increases in private tuition, causing diminished resources at public institutions while private ones risk pricing themselves out of the market (Boyer 1996).

Proactive Anthropology 23 Both the critical and the constructive perspectives, then, perceive a

crisis, but diagnosis differs. In the critical perspective, agency is bestowed on the capitalistic system, its values and consequences. Academics are victims. In the constructive perspective, agency is bestowed in part on the capitalistic system, but also in part on academic disciplines themselves. A social contract is acknowledged, whereby society, includ-

ing the government as well as capitalistic and corporate society, has (whatever the motive, and here one should note, though not exaggerate,

the use of universities for developing corporate and governmental, -. including military, technology and expertise) given considerable support and freedom to academics and academics have in turn contributed significantly to society. Withdrawal of support is not only the result of the juggernaut of capitalistic society but also of the failure of academics

to contribute adequately (and/or to communicate adequately about their contributions). Each perspective is critical of the other. The constructive one accuses

the critical one of a narrow and reductionistic analysis, and of a kind of paranoid attribution of agency to the corporate villain. The critical one accuses the constructive one of naiveté, of too Pollyannish a view of society; trust in social contract is unjustified, and it is foolish to think the

established system will support any academic endeavor except the unthreatening fetishistic quaint or technologically useful. Certainly, one would not expect the corporate world to support a perspective critical of that world, that is, the critical perspective. The constructivist would

observe that while this expectation tends to be true, even corporately

dominated boards of trustees are often committed to upholding academic freedom, including the right to express a critical perspective. While social critics may depict U.S. higher education as under the corporate thumb, few would argue that this is an autocracy in the sense of a classical czarist, fascist, or communist state.

In part, the different perspectives stem from different data. The critical grows from a multitude of experiences, ranging from the excesses of capitalism and postcapitalism in the corporate world to despotically induced traumas of intellectuals in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and

elsewhere. The constructive acknowledges such experiences but also notes features special to the United States such as support of public mass

education and private colleges and universities in numbers unequaled elsewhere. But while different data partially explain the differing emphases, so also are the theoretical underpinnings, ranging more toward the left on the critical side, toward liberalism (or variations reflecting U.S.

pragmatism) on the other. Anthropologists tend to be more informed than most by the non-US. colonial or postcolonial contexts but may tend to read into the U.S. context some of these others.

24 Transforming Academia Whatever the sources of the differences, the two perspectives suggest different consequences for a proactive anthropology. The critical prescription is critique and resist! If the system is bad, say so, and loudly! Do not accept it, oppose it; or if not that, at least remain aloof and critical. The constructive prescription assumes the possibility not only for change in the system but also for stronger contribution by us, as agents; hence critique and reform by and of both parties is the preferred strategy. Yes,

criticize and oppose the system but also reform it, and critique and reform our own practices as well. Anthropologists are educated more for the critical than for the constructive strategy. We learn to be outsiders

and intellectuals, we do not learn to be policy makers or leaders and organizers, and our experiences in the field teach cynicism and mistrust

of many who lead and hold official positions. | Reaching Out: The Common Focus While these strategies differ, in one crucial respect they lead to a common focus: to reach out. Whether we emphasize critique or contribution, we must move beyond ourselves. If we rail at the system only

among ourselves, little is accomplished beyond narcissistic selfapplause. Launch critique outward, so that it can have effect. On the other hand, while launching other-criticism outward, direct self-criticism inward. One such criticism of our discipline is that it overly rewards inward contribution, preventing our knowledge from reaching outside. Thus my argument is a kind of inreach pressing for outreach; Iam critical of us for being too inward-looking, and I press, therefore, for directing our contributions outward; this is a piece of proactive anthropology. At the same time, I share with the critical perspective a conviction that the

system is flawed; in fact, I believe it is potentially destructive to an extent unimaginable in the pre-electronic, pre-global/corporate age. I hold no illusion that we can simply accept and work within the corporate-dominated system, that we can “get ahead” by conforming and achieving within the paradigms set by the system. So we must be self-critical and other-critical, yet launch our messages outward, whether they be critical

or constructive, and we must then be activist in the sense of not only _ resistance but also, where possible, initiative and leadership. The above sets a context for critical reflection on remarks that Imade at the conference which prompted this volume and which were based on a 1995 presidential address to the AAA, now published in the Amertcan Anthropologist, March 1997 (Peacock 1997:9-17). In that talk, I acknowledged the social forces impacting us but I abstained from their critical analysis. Instead, I directed my critique at those present, fellow

Proactive Anthropology 25 anthropologists, and I directed my proposals for reform at our own discipline. Thus, I followed the “constructive” paradigm and asked, basically, what we should do. I summarize the relevant points of the

argument next. | ,

The argument began with three scenarios for anthropology in the 21st century: anthropology as extinct, anthropology as the “living dead,” that is, quaint and marginal, and anthropology as a vital and leading

scenario. :

discipline. The question it pondered was how to achieve the third - My answer was, essentially, by reaching out, not only by publicizing our knowledge but also by taking more of a leadership role beyond the , discipline and by grappling with issues that concern humankind, not just the academy or discipline; “public or perish” could be a useful motto, . provided “public” was understood in the civic and moral, rather than | just the public relations, sense.

After I assessed the current social forces presenting threats for anthropology, I noted that the. discipline has many strengths, notably its

contribution to undergraduate education. Yet it also has weaknesses,

notably our ways of marginalizing ourselves, disqualifying ourselves , from key roles in the common cause of grappling with issues facing . human society. We seem compelled to depict ourselves as “different” — . different from other disciplines, different from conventional norms. I argued that we need to think systematically, not ideologically, about the optimal mix of outsider and insider to best enhance our contributions. I noted a similar concern with our proclivity to reward those who

contribute inwardly, within the discipline, rather than those who com- : municate beyond the discipline. The gap between the inner development and outer realm has widened since World War IJ, so currently fashion-

able ideas within the discipline, expressed in abstruse language, gain .

War II ideas. a

little resonance in the wider world; we still base our wider contributions primarily on more accessible and more obviously applicable pre-World

What should we do? I proposed that we emphasize and reward contributions significant beyond the discipline, those that resonate with , larger human issues and are communicated in ways that resonate widely. I then put forward ten suggestions for accomplishing this feat. First, “science of a sort, humanities of a sort,” that is, that we keep on with our staple work: a solid fleshing out of the natural history and cultural history of humanity and that, with due regard for critical perspectives, we continue to elucidate regularities and patterns in human life. Second, that we shape policy, enhancing it anthropologically, rather

than simply solving problems caused by bad policy. Third, that we assume leadership roles, in public service, public intellectual arenas, and

26 Transforming Academia administration. Fourth, that we compete with others less qualified but more visible in communicating to wider audiences about human issues. Fifth, that we create literature, film, and other forms that people, including ourselves, engage and consume for the sheer fun of doing so. Sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth, that we not forget our “fundamentals,” that is, area studies, languages, fieldwork, and comparison. Tenth, that we sustain holism, not in the rigid sense of four fields but rather as “force fields”: vectors that connect dynamically the polarities that energize our intellectual life and society. One such vector is synergy between theory

and practice. !

. aa we do all things, however, we shall remain marginal, I argued, unless we do certain things organizationally. What are these? First, we should participate, then lead. Head projects that reach beyond discipline and academy. Second, formulate positive proposals, do not merely critique. Third, reach out. Think and communicate beyond dis-

, cipline and academy. Os I proposed these simple suggestions be implemented both individu-

ally and collectively.'If each of the 11,000 members of the AAA spent 10 percent of his or her time doing these things, 11,000 nodes of activity and

energy would result. If, further, anthropology as a discipline would unify in the effort, overcoming sectional and other divisions, a truly significant impact would result. One hope for such unity is the AAA, and one specific path for it is the long-range plan. Through such initiatives, one could bring to pass the third, and most hopeful, scenario for

anthropology in the 21st century: . ,

Anthropology remains intriguing and creatively diverse, sometimes iconoclastic but breathtaking in sweep and perception, yet it is also integral and even leading in addressing the complex challenges of a transnational yet

grounded humanity. [Peacock 1997:14] - .

Constructive Critique or Critique of the Constructive One of the elementary assumptions of literary criticism, not to mention other critical approaches, is that the author is the last to know—that of all commentators the author is least capable of assessing

the text. Nonetheless, I will hazard several comments on the above argument as a way of moving beyond it and toward concerns of this volume. First, I still believe the argument is essentially correct and that the advice, if taken, will lead the discipline in a useful direction. One must be wary, however, of stereotyping and simplification; for example, I do not propose that anthropologists abandon scholarship and science for practice and advocacy, but rather that each scholar/scientist devote

Proactive Anthropology 27 a fraction of effort to pursuing ways to reach out, lead, and otherwise broaden the reach, deepen the resonance of the discipline. Second, I realize that the argument, in its constructive emphasis, runs against the

grain of the critical analysis that predominates in this volume and perhaps in our discipline as insome other humanities and social sciences.

My argument is perhaps too optimistic. The measures advocated will help, but they are insufficient to overcome the destructive forces that the critical argument correctly identifies. A problem with the critiques, however, is that they are short on proposals for action. This is due, in

part, to the limitations on a single, rather small discipline such as anthropology to effect change as a discipline. Let us, then, try to consider realistically what we can and cannot do as anthropologists to affect the

wider societal forces and whether we may need also to transcend our

role as anthropologists to do that. |

Limitations and Potential of the Public Intellectual Anthropology as a discipline, insofar as it is known by the public, does provide a certain intellectual legitimization for speaking and acting. We must define carefully, however, the scope of that legitimization. In contemporary society—with variation, of course, between different national and local contexts—we can claim some legitimacy as intellectuals, especially as analysts and critics of society and culture and commentators on the human condition. Therefore, we can and should gain some

hearing through op-ed essays and the like, which offer a critical, espe- : cially a comparative and long-range perspective, on education, the global economy and culture, and other issues that bear on problems noted in this volume. We should be public intellectuals. We should, however, be clear about the limits of our legitimacy and influence. If the American Economic Association, for example, were to issue a critique of the President’s budget proposals in his State of the Union address, these would be taken seriously; the equivalent from the AAA would not be, unless they addressed some particular area identified with our compe-

_ tence. It is instructive to observe how anthropologists who do acquire public influence do so. Margaret Mead is the icon, but note the parameters within which she worked. She moved within a paradigm that was (1) of wide popular interest, that is, gender roles, family relations, and child rearing, and (2) immediately and obviously informed by her spe-

cial experience and expertise, that is, cross-cultural fieldwork and knowledge. She built an immense network of influential contacts, ranging from the media to Congress. She devoted her post-World War II life

28 Transforming Academia to public communications, utilizing these themes and contacts, and organized her engagements with the intensity of other professional communicators, such as entertainers, evangelists, and politicians. While

Mead is often criticized for her conservative political/economic stance, one might question whether a more radical analysis (and she was quite radical, for her epoch, concerning many social and cultural issues) would have been feasible in her circumstance; the result might have been to silence her, as was true of other radicals during the McCarthy era. ‘In any case, one lesson is that, as Mead illustrated, anthropology gains prominence in public discourse only by building a place for its voice. A second lesson, equally obvious, is that when speaking publicly _ Mead addressed concerns of the public, not necessarily of the discipline. She would criticize the discipline when addressing the discipline inter-

nally but criticize society when addressing it (compare some of our current leading voices who waste precious media opportunities to air }

| internal debates of no interest to wider audiences). Our influence as a discipline is also limited by our relatively small

numbers, power, and wealth, and by our lack of controlling anything , that matters to those with power and wealth; the Teamsters’ endorsement of a candidate for national office makes a difference, AAA’s would

not. Thus, it makes sense to strengthen the role of anthropologists as public intellectuals, but it is generally futile for anthropologists as an‘thropologists to band together as influence or power groups in the wider society. It is difficult to imagine much impact of such a group because

we would have little with which to threaten or reward outside our disciplinary realm.’

Anthropologists are not, however, only anthropologists. They are also participants in various contexts beyond anthropology. In these, they can draw on power in ways denied them in their identity as anthropolo-

gists only. Thus, they are citizens, faculty members, students, state employees, perhaps administrators and elected leaders. In these roles, the commonsense rules of politics come into play. An illustration is provided from my own experience as the elected chair of the faculty of my university from 1991-94. Because I represented 2,300 faculty, Icould act as a kind of labor union leader and spokesperson vis-a-vis the administration, the legislature, and local society. By mobilizing faculty chairs from other campuses throughout our system of 16

campuses and by linking to the state employees association, which included public school teachers, community college faculty, and thousands of others, land others could collect a constituency of sufficient size

and scope to make an impact and gain a hearing. By also working through influential citizens, we were able to get the ear of the governor and some key legislators and other state leaders.

Proactive Anthropology 29 Through this process, we played an effective role in improving working conditions (including shifting salary increases for faculty in the 16-campus system from a decade average of approximately 1 percent to an average of approximately 4 percent) but, perhaps more importantly, opening communications between faculty and legislators. The process involved critique, occasional confrontation, and-clear, positive proposals that resulted in specific reform and legislation. Channels included the media, mass gatherings, and hundreds of hours of face-to-face conver-

' sations, including discussion with legislators about virtually all the __ issues concerning higher education noted in the various critiques mentioned above and elsewhere in this volume. This particular example can be elaborated by other anthropologists, such as Art Gallaher, who speaks from his experience as chancellor of a large state university. The issues bore on educational philosophy and social values, but power, influence, and resources became salient, too, because a significant constituency was represented. Identity as an an- — thropologist and the identity of anthropology played little if any explicit part in this process because the issue was not one of a particular disci-

pline but of the stakes at risk for higher education and the future of society, especially our state.” In any case, the disciplinary identity is most

salient in legitimizing intellectual analysis, but political processes beyond the discipline must be brought into play to directly engage the Wider social forces and ruling powers.” This realm beyond anthropology is where anthropologists must go in order for critique and vision to have

effect through connection to power and resources.* Proactive anthropol- | ogy necessarily pushes anthropologists beyond anthropology.

Proactive Anthropology | What, then, is “proactive anthropology”? Proactive anthropology begins but cannot end with a critical perspective. As many in this volume demonstrate, society works systematically to undermine freedom, open-

ness, and critical perspectives; anthropology is, perhaps above all else but certainly among other things, a critical perspective. To express that perspective shrewdly and forcefully is perhaps our strongest contribu-

merely academics. 7

tion to society itself. To do this, we must become public intellectuals, not

Yet more than that, we must act as well as critique: as Goethe

proclaimed, truth is in the deed. Those who can, do, those who cannot, critique, is the accusation intellectuals can expect in a pragmatic society like ours. Our actions will have to include political engagement if we are to have effect, but, as argued above, anthropology alone is too small,

30 Transforming Academia esoteric, and weak for effective political pressure; hence, we must unite

with larger and more pertinent constituencies. We can and shall act, enriching learning and teaching, in appropriate situations guiding, ad-

ministering, practicing, and politicking. All of this is proactive anthropology. Is proactive anthropology simply advocating anthropology? No, it is positioning anthropology and anthropologists to more viably contribute ideas, leadership, and experience. Not all is good in anthropology, but much is, and society can profit from wider exposure both to us and to our discipline. I envision anthropologists in the coming millennium

-. not as quaint or fetishized (eccentrics exhibited) nor as enslaved to bureaucratized policy or business vocational technique (servants of the

establishment), but as critically grounded yet active leaders in addressing the complex challenges of a transnational humanity.

Notes , 1. The impotence of a disciplinary organization in the wider U.S. society is illustrated by the story of a former president of the American Political Science Association who, while driving his car, hit a cow. His presidential status meant little to the angry farmer. In certain circumstances elsewhere, notably where theory and ideology infuse political and military action, however, disciplinary and academic issues and organizations may be catalysts of wide social import. Eastern Europe during revolutionary transition provides many examples. 2. Occasionally anthropology has made some direct contribution, but idiosyncratically. For example, I had a chance conversation at a football game with

a congressman who was from a small town that was having a centennial celebration. I asked him if he had heard of a book published in 1885 by a father and son from his town, titled History of the Church of God, from the Creation to A.D.

1885, Including Especially the History of the Kehukee Primitive Baptist Association. “Yes!” he replied, “we are trying to get a copy for our centennial.” I told him where to get a copy and also sent a copy of a book written by me and a colleague that commented on this book and also explicated Primitive Baptist worldview, based on fieldwork we had done in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Months later, I led representatives from around North Carolina to a meeting of the Appropriations Committee, which this man cochaired. As we took our places, he came over to me and whispered, “Your book was deeply meaningful

for me, for I myself was reared a Primitive Baptist.” One would hesitate to suggest that this incident affected the outcome of the committee’s deliberations, which set the state’s budget for higher education for that year, but at least such contacts helped build a community between legislators and academics that in the long run facilitates negotiation. 3. Anexample of this was the role the AAA played in the mid-1990s leading

efforts to lobby against Congress’s plan to cut the social sciences from the National Science Foundation. The AAA enlisted support from influential persons outside anthropology and the social sciences. The effort succeeded.

Proactive Anthropology 31 4. For example, let us look at the Nike case. A Cultural Survival Quarterly - headline reads “Nike Wins Spot in Top 10 Worst Corporations.” Author Julia Dickinson explains, “Nike has been chosen by human rights activists as the company that ‘best represents the worst of global economy’ ” (Dickinson 1998:8).

The article cites labor abuse as the reason for this criticism of Nike, and states

that negative press resulted in Nike experiencing a 30 percent stock drop. Sources cited include Thuyen Nguyen’s “Nike in Vietnam, an eyewitness account” Campaign for Labor Rights. Under Action You Can Take: “Write a letter to Nike CEO Phil Knight” or e-mail “Boycott Nike Homepage.” An additional/alternative proactive effort took place during spring 1998.

-At the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, students had protested a multimillion-dollar contract between Nike and the athletic department, partly on grounds of the alleged labor abuses. Believing that the issues deserved informed discussion, three faculty members, including myself and current chair

of faculty Richard Andrews, a professor of environmental engineering, and Nicholas Didow, an associate professor of business, and Carla Jones, a Ph.D. | candidate in anthropology, organized a course that considered the labor issue and many others entailed in the Nike case. The purpose was to explore with ] concerned students issues and data concerning Nike and its contexts: Asia, labor relations, athletics, and academics. Guest lecturers ranged from critics of Nike (such as Nguyen) to representatives of Nike, and also scholars of Asia, economists, historians, anthropologists, and the chancellor and former president of the university William Friday (who chaired the Knight commission on collegiate athletics). The course received some publicity, for example, a spot on ESPN, and Nike CEO Phil Knight himself appeared, in a surprise visit, at a class. The students presented to Knight their critique of Nike, based on our studies. A few days later, Knight announced at a Washington Press Club speech widely covered in national and international news proposed reforms in Nike-linked plants. Knight attributed the reforms, in part, to our course. Other results include a

code this university, in company with many others, is drafting to govern relations with corporate sponsors.

While appropriate skepticism is in order, and the protest and critical stance remains crucial, the course illustrates an effort to combine critical and construc_ tive action characterizing proactive anthropology...

3

Anthropology and the Academy: Historical Reflections ERIC R. WOLF When discussing the current crisis in academia and its implications

for anthropology, we need to bear in mind how anthropology and its : endeavors exist and have always existed within a changing habitat. We

| have come to recognize how much can be learned by tracing how human groups, with their heads crammed full of weird constructs about the world, must nevertheless interact with the operational environments that surround them. What happens within groups is closely related, sometimes heavily overdetermined, by what happens all around them. We need to apply that understanding to anthropology. If we do that, we must look at where U.S. anthropology has been located in the ever-changing parameters of space-time. This is not the first tume we have faced crisis; we need to bring to our present situation

a historical perspective on how anthropology in the past was affected by, challenged by, and responded to promptings and pressures that emanated from outside the discipline. Since I took part in some of that history as an observing participant, I shall offer some personal reflec- _ tions. Many of these matters will shortly be forgotten, because we no longer publish obituaries in the American Anthropologist, and because our

younger colleagues’ access to memory is increasingly limited by what computerized bibliographic searches turn up.

If anthropologists have been good at learning about how human : groups are socially and culturally directed and constrained, we have been less good at applying this insight to ourselves. Instead, many of us have long clung to a romantic view—common both within and outside the discipline—of the anthropologist as a gifted but lonely oddball, an individual “hero” or “heroine” who travels by him- or herself alone into other cultural worlds and returns with nuggets of knowledge accessible only to fellow-initiates. This romantic vision of the individual often makes

us rotten colleagues in our own departments, questionable actors in relations with other fields, and rebels without an apparent cause within academe.

32 :

Historical Reflections 33 But anthropologists are rarely alone. Despite recent discourse about

how the real world is but a fiction, that world remains much with us, and bites us just when we deny its existence. Contrary to the image of the groves of academe as playgrounds for free and untrammeled minds, the academy consists of institutions with bureaucracies, rules of conduct and work, stipulations of rank and pay, and relations of power through which these are negotiated, mediated, upheld, or curtailed. Such institutions are subject to policies, to policy changes, and to politics. Unless you sit on a trust fund, you depend on these institutions for what is known,

~ without any irony, as a “living wage.” This is capitalism and not the classical Greek polis. Furthermore, these academic institutions exist within other institutions, and all of them are subject to the vibrations, turmoils, and eruptions in the power-laden political and economic fields in which they are enmeshed. The outcomes are predictably tensionridden and contradictory—they sometimes offer marginal spaces that permit experiments in theory and research, and at other times foreclose them. They are, moreover, selective; they favor some people in some positions in some institutions, and render others miserable. We should remember that this tension between individual practi-. tioners and the institutions in which they are employed has worked out differently for U.S. anthropology than for anthropologies elsewhere. Italian anthropology was stupefied by fascism; anthropology in Germany was forcibly coordinated with the operations of the Nazi apparatus; anthropologists in the Soviet Union had to keep up with changes in the party line. By comparison, censure of anthropologists in the United

States was annoying and depressing, but not life-threatening: Boas, , Benedict, and Weltfish were criticized for their stand on racism and for what was later called premature anti-fascism; the Archdiocese of Detroit sent nuns to take notes in Leslie White’s classes where he compared the Holy Ghost to the Chukchi Spirit of Syphilis; Morris Swadesh lost his job , at City College and went on to do marvelous linguistic work in Mexico. But other disciplines suffered more. One of the things that used to work for anthropology was its focus on apparently innocuous information on apparently marginal and un-

important peoples. In most institutions, anthropologists were minority members of sociology departments. That was the case with the department at Queens College where I was an undergraduate, and it was true of the first departments in which I taught at Illmois and Virginia.

At that time, U.S. anthropology was in its culture-and-personality mode, in an environment increasingly interested in something that was called “mental health.” This interest came out of the mental hygiene movement of the early 20th century, which worked to improve living conditions for the mentally ill. The 1930s saw efforts to broaden this

34 Transforming Academia concern to all forms of psychological maladjustment. The movement was largely pioneered by social workers, but anthropologists found niches in it along with people in many other disciplines. In tune with the motivations of social reform that guided the New Deal, the basic para-

digm of this movement was that maladjustments were primarily psychological reactions to particular tension-creating circumstances, and that with proper diagnosis and prescription you could reduce pain and foster well-being. The sociologist Kingsley Davis (1938) called this a version of the Protestant Ethic in scientific guise; it was certainly in the optimistic quick-fix American mode of engaging problems. It was also’ _ strongly influenced by psychoanalysis, primarily in its neo-Freudian American mood, which held that psychological change through egotherapy was interdependent with a restructuring of social relationships.

Here anthropologists had a lot to say. They knew about culturally specific forms of mental illness; they had evidence that cultures under

] stress were likely to produce mental symptoms; and they could talk about how the entire continuum from mental well-being to mental illness might play out differently in different cultural settings. Thus, at

Virginia in 1955 I was asked to teach culture-and-personality in the medical school; and a damned good thing it was too, because nothing in medical training then prepared medical students to work in rural, often black, Southern communities. In fact, teaching culture-and-personality paid my salary until 1971, along with teaching everything else except Polynesian archaeology. I liked doing this, because culture-and-personality touches on many of the unsolved problems in anthropology, and at Virginia it put me in contact with people who were into information theory and general systems research. At the time, there was great optimism about the possibilities of an

interdisciplinary social science, which was manifested in various foundation initiatives and in the creation of new departments such as Social Relations at Harvard. The efforts were sometimes productive, occasionally plain foolish, but, when they worked, they laid groundwork for new departures. Another stream of the interest in relating individual development to the social and cultural setting came from Ruth Benedict’s view of whole cultures as “personalities writ large.” This perspective was carried into the wartime agencies of the U.S. government, where Benedict and others applied it to studying Burmese, Rumanian, Thai, and Japanese cultures “at a distance,” to quote the title of a later book. After the war, the Office of Naval Research gave Benedict funds for the Research on Contemporary Cultures project, and a good many graduate students — worked on one culture or another. I was allowed to invent an Austrian

Historical Reflections 35 project and interviewed as many refugees as I could find within reach of _ the New York subway.

Improving mental health in rearranged social settings alsospoketo people who were seeking “community” and wanted to halt the disorganization of reliable social ties. Theoretical sociologists had long wor-

ried about the loss of community and the rise of mass society, and anthropologists could certainly speak to both changes in community life and the stresses produced by these changes. This anthropological perspective dovetailed with work geared to helping communities, often in

conjunction with New Deal programs in the rural South but also in the North, as in the study by Robert and Helen Lynd on Middletown (1929). Much of this work took the community as a microcosm of larger society, but a few researchers went beyond this, among them rural sociologists (such as Howard Odum and Rupert Vance) who looked at the South as a region with a particular history and distinctive problems, who began to think in terms of multiple levels of social complexity.

Many studies by anthropologists were done in and on American Indian reservations, in connection with university departments or the Bureau of American Ethnology and other agencies concerned with Indian affairs. During World War II, the expertise gained was applied (often with the same emphasis on culturally formed personalities and tension-induced stress) to Japanese American detainees in War Reloca-

tion Authority camps. In the postwar period, this paradigm linking mental problems to psychocultural tensions was extended to projects for

technical assistance to communities abroad. The changed international situation after World War II gave rise to , one of the major movements in the social sciences, “area studies.” There

had been an interest in “foreign” areas before and during the war, but, as Julian Steward put it in his book Area Research, that tended to be “a catchall proposition in which hundreds of kinds of information were supplied for every conceivable purpose” (1950:xiii). The idea now was

to move toward an interdisciplinary, integrated approach, and area centers grew up in many universities around the country. Anthropologists found footholds in these centers, and for a period of 20-25 years, they wrestled—in one way or another—with how to understand complex sociocultural systems. Area interests were connected, directly or indirectly, with U.S. interests in the Cold War, and they have waned as the force of that rationale declined. Since these interests were also disputed by political factions in the country at large, some of these area studies efforts—perhaps the most productive and illuminating ones—were derailed or neutered. For ex-

ample, Owen Lattimore, whose project on nationalism in the region of the Russian-Asiatic frontier was one of the high points of area studies,

36 . Transforming Academia fell prey to Senator McCarthy’s crusade to discover Communists everywhere.

Other area-directed studies, however, played a major role in the movement to oppose U.S. foreign policy, especially in Vietnam. This movement was notable in anthropology, but it cut across all the social sciences. It gave rise to an increased interest in the lot of peasantries around the world, and it created pressures for better conceptualization of the relations of peasants to power and for closer attention to social and economic history. The climate of political critique and protest brought

into social science discourse the various Marxian traditions concerned with the historical development of political economies. Much of the | intellectual vigor of the teach-in movement derived from the mobilization of scholars (including anthropologists) who brought expertise in

area studies and applied it to assessment of public policy. My own participation in the political events and intellectual shifts of the period is reflected in my books Peasants (1966), Peasant Wars of the Twentieth : Century (1969), and later Europe and the People without History (1982). Having spent several years working in or around area study centers, I would say that some of these efforts generated smoke and mirrors, but

others have produced basic, cumulative, and enduring knowledge. From my admittedly geezer perspective, the waning of this mode of organizing research means that anthropologists no longer find easy institutional access, down the hall, to the historians, geographers, ecolo-

gists, development economists, linguists, art historians, and political scientists who can teach them a lot about where “their” people fit into a

larger scene. Conversely, these good folks no longer have to bother with , the oddball anthropologist who could tell them that their elegant abstractions do not hold water.

I have the impression that area studies lost out as “development” , studies came to the fore. Programs aimed at “community development” had begun, in many world regions, even before World War II, mostly _ under colonial auspices. These later mushroomed into projects of “economic development,” in which the study of local communities was often a constituent part. “Development economics” itself emerged only after World War II. I took one of the first courses in development economics offered, at the New School in 1951. It was taught by Henry Aubrey, and Robert Heilbronner sat next to me on the school bench. I could not for

the life of me connect what the economists were talking about with anything I had experienced before, certainly not in my fieldwork in Puerto Rico. Maybe I had been immunized against neoclassical hocuspocus through my Marxian proclivities, but I witnessed, ten years later, the apostasy of Andre Gunder Frank from liberal Milton Friedman-type Chicago economics. A study trip through the so-called developing world

Historical Reflections 37 convinced him that what was known as development was the prime ‘cause of underdevelopment. Frank had an important influence on some corners of social science, including anthropology, but he was for a long

time without a job; his critique was not what development studies wanted. Critical economics has made some headway since then, although the present Republican millenarian movement to revindicate the

market does not hold much promise for it. | Development anthropology, however, gained ground as develop-

ment economics acquired new vim and vigor in the 1970s. This ascen_ dancy is linked in part with the activities of globalizing institutions, such | , as the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and sundry NGOs. Growing increasingly “discontent with the poor results of technology and capital-intensive top-down investment” (Escobar 1991:663), these agencies “developed a new sensitivity toward the social and cultural factors in their programs.” Moreover, “programs had to be socially relevant, to

be culturally appropriate, and to involve the direct beneficiaries in a significant fashion.” This new demand created.a market for development anthropologists who can address “the human element” (Escobar 1991). As this ongoing parade of paradigms suggests, anthropology more

often than not has received its questions and problems from outside, from the institutional world of which it is a part, which is, in turn, driven by the larger political economy. Anthropology has worked on the questions so posed with its own materials and in its own ways, adding accent marks here and there to differentiate its own idiom from others within

the broader stream of communication. At every point there have been spaces—crevices or unoccupied terrain—in which something novel and

interesting could be done and said. However, from my own perspective as an unreconstructed secular , humanist and semi-dialectical materialist, much of what has been done could have been done better, reached further, endured longer, if it had engaged from the start questions of how power is wielded, by whom over whom, within what ambience of political and economic thrust and constraint. Much of what was done suffers from a misleading romanticism and a sentimental search for personal identity and salvation. We need to be bolder about expanding and asserting anthropology’s capacity for the analysis of powér, and-bring it to bear on both the theoretical issues and societal challenges before us.

_ Let me underline some of the themes in my personal-historical reflection, which may bear on our understanding of our present crisis within academia. First, while anthropology has its own discipline-based perspective and theories—growing out of its experience with the multiplicity of human groups and with the larger historical and evolutionary _

38 Transforming Academia trajectory of our species—theories and problems are not entirely selfgenerated. The trends, interests, and circumstances of different periods pose problems and concerns to which anthropology may respond. Our ability to survive and thrive in the past has depended in part on how well we could address the problems and concerns of others; and the same

will be true in the future. Our own disciplinary vitality depends upon whether we can also bring those new emphases to bear on the continuing “unsolved problems in anthropology.” » ‘A second theme is in the history of anthropology’s relations with

other disciplines. Such relations have always been key to both the research of anthropologists and their occupational circumstances. The current call for anthropologists to build bridges to both other disciplines

and other publics has its own history. A lesson of that history is that : interdisciplinary connections have been both productive and problem- = atic. As we consider this strategy for the future, we need to recognize its opportunity for growth while simultaneously acknowledging its danger: a trivialized anthropology tailored to the consumption needs of others. A third theme is in what anthropology has to say. What anthropol-

ogy has always been good for has been telling others—as noted earlier—why their “elegant abstractions do not hold water.” A built-in critical stance comes out of our understanding that theories and notions have to be tested against the multitude of scenarios that make up the ethnographic and historical record. This critical stance, at its best, goes beyond naysaying; we have a lot of ideas about how better explanations can be reached. It makes us valuable colleagues and analysts but, at the same time, the skunks at a garden party, telling people what they do not necessarily want to know.

There is, moreover, a basic tension between this major contribution—our critical perspective—and the institutional contexts in which we must gain our livelihood. There is nothing new in this: often in the past anthropologists have been reviled (or dis-employed) for the very potency of their ideas. This tension is unresolvable, for it should not be resolved. We need to function within institutions and to make ourselves useful to others if we are to survive and to work as anthropologists; but it is no good surviving as anthropologists unless we can do so critically. Let me offer one example of both the potential and the dilemma. The current debate on multiculturalism has gone forward with minimal input from anthropologists. We can all bemoan that and resolve to get more involved; certainly, we have more to say on the issues than any other discipline. The kinds of things we have to say, however, must challenge the premises and interests of many of the parties involved in this debate. The anthropological perspective requires us to question a

multiculturalism that sees “cultures” (often equated withethnic groups

Historical Reflections 39 or other fictions) as separate entities lined up side by side, each with its - own separate history and distinctive “traditions” standing behind it. To the anthropologist, cultural diversity is a matter of process and interconnection, not a multiplicity of fixed groups; entities defined as “cultures” or “ethnicities” or “traditions” must be understood as fluid and problematic; and all must be seen against a background of power, politics, and history. This message needs to be heard, but we may find that the

messenger is unwelcome in the forums of academe and at the tables where jobs and resources get allocated. Even as we contemplate ways of

_ making anthropology more marketable within academe, it remains no less our challenge to carry forward the critical enterprise that makes it

all worth doing. ,

II

Ethnographers’ Analyses of the Current Situation

4

Sweatshopping Academe: Capitalism and the Part-Time Academic in U.S. Universities JAGNA WOJCICKA SHARFF AND JOHANNA MAYHEW LESSINGER In the winter of 1995, a group of more than 200 unionized graduate

student teaching assistants at Yale went on strike, demanding higher wages for the part-time teaching they did and threatening to withhold class grades if their demands were not met (Goldin 1995:B16; Judson 1996a:B6). Although the strike was eventually crushed, the brief rebellion and the reaction to it at Yale are instructive. In this paper, we examine the plight of the growing number of U.S. academics who are forced into part-time and adjunct teaching as a permanent condition.’ This kind of teaching, once a prelude to a career as a full-time academic, now is the only way numbers of scholars can maintain a toehold—how-

ever tenuous—in the professions they trained for. As a result, part-time , teaching is also a form of economic exploitation practiced systematically

by colleges and universities. , According to the American Association of University Professors - (AAUP), nontenured faculty, most of them part-time, now account for half of all faculty appointments in this country (AAUP 1992:39). In some

colleges and universities and in some fields that proportion is higher than in others. Additionally, all trends suggest that this “casualized” academic workforce is growing, while full-time academic employment is shrinking (AAUP 1992:48). An American Federation of Teachers report on part-time faculty, for instance, sees the numbers of part-timers increasing 133 percent from 1971 to 1986 (quoted in McKenna 1995:9). The increasing reliance on part-time teachers, we suggest, is in the long term destructive to universities, to disciplines, and to national intellectual life itself.

| 43

The Yale strike is important first of all because the graduate students, young as they were, explicitly identified themselves as workers, rejecting the administration’s definition of them as budding academics

44 Transforming Academia who should be willing to suffer during an apprenticeship. This selfidentification of the scholar/teacher as a worker, plus the recognition of exploitation within the university, are new realizations that still elude many older academics. Even those who barely subsist through part-time teaching often continue to think of themselves as members of a unique

and privileged professional category, somehow exempt from larger economic forces now battering so many other U.S. workers. The outraged reaction to the strike on the part of Yale’s full-time faculty suggests a second point. Those who opposed the strike defined graduate students’ part-time teaching and grading as a form of appren-

ticeship, part of students’ professional training; this seemed to make _ irrelevant the issue of the very low wages part-time student teachers

were earning and wholly sidestepped the issue of whether full-time academic jobs actually await these students when they graduate. Typically, the ideology of professionalism contributes to delusions about

part-time academics’ structural roles, even among part-timers them- _ selves. Such myths continue to obscure real divisions, inequalities, and

conflicts of interest within academic ranks and to hamper solidarity

between full- and part-time teachers. : | ,

Third, the Yale strike reminds us of just how heavily U.S. higher education, even at the most elite universities, relies on part-timers to teach undergraduates. At the time of the strike, Yale employed some 400 graduate teaching assistants in addition to various kinds of part-timers who already had Ph.Ds.

It is important to remember that although the Yale strike was broken, the graduate students involved did manage to organize, did form a union, and did strike; what they attempted, other part-time teachers and marginal academics can try too, perhaps next time in conditions of less isolation. It is very likely that, given the growth in the numbers of part-time college teachers, such organizing attempts will ©

proliferate and become more successful. Why have U.S. colleges and universities moved away from the

employment of full-time faculties to construct an academic “underclass” of part-timers who perform more and more of the university’s traditional function of undergraduate teaching? At one level, this new organization

of higher education simply reflects national trends toward corporate “downsizing” and corporate restructuring, which involve a striking increase in the use of temporary: labor. All over the United States, doctors, lawyers, executives, and architects, once considered secure, autonomous professionals, are increasingly being forced into temporary contract work at lower pay and with fewer benefits than ten years ago.

Scholars, who have traditionally sought employment in universities, now find themselves in a similar position. At a deeper level, the creation ,

Sweatshopping Academe 45 of a large part-time teaching sector signals a large-scale shift in the structure, function, and social location of higher education. Colleges and universities are not simply being shrunk or downsized, but fundamen-

tally reorganized. ,

Part of the reorganization involves intensification of existing strati-

fication among the different types of colleges and universities whose students are being prepared for different niches in a highly segmented labor market. We are aware that working conditions for part-timers vary somewhat between elite institutions such as Yale, large state universities, and local two-year colleges. One longtime observer of university policies

toward part-timers writes,

Institutions such as X [a large state university] are intended to stratify the workforce, to give their students the education they need to be serviceable

and no more. For this it is important to have teachers whose sense of self-worth is low: full-time faculty, if they must be hired, are treated with barely disguised contempt by the administration. Part-timers are in all ways preferable. They cost less; the contempt needs no disguise at all; and if they respond with appropriate cynicism by cutting back their work to the levels justified by their compensation, why so much the better! Promoting undereducation is the mission (or at least the function) of the [large state universities] of this world in the exact sense that promoting underdevelopment is the mission of the World Bank. [personal communication, Antonio Gilman, 1996]

Our research suggests that the reorientation of U.S. corporations toward global, rather than domestic, economic interests and toward

profit-driven corporate policies (see, for instance, Gordon 1996) is a | major factor in the reorganization, intimidation, and decimation of the professional workforce. By analyzing the impact of this reorientation on U.S. colleges and universities, we can begin to understand the “casualization” of academic work, as well as to suggest explanations for several other recent transformations in the structure of higher education. We can also begin to see how universities and colleges are commodifying knowledge, teaching, and learning as they pursue criteria of efficiency, productivity, and profit. If such “social sectors” as education were once partially insulated from commodification, they are no longer.

The material for this article comes from three sources: long, hard personal experience in the world of part-time teaching on the part of both authors, our reading in Marxism and political economy, and long inter-

views with ten fellow anthropologists who have also spent years amidst , the indignities of adjunct teaching.* For both the authors and those they interviewed, this work has provided a certain catharsis. When this paper was first given at a conference, a fellow panelist observed that we rarely give ourselves permission to speak openly to a larger audience about our

46 Transforming Academia rage, humiliation, poverty, and marginalization. Additionally, for the first time, we are advocating political action and change, both for parttimers and for anthropology as a discipline. By setting our situations within a political economic framework, we are arguing that it is not—as some of our fully-employed colleagues still secretly believe—our individual failures as scholars, teachers, and people which have left us marginalized, impoverished, and unrecognized.

Rather, it is the shape of late-20th-century U.S. capitalism which has pushed us aside and devalued our skills, as it has done to hundreds of thousands of other workers. If there is any consolation in this situation, it is that part-time academics are not alone.

The Invisible Part-Timer Mainstream commentary on the deteriorating conditions of higher

: education invokes budget deficits, the public’s loss of confidence in higher education, or changing values and student needs. In accord with

these superficial explanations, the discipline of anthropology often points to alleged shortcomings among the academic underclass itself. For instance, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) commissioned two recent surveys. One suggested that the “elapsed time between receiving the B.A. and Ph.D. degree” may contribute to un- or underemployment (Givens and Tucker 1993:49). The other suggested that lower “productivity,” in the form of published articles and books, may be responsible for the “significantly lower ranks” held by women in full-time positions (Bradley and Dahl 1993:35). According to the AAUP, one of the most striking attributes of the part-time teaching sector

is its concentration of women (AAUP 1992; McCarthy 1991). , Anthropology, dedicated to the collection of socially relevant information, still has few reliable statistics to show the scope of part-time employment within the discipline. The Committee to Study the Academic Employment of Women in Anthropology began collecting data on part-timers only in 1992 and received responses from only one-third of the anthropology departments surveyed. The AAA’s 1996 survey of departments (Givens and Jablonski 1996:5) makes no mention of parttimers. Thus, trends in the use of part-timers in anthropology cannot be calculated over time, nor is the available data reliable (personal communication, Cynthia Webster, 1993). This difficulty in collecting data sug-

gests just how invisible part-time academics are to their full-time colleagues. Although adjuncts may teach largenumbers of undergraduates in crucial introductory courses, department chairs tend to see the adjuncts as faceless service workers whose connection to the institution is ephemeral;

Sweatshopping Academe 47 part-timers are rarely considered members of their departments and are thus not worth counting or reporting.

We are persuaded that much of the mainstream explanation for the growth of an academic underclass involves a mystification, built on ideologies of professionalism, personal autonomy, and free will, rather

than a clarification of infrastructural causality. In searching for the underlying causes for the growth of an academic underclass, we note several other structural shifts in higher education that are also poorly

explained. They include: | 7 e corporations’ increased use of direct capital investment in university research, as shown in the analyses of DePalma (1993:B9), Negi (1993), and Soley (1995);

e a dramatic rise in tuition fees, increasing at more than twice the rate of inflation, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (U.S. Department of Education 1992); ¢ continuing bitter complaints from colleges and universities about “fiscal agony,” despite enrollments at an all-time high of over 14 million students, and tuition revenues that have doubled over the

last decade (these figures are from Negi 1993 and the National Center for Education Statistics 1992); and e arapid 19 percent rise in the administrative costs of U.S. univer-

sities during the 1980s compared to a 5 percent rise in their instructional costs over the same period, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (1992).

The Emergence of the Corporate University The works of David Smith (1974), Bennett Harrison and Barry Bluestone

(1988), Saskia Sassen (1991), Lawrence Soley (1995), and David Gordon

(1996) provide models of changing capitalist relations which link the involvement of corporate interests to the restructuring of U.S. higher

education. | , Neither Gordon’s 1996 work on the ways bureaucratic growth occurs at the expense of other sectors nor Sassen’s 1990 general analysis

of corporate global reorientation and the consequent reorganization of the labor market specifically examine U.S. higher education. Nevertheless, their work is particularly fruitful in relation to our present argu-

ments. Gordon points to the ways bloated corporate bureaucracies become the primary cause of falling wages and vanishing jobs for U.S. workers. Sassen’s argument about the casualization of work is especially pertinent to the question of underemployed academics. She contends

48 Transforming Academia that global capitalism, in its present form, eschews all local, nation-based

obligations and loyalties. For postindustrial capitalists, the only local interests to remain are focused on the provision of a low-wage service sector and on innovative, potentially profitable research. Combining such analyses, we conclude that the globalization of capital has given corporations the clout of global alternatives so that they

can pursue the Big Stick strategy, turning aggressively on workers, destroying unions, and ignoring labor laws. Such analyses require us to examine the role of universities vis-a-vis corporate capitalism—both as

selves. ,

agents of that capitalism and as its subjects being reshaped.in the process. This approach also requires us to see academics as workers, not autono-

mous professionals, and demands reexamination of the managerial or ] professional class position academics have traditionally assigned themThe impact of corporate reorientation on higher education is com- |

| plex. On the one hand, publicly funded state and city colleges and universities have suffered enormous budget cuts, along with other social sectors of the economy. They have abandoned any pretense at offering genuine social mobility to the poor in favor of preparing students, at the most minimal level, for subaltern positions within the work force. On the other hand, private institutions have become heavily dependent on government funds over the last 30 years. Some of the loss in public funding

stems from the relocation and closure of many U.S. manufacturing companies and the consequent erosion of the corporate tax base. At the same time, under the rubric of “budget balancing” and “deficit reduction,” there has been a parallel political movement toward tax cuts; the prime beneficiaries of tax cuts are corporations. The resulting contraction of tax revenue has created a fiscal nightmare for localities, which have responded by cutting funding for all social programs—including higher _

education. In colleges and universities, the money for support staff, maintenance, libraries, and untenured faculty salaries took the deepest | cuts, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (1992).

At the same time, private colleges and elite research institutions have become eager, if junior, partners in serving current corporate needs. Since the beginning of the 1980s, U.S. and foreign corporations have been

increasing their investment in university-based research. Soley (1995) details the ways in which corporations hire faculty members as consultants to carry out research and analysis; he also explores the growth of corporate-funded research institutes at universities. Many colleges and universities justify these cozy corporate relationships on the grounds that they must replace lost public funding. Such a plea sidesteps the implications of allowing corporations to set academic research agendas.

Sweatshopping Academe 49 Part of the inducement for universities to link themselves with corporations lies in a series of patent law revisions enacted and amended in the 1980s which grant universities ownership of discoveries under-

written by federally funded research. As Negi says, this, in turn, “allowed the universities both to license patentable inventions directly to corporations fora royalty and to solicit up-front contributions” (1993:43).

Currently, 8 percent of university research budgets are funded by corporations (DePalma 1993:B9; Negi 1993). A relatively modest corporate investment in university research yields huge savings on in-house research and development. In effect, corporations received a veritable

windfall of public funds through the universities, whose staffs and infrastructures are still heavily dependent on state and federal allocations and tuition money. The National Coalition for Universities in the

Public Interest notes that |

the American public now pays for university research four ways: federal tax dollars underwrite most campus-based research; undergraduate tuition fees help pay for labs, scientists and research assistants; corporations investing in campus research receive tax breaks which means a loss to the federal

treasury; and corporations with exclusive rights to a patent produced by publicly funded research can sell the product at a monopoly price. [Negi

1993:43] _

A 1988 U.S. Office of General Accounting study of technology transfers from schools receiving the most federal grant money found that

the 24 universities surveyed were involved with 499 foreign corpora-

tions. The programs at MIT, Stanford, and the University of California at Berkeley accounted for 58 percent of them (Negi 1993). In the wake of

that study, a House subcommittee later criticized U.S. universities for selling research results in biotechnology, communications, and pharmaceuticals to foreign corporations. The subcommittee noted that “such actions undercut the U.S. economy when, ironically, university officials were askuig for more federal support for campus research to help U.S. companies compete internationally” (quoted in Negi 1993:44). This intimate relationship between universities and industry, as well as the consequent commodification of higher education, has many _ disturbing implications. For our present discussion, the most important factor is that it contributes to the impoverishment of those areas of U.S. higher education that are of little interest to profit-making corporations. Additionally, it encourages ever-greater stratification among institutions of higher education and further stratifies their teaching staffs in. terms of status, pay, and working conditions.

The process of wooing corporate investment has forced universities , to devote a greater and greater share of their budgets to venture capital

50 Transforming Academia outlays. These include building and modernizing laboratories and communications systems for applied research, providing much higher sala-

ries for industrially qualified scientists, improving the housing and social amenities offered as inducements to such faculty, and hiring an

array of administrators to facilitate these processes. Negi (1993) notes that corporate involvement with elite research universities has also had a “trickle down” effect on state and private institutions. These less elite institutions scramble to keep up, searching for private research dollars and allocating disproportionate funds to the _ more prestigious science-technology research-marketing sector. What-

ever the type of university, this system encourages faculty to favor _ research over teaching, both for prestige and salary and to acquire tenure :

and promotion. It also encourages administrators to cut back course offerings and eliminate departments—such as social science and the ~ | humanities—seen as peripheral to profit-oriented research and corpo-

rate goals. ,

| In such a reorganization of the university, teaching, the traditional mission and function of faculty, is increasingly transferred to an underpaid academic underclass (AAUP 1992). At the same time, the massive reallocation of university funds toward applied science research is turning the traditional liberal arts sector of education into an orphan in all

but the elite institutions. In the liberal arts, tenured lines have been eliminated, classes have been enlarged or canceled, and faculty salaries have stagnated at 1972 levels in constant U.S. dollars (National Center for Educational Statistics 1992). Lest they be accused of turning liberal arts colleges into technical vocational schools, administrations have elevated some liberal arts faculty out of this morass to “superstar” status. This small elite, with startlingly high salaries and research budgets, light or nonexistent teaching loads, ample travel funds, and sabbatical leaves, is shown off to students, parents, and taxpayers as a symbol of excellence.

The “superstars” and the “trophy professors” lured away from rival institutions become part of the promotion of individual colleges and | universities both to students and to their parents, alongside tasteful new buildings, computer labs, and semesters abroad. This same academic elite, relieved of teaching duties by the secon-

dary labor force of nontenured teachers, graduate students, adjuncts, and lab assistants, has been persuaded to acquiesce to the low pay and miserable working conditions of the academic underclass. The resulting segmentation of the academic labor market encourages a lack of solidar_ ity among the teaching staff that, in turn, makes it easier for administrations to pursue their own agendas.

The corporate reorientation of colleges and universities has also provided the impetus for the sheer growth in the number of administrators,

Sweatshopping. Academe 51 whose role is to introduce “scientific management” and corporate-style

employee policies into the academic endeavor, in return for salaries significantly higher than those of most ordinary academics (Edwards 1991:2). These administrators are charged with courting corporate investment, destroying or maiming departments judged “noncost-effective,” edging out faculty members deemed “unproductive,” reducing the costs of staff salary and benefits, dismantling faculty control over curriculum

and university affairs, defusing the inevitable faculty discontent, and smothering any attempts to organize around such issues.

The Casualized Faculty Labor Force Higher education is not alone in suffering from the effects of global capitalist reorganization. Returning to Sassen’s (1990) proposition, we

suggest that all sectors of the U.S. labor market depend heavily on disposable, interchangeable labor. As a result, a number of former U.S. occupations and professions once characterized by their permanence, autonomy, and security—like college teaching—are being transformed into casual work. One of the striking features of the U.S. economy is the increase in

the number of part-time and temporary workers in every field (see Gordon 1996; Harrison and Bluestone 1988; Kilborn 1993:A15; Uchitelle 1993b:1). Susan Diesenhouse, writing in the New York Times, says, “Elite

temps—professionals or other highly skilled workers—account for 24

percent of 1.15 million people who work as temps .. . .In 1981 it was 14 ! percent.” Furthermore, “Specialty temporary-help companies form the fastest-growing, most profitable sector of an expanding industry” (1993:5).

_ This trend toward casualization goes hand in hand with another aspect of the U.S. job crisis: companies with record profits are nevertheless shedding jobs, insisting that to survive the 1990s they must “prepare

for the worst,” that is, cut their permanent workforces (Uchitelle 1993c:A1; see also Uchitelle 1993a). Casualization and job loss are con-

nected in that the companies laying off permanent workers may even_ tually replace them with cheaper casual labor, sometimes from abroad. For example, UNUM, a big Portland, Maine, insurance company, recently used a temporary help company in Florida to hire temporary software designers from India. ““UNUM’s software development would cost $60 in Maine, $30 in Ireland, and $15 in India, Malaysia or the Philippines,’ said John J. Alexander, vice president for research” (Die-

_ senhouse 1993:5).

In a parallel process, those who manage higher education have pared down secure academic jobs, substituting a feminized (and insome

52 Transforming Academia fields such as math and science an increasingly immigrant) casual labor force to perform the function of teaching (Edwards 1992). This casual labor force gives college administrators greater freedom to shrink, reorganize, and restructure traditional disciplines and departments. Admin-

istrators claim they need to retain “flexibility” in the face of shifting student enrollments—the shifts themselves often driven by student anxieties over future employment. But the “lean, mean, and flexible” institution many administrators advocate is one that is top-heavy with well-paid administrators and that acknowledges no long-term financial

responsibilities to its faculty. , The drive to abolish academic tenure, the growing popularity of _ two- or three-year nontenurable appointments, and the use of part-time

adjuncts are-all aspects of the same trend toward the casualization of academic work. Of these, the part-timer is, in administrative eyes, the most desirable employee: cheap, powerless, quickly hired, and quickly | fired if a department is marked for closure and another slated for instant expansion. In recent years, administrative decisions to dispense with certain subjects, such as nursing, philosophy, French, or anthropology, have begun to threaten the survival of entire disciplines. In examining part-time academics simply as workers, exploited like many other workers, we cut through some of the misleading rhetoric surrounding their role and status. Much of that rhetoric, produced by university administrators, by embarrassed department chairs, and even by part-time faculty themselves, obscures the true marginalization of adjunct teacher/scholars by insisting on their “professional” status despite meager pay, lack of benefits, and highly unstable employment. In academic surveys and discussions, part-time employment is sometimes treated as a matter of personal choice, not as imposed reality. It is, as Gordon writes, a “sentence,” not an “opportunity” (1966:246). Even the | efforts of marginalized academics themselves to win respect and status can lead to blurred, sentimentalizing, or downright misleading language—

see, for instance, the term independeni scholar. Abandoning false consciousness and viewing ourselves as workers may be our first necessity. If we look behind the emic curtain of status and “professionalism,” and instead consider nontenured rank in terms of real wages, income, and job security, it closely resembles the wage earned by undocumented, immigrant workers. In New York City, for example, a domestic worker who has overstayed her visitor’s visa charges an average of $10 an hour to clean houses. Academic part-timers in anthropology in New York, on the other hand, nominally earn about $50 dollars an hour—real “professional” wages. But this official rate is purposefully deceiving, calculated

only on the basis of the number of “contact hours” in which the teacher , actually presides over a classroom full of students. As anyone who has

Sweatshopping Academe 53 ever taught knows, the classroom lecture or discussion section only occurs at the end of a long process of preparation. If one takes into account the actual number of hours a teacher spends in course design, consultation, library research, and reading needed to

prepare a course, and adds on time spent outside the classroom in mentoring students and grading, very different figures emerge. Parttimers in New Yorkare usually paid $2,200-3,000 for a single three-credit

course, which is assumed to involve 45 contact hours over a semester. We calculate, based on interviews with our colleagues, a minimal time expenditure of 125 hours for such a course if it is an introductory course taught repeatedly (without even taking class size into consideration). About 250 hours will be spent to create a new elective taught for the first

time. Instead of earning the average CUNY wage of about $2,200 per course, a part-timer should be earning $6,200 for an introductory course and $12,500 for anew elective, if actual hours of work were compensated. Or looking at it another way, in the first instance the part-timer is earning only $18 dollars an hour, still a respectable wage for a skilled blue-collar

worker, and in the second, only $9 dollars an hour, not quite so respect. able. Looking at it still a third way, the part-timer is subsidizing the

value. ] |

institution to the tune of $4,000 dollars in the first case, and a whopping $10,000 dollars in the second, as a result of not being paid for her or his actual time spent working. Marx labeled this the extraction of surplus Maintaining the facade of professionalism and the illusion of a high

hourly wage serves both the institution and the individual part-timer.

The administration keeps the money and drives the adjunct to greater | exertion to “maintain professional standards”; the academic keeps his or her alleged status and a modicum of self-respect. It is in no one’s interest to “speak truth to power.” | On a day-to-day basis, the majority of part-time academics experience working conditions that to some extent resemble those endured by low-skilled labor or sweatshop workers. The work of adjuncts is routinized and de-skilled. Some of their teaching duties are akin to industrial “homework,” involving isolation, low pay for long hours of effort, and the necessity of purchasing and maintaining the necessary productive equipment. From the interviews we conducted with our underemployed anthropologist colleagues and from our research, we have distilled some of these characteristics: e Part-time teaching 1s a form of subcontracting, in which parts of the

highly paid college teacher’s job are contracted out to low-paid

piece workers. There is an increasing tendency to split even adjunct work into smaller and smaller pieces. We recently heard of a case in New York in which a new course was divided among

54 Transforming Academia four adjuncts, who developed the new course and were forced to share the already small wage four ways. e Part-timers are offered the least desirable work at times (nights, week-

jors). |

ends) and places (dangerous neighborhoods) full-time faculty reject. Part-timers are also offered the least desirable student

populations (large introductory classes of undergraduate nonma-

e Part-timers are a heterogeneous group, including graduate students - ~ who are often allocated courses to teach as a form of work/study aid, recent Ph.D.s who hope to acquire teaching experience so — they can move on to full-time positions, and long-term adjuncts who sometimes sarcastically call themselves “freeway flyers” as

they dash from institution to institution, juggling several parttime positions in different locations. What all part-timers share is a common level of economic exploitation. e Part-timers earn approximately one-fifth of the salaries of full-timers, —

even before benefits such as health insurance and pensions or perquisites such as photocopying, postage, office space, paid leaves, and travel grants are included. These wages are likely to be forced down still further. We recently heard of a CUNY graduate student who was offered $6,800 to teach four courses over two semesters. At an institution which offers almost no financial aid, this seemed to her a windfall. However, her rate of pay per course was $1,700, $500 less than the $2,200 per course CUNY usually

offers adjuncts who do not yet have Ph.D.s. ; e Part-timers are poor. A lucky and unusual few (but none in our sample) are sometimes able, by hustling several jobs at a time in different places and finding summer school work, to earn as much as $35,000—40,000 in a good year. Such individuals are unusual,

however. Those in our sample earned much less—around $6,000 to $18,000 a year—from teaching. Asa result, most are dependent on the wages of other household members or on nonteaching jobs to survive. e Part-timers have few, if any, benefits: no health insurance, sick leave, overtime, or holiday pay, and no sabbaticals. If they have health

insurance at all it is through their own “day jobs” or through _ domestic partners with full-time employment elsewhere. e Part-timers often have little or no space for seeing students, preparing

courses, storing books, or grading exams. Like garment workers in a basement sweatshop or immigrant restaurant workers sleeping on tables at the end of the day, the sweated academic must function somewhat surreptitiously in the cracks and crannies of the formal institution’s physical plant.

Sweatshopping Academe 55 e Part-timers are anonymous, interchangeable, and without claims on the

institution, in administrative eyes. Adjuncts are hired hastily at the beginning of the semester, often over the telephone. They have no promise of job security or continuity in subsequent semesters; indeed, courses for which the adjunct has already done prepara-

tion may be canceled at the last minute. Arrangements that de-

prive them of academic citizenship are often presented by department chairs as a benefit— “Look! We won’t even require - you to attend department meetings!” It is little wonder that admin-

| istrators and department chairs find it impossible or irrelevant to enumerate their part-timers in the profession’s surveys. e Part-timers are usually working this way involuntarily. Virtually all would take full-time teaching positions were they available. Contrary to myth, few academic part-timers today choose this form of work for the sake of flexibility. e Part-timers continue their own professional work against great odds.

Poverty, the strain of commuting to multiple jobs in multiple locations, and the general chaos and uncertainty of adjunct work take their toll on the ability to continue scholarly research and writing. Many part-timers do manage to continue writing and other professional activities, but they are handicapped by periodic lack of office space, phone access, or library cards. Unlike the

full-time academic, the part-timer subsidizes his or her own scholarship, paying his or her own way to meetings, buying his

or her own computer, modem, and Internet access. | e Adjuncts’ professional activities are unrecognized and unrewarded due

to the organization of part-time work. Unlike the full-time academic, there is no promotion or pay differential for part-time

: teachers who also publish articles, organize panels, referee for journals, or sit on professional committees. e Part-timers are often not evaluated for their teaching performance. If

they are evaluated, such evaluations may be used punitively rather than to build teaching skills. e Part-time work is itself stigmatizing. The longer people continue to work as adjuncts, the more ineligible they are perceived to be for full-time positions, should these become available. e Part-timers are frequently ineligible to join unions. When they are eligible, obstacles are put in their way to discourage union activity; the nature of their work, which occurs in disparate times and places, also makes union activity difficult.

e Part-timers fear reprisals for protesting their work conditions or administrative or departmental policies.

56 Transforming Academia e Part-timers are isolated, since they are rarely considered members

of the departments where they work. Cut off from the social dimensions of a work community, they are on the periphery of social networks that organize the presentation and publication of

papers or the dissemination of advances in the field. Ironically, they are also isolated from the networks that might help them

acquire and keep good jobs. ,

_ From the Mouths of Our Colleagues | ; , Much of the preceding material is synthesized from long interviews with part-time colleagues, many of whom summed up their situations © with great anger, pathos, and eloquence. Here we offer some short samples from many long, intense interviews. But adjuncting, it makes me angry! You have no leverage, no power, no say in anything. You don’t dare say anything to anyone anytime. Because you’re worried about your job all the time. And unless someone comes along and says, “Hey, adjuncts are entitled to some kind of seniority, security or some evaluation on merit”—at least something—then you'll have nothing. ... It was much better when I was a graduate student. But once you start teaching

two courses, three courses, your teaching load is basically that of a fulltimer... . I try to teach only courses I have taught [before] because I don’t want to spend the time anymore preparing. But... [have to take whatever is available. So there’s just not enough time. You're being asked to do most of a full-time job and you’re given none of the supports that the full-time faculty get, and none of the benefits—aside from the pay. And you’re always treated like something lower to the ground than snake shit.

Often the interviews we taped were interrupted by laughter at shared,. __

| bizarre experiences in the shadow world of temporary teaching. For example, informant 06 asked, “I almost got a [full-time] job. Doyouwant me to tell you about it?” “Sure, why not?” said the interviewer. “The One That Got Away. We all have that story.”

Informants spoke, for instance, about the research they had done and projects they were forced to give up when poverty forced them into nonacademic jobs: Meanwhile, all my research, the book I had been writing at the time I had left [xxx] University, had been put away in boxes, and J must say it was a source of great sadness to me. I mean, I couldn’t bear to think about it. ...

Consciously, I might not have had any regrets, but the fact that tears would form in my eyes indicated that something else was really going on.

Sweatshoppin g Academe | 57 Respondent 03, still outraged that her “professional” status and years of expensive education cannot earn her a living, talked about the effects on her family of constant moves in search of work. She is one of a group of informants who felt that their status as professionals should have given them a better life, whereas other informants analyzed their

own situations in terms of power and class: :

It has been almost two years since I have finished my degree and I have struggled to make ends meet by working part-time jobs. For the first year _ after I finished my degree I worked in three different institutions, . . . teaching

a seven different courses and driving great distances to teach these courses with no job benefits and extremely low salaries. And I was barely able to bring

in a third of what my husband makes teaching five courses [full-time]. ... In the past ten years I have moved an average of every single year. Some years we have moved more than once . . . so I’ve been completely nomadic. ...

And our child has suffered incredibly. Throughout most of his childhood he always had to move from one place to the next, he’s always the new kid in school. ... And I’ve borrowed incredible amounts of money to finance this education. ... My husband and I have to live separately, we have to be 200 miles apart in order just to survive as academics. . . . Living this incredible existence, most people think we’re ridiculous. They can’t figure out... are we divorced? Are we separated? ... For most people the postmodern marriage is not something they can really comprehend very easily.

In interview 09, the respondent talked about both the psychological aspects of part-time teaching and its impact on the quality of her teaching: There is a kind of problem that affects the part-time teacher herself: isolation, feelings of hopelessness, feelings of worthlessness, being treated like shit,

the toll this takes on your self-esteem. . . . But there is also, I think, the toll | it takes on your ability to teach well, your commitment to teaching. And that’s basically why I stopped doing part-time teaching. At some point I decided to pack it in. If I’m offered . . . a [short-term, full-time] replacement position that’s physically close enough for me to get to, I’Il do it. But not this one course here, one course there, because I really feel that in the end you don’t teach well. It’s rush and scurry and hurry and slip, to. get one course ready on ten days’ notice. It’s students who suffer.

Informant 04 noted the distress that casual teaching’s constant adjustment to new teaching situations requires: Every teaching situation is different—you’re told nothing about that. Otherwise-benevolent institutions just take it for granted. Even at [a prestigious university], which was the most ideal situation, they didn’t tell me what the expectations were. It could have been a disaster because I wasn’t sufficiently informed about what I was expected to do.

The interviewer replied, “It seems to me, because of the whole structure

of academia, teaching students is the least important item on their

58 Transforming Academia agenda.... It’s just ‘Go in there and sink or swim.’ They don’t really care.” Respondent 04 elaborated, It’s a tactic of intimidation. ... Every time they have an opening they have

lots of applicants from whom they can choose and the “sink or swim” business is another tactic of intimidation. . . . It enables the whole depressed-

labor workforce to be whipped into shape. Depending on the situation, it can be benign neglect or it can be malign and deliberate.

Informants had various suggestions and recommendations about improving their structural situation. All urged proportionate wages, _ pegged to those of full-time teachers, as real compensation for equal time and effort. Most also wanted health and retirement benefits—a significant issue for those who are no longer young and who suffer consider-

able stress from their working conditions. As one informant said, | “Stresses and strains express themselves in different ways. ... I have lived with terror as my companion for much of the time because there’s really not too much between me and the street.” Others were concerned about access to resources like libraries. As one respondent said, “I have

had to do handstands and crawl on my belly” to get into a research library. Most felt isolated and yearned for (but did not realistically expect) more support and understanding from colleagues lucky enough to have permanent jobs. Others struggled against depression and saw themselves as having wasted their educations. As respondent 07 said, “Yes, it’s a society of waste. People can be just wasted, as well as paper,

as trees—it’s an ecology of waste.” -

Respondent 04 emphasized the unequal power relationships that her present position has made brutally clear: There are major class divisions [within the profession] that are unspoken, ___ unmentionable, and there is a lot of institutional investment in keeping much of this under the carpet. And then the people who are victimized are invited to participate in this performance of denial, because they would only be contributing to their own injury by acknowledging being stigmatized.

Like several others, this informant insisted that open discussion is the first step toward changing the stigmatized status of nontenured teaching: Speech is the first level of attaining any kind of control. And to remain silent is to deny any possibility of any kind of change. ... [We need to recognize] that this isn’t some kind of disgrace and a catching disease, whereby people want to avoid you, but indeed [you] might have interesting things to say that up to now they didn’t want to hear about because it represents the worst nightmare about what could have happened to them.

Sweatshopping Academe 59 Respondent 09 took up the theme of an increasingly casualized labor force from another angle: Ideally, departments should be forced to go back to hiring full-time people. _l’'mvery disturbed about the trend of using part-timers because I see it as a

way of undermining tenure. Eventually, part-timers will replace tenured people—deans like the flexibility. . . . [We'll end up] in having a caste of serfs who are crammed into the broom closet down at the end of the hall.

Meanwhile, we take varied kinds of comfort in our different coping _.. attitudes. Informant 02 reflected the “mendicant” position, saying, “We are the migrant workers in academic vineyards,” while informant 08 reached for gallows humor: “My Ph.D. is only good for getting bumped

up to first class on the airlines.” Although most remain committed to , anthropology, several noted the growing irrelevance of the discipline to the real problems of the world, problems that are reflected in the wastage of trained people like them, like us. Respondent 05, asked if she would go into anthropology if she were choosing a field today, said, I don’t really know. Intellectually I find it challenging and satisfying. There is synthesis that is possible in a field like anthropology that I don’t think any of the other social sciences offer. . .. But on the other hand, anthropology is

increasingly rejecting this heritage.... If I were going into it now, no, | would be bored and consider it arid, sterile. ... Look at the situation! There’s

going to be a conference ... on “ethnography and surrealism”! That’s probably a good note to.end on!

What Can Be Done? ; The problems of part-time academics have no simple solutions, since those problems have their origin in a society-wide reorganization of labor markets and of work itself, with a consequent rejection of a traditional liberal arts education. At the same time, we are unwilling to shrug the situation off with a tragic sigh, as many of our fully employed

colleagues do.

Probably the first step would be to demand a count of the numbers _ of part-timers teaching anthropology—at present nobody knows exactly who, where, or how many of them there are. At a minimum, it seems logical to agitate for part-time pay scales in proportion to the work done.

We also want paid vacations and health and retirement benefits—a significant issue for the large number of part-timers who are entering late-middle-age and often feel “There’s really not too much between me and the street.” Additionally, we need to demand a greater degree of job security—perhaps the extension of different kinds of tenure—for the

60 Transforming Academia new categories of academic workers now emerging. We must insist that

part-timers have some voice in the running of the departments and universities where they work, often for years. In the long run, we might

advocate the eradication of the part-time and temporary sector altogether, since this organization of labor brings genuine benefits to nobody except the corporate university. Our first effort must be to initiate many wider discussions about part-time teaching and its implications through the AAA and its sections.

As some of our own interviews suggest, part-timers themselves are _ frequently still blinded by ideology and cannot acknowledge the class and structural aspects of their exploited position. Full-time academics are even more oblivious. The reactions of colleagues to earlier versions of

this paper (most remarks began with some variant of “I had no idea. . .”) ,

suggest how little the fully employed know about the struggles and dismal future prospects of the part-timers in their midst. It is also clear that full-timers have not yet understood how the growth of part-time teaching erodes their own working conditions, the quality of teaching, the permanence and autonomy of departments, and the health of entire

disciplines. | .

We need to recognize, of course, the major conflicts of interest within our increasingly stratified academic ranks. Full-time faculty, particularly those in the middle ranks who have tenure but will never be academic superstars, are already suffering speed-ups in the current situation. They have far heavier teaching loads and more administrative work than in the past. Their salary increments are increasingly dependent on competitive publication, which they have less and less time to produce. The work of part-timers seems, in the short run, to free the full-time faculty from certain kinds of routine teaching and may permit departments to offer more attractive selections of courses and to bring ©

in more students cheaply—both important under the new corporate model of university management where faculty are constantly reminded that “enrollment numbers count.”* In some circumstances, part-timers also form a buffer against fulltimer layoffs in times of budget cuts. For example, a tenured literature professor in one of New York’s city colleges was recently asked how her department was surviving crushing city budget cuts, which had already

7 forced many other departments to fire their younger full-time faculty. “Oh,” said the literature professor with brutal cheer, “we’re managing fine. We laid off all the adjuncts, so we’re okay. Nobody got fired.” At

the other end of the scale, graduate students and new Ph.D.s, still dreaming optimistically of full-time employment to come, are in direct

competition with long-term adjuncts; the students may be willing to

Sweatshopping Academe 61 work for even less money than those who have been teaching on the fringes longer. Nevertheless, it does seem possible to argue that we are all—from graduate assistant to professorial superstar—in the same sinking boat. Do our fellow academics really think the corporate: model of streamlining the university is acceptable? We think that, aside from the few who profit directly from corporate links, most do not. Most are reluctant to

see a restructured university abandon the principles of a liberal arts education and of teaching as a vocation. Most do not want to see -.. academic policy set by business, or to hand over all teaching functions to an army of migrant part-timers. It is this mixture of self-interest and idealism which part-timers have to tap when seeking allies among their

more established full-time colleagues. , 7

, The first step is for academics, including tenured full professors, to start thinking of themselves as workers—not as privileged professionals—who are as vulnerable to exploitation as any other workers. In a country where class consciousness is poorly developed to begin with, this is a fairly large step, but such alliances are important. We should

remind our full-time coworkers of the kinds of speed-ups they are experiencing and suggest that, rather than giving in to administrative demands to take on ever-larger teaching, supervisory, and committee loads, they should demand the hiring of more faculty—preferably fulltime—but in any case at reasonable rates of pay. _ The next step is to ask what kinds of structures can facilitate organizing across disciplines and across different institutions. At present, only

a few faculty, generally in large state university systems, are members of genuine unions. These unions are frequently reluctant to admit parttimers and are even more reluctant to take up their issues. Many more faculty are members of associations such as the AAUP, which are becoming increasingly interested in the question of part-timers but which are far from militant. Increasingly, part-timers are beginning to form their own unions to lobby for their own specific demands. These unions need encouragement to grow and to link up into a national federation. If U.S. trade unionists dream of reviving union strength in this country, these _ local groups offer fertile ground. It seems to us that such organizing will be most successful if part-timers can win support from both unions and

professional associations. SO

Finally, we need to recognize that the university is actually a good locus for resistance. Colleges and universities cannot be moved overseas; nor is corporate America yet prepared to dispense with them altogether, since they produce the technically trained managerial class corporations need. Meanwhile, academics themselves are particularly well-qualified to speak, write, hold teach-ins, and agitate. We anthropologists need to

62 Transforming Academia reclaim our traditions of social critique, embrace our roles as public intellectuals, and assert our right to a living wage in our chosen work. Or, as they said in our youth, “Dare to struggle, dare to win.”

Notes

1. This paper was originally conceived for a panel called “Sweatshopping Academe” at the 1993 American Anthropological Association annual meeting. Earlier versions of the paper have been published in the Royal Anthropological - Institute’s Anthropology Today 10(1), February 1994, and in the Anthropology of _ Work Review 15(1), spring 1994.

, 2. Interviews with ten colleagues were carried out between July and October 1993. Of these eight were women and two were men, who ranged in age from

42 to 60. Four were married, two lived in long-term partnerships, one was _ divorced, and three were single. Two had small children and one had small grandchildren; additionally, eight had full- or part-time responsibility for aging parents or in-laws. Nine have Ph.D.s (Berkeley, Brandeis, Brown, Columbia, City

University of New York [CUNY], University of Hawaii) and one is ABD (“all but dissertation”) at Chicago. All our respondents have taught full-time at some point in their careers, mostly holding “visiting” positions for periods of one to three years—although two, both women, were terminated after five and eight years of teaching, respectively. Most of our respondents have conducted significant research after the Ph.D. and have published. Many used their “fat” years of employment to subsidize “lean” years of research and writing. All have also continued to perform other kinds of professional work as well: mentoring present and former students; writing recommendations; serving on thesis committees; leading informal seminars; commenting on and editing colleagues’ work; consulting on curricula; writing reviews; reviewing grant proposals or serving on AAA committees. This “social work” of educating and connecting goes unrecognized and unrewarded.

3. In critiquing the peculiar term independent scholar, redolent of the wealthy, leisured 19th-century amateur scholar, we nevertheless recognize the |

excellent work done by various independent scholars’ organizations, which _ have forced some professional associations and funding agencies to acknowledge the scholarly legitimacy of un- and underemployed academics. 4. Some full-time faculty are beginning to recognize, however, that the

present system leaves them with a shrinking cohort of full-time colleagues with whom to share the growing burdens of committee work, departmental planning, . and such “extras” as organizing summer schools or internship programs. One response is to try to induce part-timers to take on some of these chores as well by offering small bonuses and the lure of “professional” responsibilities.

,5

Race, Class, and the Limits of

Democratization in the Academy , KAREN BRODKIN ~__. In the last century the U.S. academy has been a.contradictory place. On the one hand, it has been a conservative institution, reproducing and

, legitimating the elitist occupational, political-economic, and social relations of segregation that have been characteristic of industrial capitalism. On the other hand, the university has also been a site for radical movements to change both university and society. _ These two sides of the academy have come into conflict around race. The students who were racialized and whom the university had sought

to exclude also were the ones who led the opposition to exclusionary practices and to the ideas justifying racism and class oppression. During the 1920s and 1930s, it was Jews (especially in New York City); in the 1950s and 1960s, it was African Americans; by the early 1970s, these were joined by other people of color, women of all colors, and gays and lesbians.

In the early 20th century, anthropology led the charge against racism and | social Darwinism within the academy and its associated institutions. Today, mainstream anthropology sits on the sidelines of the battles against racism and nativism. I want to compare the two periods to understand why this change has taken place. I will suggest that the limits

of Boasian liberalism combined with the whiteness of more left traditions within anthropology have contributed to the discipline’s relative margin-

alization.

Part of my research into the history of the social construction of race

in the United States has been about the construction of whiteness in ~ general and Jewish whiteness in particular. In the 1920s and 1930s, southern and eastern Europeans were racially not-quite-white. They joined other non—European ancestry peoples in experiencing the receiv-

ing end of racism, which flourished in higher education as it did elsewhere. Jews were the first of the Euro-immigrant groups to enter colleges in significant numbers, so it was not surprising that they faced the brunt

of racial discrimination. The Protestant elite—who had no love for

63 7

African Americans or Asian, Latino, southern European, or other eastern

64 Transforming Academia European immigrants either—complained that Jews were unwashed, uncouth, unrefined, loud, and pushy. Harvard University President Lowell, who was also a vice president of the Immigration Restriction League, was open about his opposition to Jews at Harvard. The Seven

Sisters schools also had a reputation for “flagrant discrimination.” Bryn Mawr president M. Carey Thomas may have been a feminist of sorts, but

she was also was an admirer of scientific racism and an advocate of immigration restriction (Sacks 1994; Steinberg 1989; Synott 1986:249-250).

Although Jews today are proud of the academic skills that gained them access to the most elite schools of the nation, it is important to remember that they had no serious competition. Back in the 1920s and

1930s, higher education was not mainly about academics. In many schools, the gentleman’s C was all that was expected. For some, the

center of college life was the social connection with other children of = elites, through clubs and sports and other activities. Jews never entered this part of college. The academics and academic requirements were a veneer. Jews took seriously what their affluent Protestant classmates often disparaged, and, from the perspective of nativist elites, took unfair advantage of a loophole to get where they were not wanted (Karabel

1984; Silberman 1985; Stemberg 1989: chs. 5, 9; Synott 1986:250). _ Fear that colleges “might soon be overrun by Jews” was publicly expressed at a 1918 meeting of the Association of New England Deans. In 1919, Columbia University took steps to decrease the numbers of Jews

by a set of practices that was soon widely adopted. They developed a psychological test based on World War I army intelligence tests to measure “innate ability—and middle-class home environment,” and they redesigned the admission application to ask for religion, father’s name and birthplace, a photo, and personal interview (Synott 1986:239-

240). Other techniques for excluding Jews, like a fixed class size, a chapel , requirement, and preference for children of alumni, were less obvious. — Sociologist Jerome Karabel (1984) has argued that contemporary criteria for college admission, which mix grades and test scores with | criteria for well-roundedness and character (as well as affirmative action for athletes and children of alumni) had their origins in these exclusion- _ ary efforts. Their proliferation in the 1920s caused the intended drop in

the numbers of Jewish law and dental students as well as medical students, and also saw the imposition of quotas in engineering, pharmacy, and veterinary schools.* How we interpret Jewish social mobility in this milieu depends on

to whom we compare them. Relative to other immigrants, Jews were upwardly mobile.” But compared to nonimmigrant whites, that mobility was limited and circumscribed. The existence of anti-immigrant racist and anti-Semitic barriers kept the Jewish middle class confined to a small

Race, Class, and Democratization 65 number of occupations. Until after World War II, Jews remained largely excluded from mainstream corporate management and corporate professions, except in the garment and movie industries, which they helped buid. Jews were almost totally excluded from university faculties (and

the few who made it had powerful patrons). Although Jews were the Euro-ethnic vanguard in college and became well-established in public school teaching, as well as being visible in law, medicine, pharmacy, and

librarianship before the postwar boom, these professions need to be understood in the context of their times (Gerber 1986:26). In the 1930s,

~~ these occupations lacked the corporate context they have today, and Jews in these professions were certainly not corporation-based. Most lawyers, doctors, dentists, and pharmacists were solo practitioners; they depended upon other Jews to be their clientele and were considerably

less affluent than their counterparts today. , At the turn of the century, universities were important sites for generating the social Darwinist racial theories that naturalized and legitimated prevailing power relations. These theories denigrated and stigmatized non-European peoples and working-class southern and eastern European immigrants. Racist and social Darwinist theories were key elements in claims by psychology and sociology to be professional

| fields. Quantifying intelligence through development of an intelligence test helped psychology to rise in status and gain federal support; the Chicago school of sociology under Robert Park had a fair amount of

anti-immigrant bias (Park and Miller1921). In sharp contrast, Boasian anthropology positioned itself as perhaps | the only openly antiracist social science and allied anthropology with movements against racism (Baker 1994; Benedict 1934; Boas 1911, 1912;

Hyatt 1990; Stocking 1968). Boas needs to be seen not as the lone anthropologist, but as part of a broader Jewish—African American alli-

~ ance, which according to historians was “fighting antisemitism by re, mote control” (Lewis 1992) or “by proxy” (Diner 1977). However, Boasian anthropology was not the only anthropology of its time. It was a marginalized upstart compared to the institutionai centrality of the constellation of people and institutions including Har~ vard, the University of Pennsylvania, the Bureau of American Ethnology, the New York Museum of Natural History, and the Bronx Zoo. As George Stocking (1968) and Lee Baker and Thomas Patterson (1994) all show, these institutions were part of an Anglo-Saxon gentleman’s tradition of an anthropology centered around a social Darwinist approach. This anthropology’s mission was, in some features, to show the inequality of races, the undesirability of immigration, and the progress of civiliza-

tion, with WASPs as its most advanced forms.

66 Transforming Academia However, today’s American anthropology does not trace its lineage primarily from this tradition. Instead, we take as our founding ancestor an (albeit pretty patrician himself) immigrant Jew who shaped a constel-

lation of academics and institutions within anthropology centered around an activist philosophy of using scholarship against racism and nativism. Indeed, Boas’s emphases on the autonomy of culture, language, and race; on cultural relativism; and on historical particularism need to be understood as an effort to develop a platform upon which to erect an antiracist science (Boas 1911). While the other social sciences were claiming their own piece of the political-economy elephant (as Eric | Wolf [1982] has characterized it) in decidedly social Darwinist ways, American anthropology turned its back on any form of political economy and fought the racism of social Darwinism with.the Boasian concept of culture and treatment of race. Boasians pursued three main themes to oppose racism and nativism. First, they discussed the sophisticated kingdoms and cultures of Africa

to show African Americans’ capabilities before their degradation by slavery, to prove it was not innate ability that was lacking (Boas 1974; Herskovits 1958). Second, they showed that race, language, and culture varied independently, and that each was malleable, that even physical characteristics could change. This was supported in Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants, a report for a congressional commission (Boas 1912). Third, they treated culture as anondeterminist concept.

This is articulated most precisely in Benedict’s configuration. Chosen from the great arc of possibilities and in contrast to Spencerian biologi-

cally rooted temperaments, Benedict’s configuration provides a sharp , contrast to today’s determinist “culture of poverty” or “tangle of pathology” versions of cultural racism (Benedict 1934).

Boasians were not race-avoidant, and they were activist: Boas

taught undergraduate courses on race and racism at Columbia and | urged Columbia to adopt a black studies curriculum to teach about African culture and history. He trained anthropologists like Herskovits, Benedict, Klineberg, Hurston, Dunham, Powdermaker, and Montagu, who dealt with race and racism. He gave public lectures in New York

City and wrote popular articles. He was involved in the founding conference of and continued to work with the NAACP, and to speak out against segregation (Harrison 1992; Hyatt 1990). But he was not a radical, and he was a less-than-perfect antiracist: for example, he treated Ella Deloria as a native informant rather than the anthropologist she was. As Harrison (1992) has suggested, he may have worked with Du Bois, but he did not publicize or cite Du Bois’s work, and as Hyatt suggests, he had some other strange ideas about race and intermarriage, and was not sure black folks were fully equal to whites

Race, Class, and Democratization 67 (Hyatt 1990). As Lee Baker (1994) has argued, Boas really did not ‘understand the political forces that sustained racist thinking. He was naive about the dynamics of African American politics: for example, he tried to get funding from Booker T. Washington while he was allied with Du Bois. And he could not understand why he was turned down by “the Tuskegee Machine” and why his idea for a museum of African culture was ignored by Carnegie. He did not get the connection between political economy and racism; for Boas, racism was a product of ignorance, not capitalism (Baker 1994; Hyatt 1990; Stocking 1968).

a Let us turn to recent times. Racially targeted but race-avoidant admissions criteria (the initial responses to Jews’ and other Euro-immigrants’

successful efforts to get into college) are still important. Today, however, they exclude African Americans and other non-European ancestry students. The civil rights movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s arose first on Southern black college campuses among black students who were

not allowed into white Southern universities and barely allowed to attend Northern ones. Early efforts, especially by Jews, coincided with economic transformations that mandated changes in the role of universities in a direction that supported immigrant struggles for higher education. Later efforts, especially by African Americans, met with success under similar expansive economic conditions, as in winning not only open admission to CUNY and other universities but also affirmative action programs in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But such efforts, always beleaguered, have since been severely undercut by long-term economic decline and state policy. Thus, affirmative action soon gener-

ated a backlash, which was given legal support by the Bakke case at the , University of California at Davis Medical School.

Among the ideas intelligence testing made acceptable was that standardized testing has predictive value. Indeed, this premise underlies the massive use of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) as gatekeeper of college admissions. In 1980, Ralph Nader’s study of the Educational Testing Service (ETS, the educational testing giant that creates the SAT) concluded that “the tests were conceived by the upper class for the upper class, and have served as a formidable barrier to millions of students, unjustly diminishing their education and career opportunities” (quoted in Steinberg 1989:250). The New York Times report on Nader cited another

critic who looked at internal ETS documents: ETS’s own research has noted that judging candidates by the standard of previous accomplishment—things they have done in their school, community and in artistic and scientific endeavors—would virtually eliminate the elements of class and ethnic discimination which prevail in the ranking by ETS scores. The evidence suggests that the choice of the standard of merit may depend on which class one is interested in serving. [Steinberg 1989:250]

68 Transforming Academia Indeed, critics have argued the SAT works much like older “diversity” criteria: as race-avoidant but racially targeted forms of exclusion. Where is anthropology today? Despite persisting antiracist currents within the discipline, largely but not entirely centered among anthro-

pologists of color, anthropology’s last major contribution has been in the , research that underlay the Brown v. Board of Education case, but even here,

our study of this role has been lost to my generation and those following it. 1 was amazed to learn so late in life that Robert Redfield worked with Thurgood Marshall (Goldman 1996) and that Herskovits’s Myth of the Negro Past (1958) was part of a Carnegie-funded series designed to serve as background for Myrdal’s An American Dilemma (see Herskovits 1958's

foreword). This is not part of the canon. Since Brown, anthropology has not had much of an antiracist profile

as a discipline—not in combating California’s Proposition 187 (which : denied public services including schooling to undocumented immigrants), or the University of California Regents’ destruction of affirmative action, or the destructive views offered in The Bell Curve (Herrnstein

and Murray 1994). We are in neither multicultural wars nor university battles over affirmative action. Indeed, anthropology is race-avoidant. According to Patsy Evans,

AAA's director of academic relations and AAA’s former director of minority affairs, antiracism was the subject of AAA resolutions in 1961, 1969, 1971, 1972, and 1976, and then not again until the anti-Bell Curve and anti-Proposition 187 resolutions in 1994.° Significantly, in a recent survey by the AAA, departmental chairs did not mention race as a key issue for the next 25 years. However, ethnicity was mentioned, lending support to Harrison’s argument that anthropology has subsumed race in ethnicity, which I submit is a form of race avoidance. However, when the survey discussed anthropology’s greater participation in interdisciplinary programs elsewhere in the university, like ecology and global politics, ethnic studies programs were conspicuous in their absence from

theWhylist (AAA 1994:293-294). , is this? It certainly is not because anthropology has become a reactionary discipline (or any more so than, say, English or history,

which are much more central in antiracist and multicultural efforts). Part of the problem is the overwhelming whiteness—90 percent—of anthropology faculties (3 percent each African American and Latino; 2 percent each Asian American and Native American).* But in this respect, anthro-

pology is only marginally whiter than the academy as a whole (86.6 percent white) or than the social sciences or humanities as aggregates.

In part, I suspect our discipline’s bias against studying “us” orthe __ United States plays some role, as does a rigid attitude that “we're the authorities on culture,” so we already know it all; and so does a continued

Race, Class, and Democratization 69 tendency to see cultures as billiard balls, in Eric Wolf's (1982:17) image,

with the world made up of many cultures each of which exists independently of others, except for the occasional brief collision.

But a more important factor may be that the liberal antiracism embedded in the Boasian concept of culture long ago became part of the liberal American mainstream. Liberal politics, whether white or, more prominently today, the cultural politics of identity and multiculturalism, are quite similar to Boasian, Herskovitsian, and Benedictian positions. These positions have become common parlance. And many on the left criticize them as being inadequate: they ignore class and capitalism. Like Boas, they avoid the idea that some folks benefit handily from racism and nativism and refuse to deal with political economy. So where is the Left in anthropology? We have a strong politicaleconomy thrust in analyzing imperialism and the global system, but our discipline’s white Left is largely race-avoidant; we do not talk about the political economy of racism, its relationship to class, or of both to gender. At the 1994 meeting of the American Ethnological Society (AES), where the theme was race, those present all wondered aloud, where were all the white men and where were all the political economists? About 75

percent of the meeting attendees were women; the other 25 percent included a strong presence of male anthropologists of color; probably no more than 15 percent of the attendees were white men.° Yet this is not a male problem: white feminist anthropology is just as race-avoidant, as Lynn Bolles (1995) has shown in her detailing of exclusionary practices

of current practitioners. We do not read or cite our sisters of color; feminist anthropology is extraordinarily retarded in our analysis of the , racialization of gender (or the gendering of race). More directly, as Bolles (1995) and Faye Harrison (1992) have both detailed, we have written out of the canon the contributions of African

American anthropologists, men as well as women. And therein lies

, another part of the explanation for why the anthropological Left, in particular, has been so race-avoidant or retarded in linking race and class. The antiracist paradigm we have to work with is Boasian, with a nondeterminist construction of culture. If we read Boas or Benedict or Herskovits today, they sound a little like liberal multiculturalists who desperately avoid class. They are no help to a Marxist. The contemporaries of Boas and Benedict who did link culture to political economy and race in ways that still resonate well with left perspectives are Du Bois (1934), St. Clair Drake (1945), Davis and Gardner (1941), early black Marxists like Eric Williams (1945), and later ones like Cedric Robinson (1983). Their constructions of culture were rooted in political economy

rather than the great arc of human possibilities. Thus, Eric Williams argued that race was culturally constructed, that it was a society based

70 Transforming Academia on slave labor that invented “the Negro.” I suspect that if they were part of the anthropological canon, we might have something more construc-

tive to contribute to the multicultural discussions. , The other implication in this comparison is that just as Boasian anthropology emerged from the margins, so too do we need to revitalize anthropology from today’s margins, from those who are intellectually and politically engaging the racism and nativism of our time.

_ Notes | 1. In 1920, Jews made up 80 percent of the students at New York’s City College, 90 percent of Hunter College, and, before World War I, 40 percent of private Columbia University. By 1934, Jews made up almost 24 percent of alllaw students nationally, and 56 percent of those in New York City. Still, more Jews became public school teachers, like my parents and their friends, than doctors or lawyers (Steinberg 1989:137, 227). Indeed, Ruth Jacknow Markowitz has shown that “my daughter the teacher” was the equivalent aspiration for daughters as “my son the doctor.” Although quotas on Jews persisted into the 1950s in some of the elite schools,

they were much attenuated, as the postwar college-building boom gave the finishing blow to the gentleman’s finishing school. 2. Stephen Steinberg, in The Ethnic Myth (1989), has debunked the myth that Jews advanced because of their cultural value on education. This is not to say that Jews did not advance. They did. “Jewish success in America was a matter of historical timing . . . there was a fortuitous match between the experience and

skills of Jewish immigrants, on the one hand, and the manpower needs and opportunity structures, on the other” (1989:103). Jews were the only ones among the southern and eastern European immigrants who came from urban, commer-

cial, craft, and manufacturing backgrounds, not least of which was garment manufacturing. They entered the United States in New York, center of the nation’s booming garment industry, and soon came to dominate its “skilled” (male) and “unskilled” (female) jobs, as well as finding itanindustryamenable to low-capital entrepreneurship. As a result, Jews were the first of the new European immigrants to create a middle class of small businessmen early in the 20th century. Jewish educational advances followed this business success and depended upon it, rather than creating it. See also Bodnar 1985 for a similar

argument about mobility. ,

In the early 20th century, Jewish college students entered a contested terrain in which the elite social mission was under challenge by a newer professional training mission. Pressure for change had begun to transform the curriculum and reorient college from a gentleman’s bastion to a training ground for the middle-class professionals needed by an industrial economy. “The curriculum was overhauled to prepare students for careers in business, engineering, scientific farming, and the arts, and a variety of new professions such as accounting and pharmacy that were making their appearance in American colleges for the first time” (Steinberg 1989:229). Occupational training was precisely what drew Jews to college. Ina setting where disparagement of intellectual pursuits and the

Race, Class, and Democratization 71 “gentleman’s C” were badges of distinction, it certainly was not hard for Jews to excel.

3. Patsy Evans, AAA resolutions, personal communication, January 25, 1996. The Bell Curve resolution noted by James Peacock, personal communication, July 1997. It is important to note that the race issue was not totally ignored; for example, the AAA resolution on apartheid in 1982 was a resolution on policy issues related to race. 4. This is comparable to the national profile for all faculty. Of some half-

million faculty, in 1992, 86.6 percent were white; 4.9 percent were African American; 2.5 percent were Hispanic; 5.2 percent were Asian American; and 0.5 percent were Native American. Source: National Center for Educational Statistics. Thanks to Patricia McDonough, UCLA Graduate School of Education, for the information. 5. As meeting organizer, I made a rough estimate by counting the registrations of those attending. By the end of the meetings, I had seen most participants.

New Voices of Diversity, Academic Relations of Production, and the Free

Market

| FAYE V. HARRISON ,

at Work ,

Toward an Anthropology of Subaltern Anthropologists Situation I: In Search of Black Anthropologists

Yvonne Jones, contributing editor for the Association of Black Anthropologists (ABA) unit news in the Anthropology Newsletter (AN), told me that a Los Angeles Times reporter contacted her for information on

what black anthropologists do. He had already been “informed” by sources he would not divulge that black anthropologists have not really produced anything—only critiques and derivative work. He had been given Yvonne’s phone number by the American Anthropological Association (AAA) office, which he had contacted for information. He told

her the AAA did not have any information, nor did the person with whom he spoke know of any publications to recommend. Erased from memory were the special issues of Transforming Anthropology (the ABA’s “journal,” which only has the official status of “review” among AAA publications) and the 1991 ABA/ AAA publication, Decolonizing Anthro- _ pology (see Harrison 1991). Fortunately, Yvonne’s phone number was published in her AN column. The reporter contacted her, and she in turn contacted me to ask if she could refer him to me as well as a few other black anthropologists who could set the record straight about the character of black intellectual production within anthropology. Situation II: Advising the SSRC

Apparently the AAA had included my name on a list of potential reviewers or panelists. I was invited to serve on an advisory committee charged with the responsibility of helping the Social Science Research

72 |

Diversity, Production, and the Free Market 73 Council (SSRC) formulate its policy for a new program in international research. I spent a full day in New York City participating in deliberations involving a group of several social scientists from mostly top-ranking research universities. Only two of us were women, and I was the only ' person of any color other than white. The other woman was reticent for most of the meeting; three of the men were quite outspoken and even arrogant, giving me the impression that they were competing for center stage. Determined not to allow the situation to intimidate me, I made it a point to participate in the discussion, interjecting comments and que-. ries whenever I felt an anthropological or qualitative research orienta-

: tion was particularly warranted. A month later, the program coordinator sent out copies of the meeting summary. When I read my copy I was shocked, disappointed, and hurt to see that only one remark was attributed to me. A statement I had made concerning the tradition of international research at historically black universities such as Howard and Clark-Atlanta was included in the record without any identification of its source. I had said other things as well, but they had not made it into

the record. It appears that they had not been regarded as significant enough to warrant inclusion, or perhaps they had not even been “heard.”

Issues I had raised about how qualitative research methods would be evaluated vis-a-vis the quantitative methods of the so-called harder social sciences were attributed to one of my white male colleagues who

had reacted to my input. His voice and not mine had been heard and credited. My ideas had provided the “data” that allowed an authorized voice to speak conclusively. Does this not represent a relation of appro-

priation? I tendered my resignation that very afternoon. I refused to be , used as a vacuous symbol of diversity and equal opportunity. Regretfully, I did not have the confidence then—nine years ago—to openly contest the document’s accuracy for fear of having my reaction construed as unfounded whining and hostility. Situation III: Paranoia or Crisis of Native/Subaltern Intellectuals?

An invited session sponsored by the AAA’s Commission of Minority Affairs was canceled two months before the 1995 annual meeting. A

letter explaining the reason for the cancellation was published in the November issue of AN. Written by Robert Alvarez, the letter was sent on behalf of ten of the individuals, myself included, who were to present papers on the timely theme of “Race, Cultural Pluralism, and the An-

thropological Promise.” From the letter’s contents and my personal communication with Alvarez, it seems that an unintended conflict in scheduling was not handled in the most diplomatic and sensitive way,

74, Transforming Academia and this complication came to be seen as the proverbial “last straw that broke the camel’s back.” As the staff at the AAA headquarters reminded us, schedule con-

flicts are colorblind in that they affect and complicate the conference participation of whites as well as minorities. In fact, some highly visible

and quite famous white male anthropologists have had to deal with being scheduled for two sessions at once. Why did Beatrice (Bea) Medi-

cine, a prominent senior American Indian anthropologist, become so upset about another computer error? After all, she’d experienced such errors before. Why didn’t she just choose one session over the other to bring the matter to a quick resolution? Why do “those people” suspect - racism and expect special treatment whenever things like this go wrong?

After Medicine altogether withdrew from the program rather than choose between two equally important sessions, why didn’t the ten remaining people go on with the session? On what basis was the “unanimous consensus” the letter articulated reached? The ordeal that Dr. Medicine experienced, and that her colleagues understood, unfolded in a multilayered context bigger and more complex than the coordination and complications of the annual meeting’s

program. Although a single straw may be barely recognizable or felt, when it contributes to the weight of a cumulative load, it becomes a burden too heavy for a camel to bear. Being the only one, or one of very few, not only having to negotiate a climate of hostility or ambivalence but also having to struggle to break out of the limits imposed by alterity and nativization, constitutes the “burden” that Bea Medicine and other

anthropologists of color have had to carry over the course of their careers. And the seniors are witnesses to the past as well as the present. They have witnessed how things have changed and how we’ve come a long way over the years; however, they also witness how some things have yet to change, even though the packaging has been modernized —__— and postmodernized.

Implications -

Today’s is an especially turbulent climate, especially in view of the restructuring, retrenchment, and conservative backlash that contribute to the crisis of the subaltern intellectual. Students and scholars of color

are being targeted by the symbolic violence of a revival of biological determinism and a cooptation of multiculturalism that puts every minority in its place. However, these may be the best of times and the worst , of times. Good times may be evident, for instance, in Yolanda Moses’s recent presidency of the AAA and in the growing visibility of dark and female faces in the leadership of various professional associations,

Diversity, Production, and the Free Market 75 committees, review panels, and editorial boards. Hard times still con- front us, though. Erasure, peripheralization, and a racialized gendered politics of reception and reproduction (Vincent 1991:47-49) assume more

subtle forms than before; nonetheless, they persist insidiously. This raises the question of whether the “new voices” of diversity within the academy are really being listened to and understood for what they can teach us about negotiating differences democratically. Are today’s new

voices any more audible than the old voices virtually erased from disciplinary or institutional memory? Even if the answer is yes, it must

_.. be qualified in view of hierarchy-producing assumptions, discourses, and practices that tend to position certain—even if not all—categories of subalterns outside the centers of authorization.

Interventions from the Global Free Market Jagna Sharff and Hanna Lessinger (1994) and Hans Baer (1995) are among those within anthropology who have called for more concerted and sustained interrogations of the growing power of corporate capital in academic life. In a poignantly insightful analysis of the “casualization of academic work” that is occurring as an outcome of the global restructuring of capital accumulation and labor control, Sharff and Lessinger make the point that the new global orientation “requires corporations to eschew all local, nation-based obligations and loyalties” (1994:13). To the

extent that local interests exist, they “are focused on the provision of high-tech services for corporations’ management headquarters, on the , low-wage service sector, and on innovative, potentially profit-making research. ... [They underscore that] U.S. universities are increasingly drawn into the provision of such services for corporations” (1994:13). In his call for studying—that is, “studying up”—academia’s linkages with big business and government, Baer warns of the dangers that “the fiscal crisis in higher education and the anti-intellectual assault . . . fueled by conservative elements” present to both critical thinking and the ability to create/re-create conditions and opportunities for academic

freedom in the most democratized sense of the term (1995:5-6). The redefinition and reordering of academic priorities in favor of conservative and corporate interests is leading to the reallocation of material and moral support away from the “softer” fields of study suchas the humanities and social sciences. The destabilizing assaults of retrenchment are compromising work conditions, displacing entire programs and departments, and undermining the legitimacy of interdisciplinary programs.

For the past 25 years, programs in ethnic and women’s studies have offered sanctuaries for the production of oppositional and transformative

76 Transforming Academia knowledges that counteract and compensate for the many gaps, silences, and subjugations that have made conventional disciplinary practice and departmental life inhospitable and unreceptive to critical thinkers rele-

gated to discursive peripheries and minorstreams (i.e., streams of thought outside the mainstream). The extent to which these programs have been successful in democratizing intellectual practice and in producing and applying new knowledges within and beyond the academy

is now a measure of their vulnerability and expendability during a

period when feminism, multiculturalism, and even “liberalism” are | being contested. The neoconservative backlash claims to be color- and _ gender-blind, but its position in the “culture wars” is to defend the purity and supremacy of amasculinist Western canon—lest American standards of excellence diminish. In a commentary in The Chronicle of Higher Educa-

tion, Evelyn Hu-DeHart (1995:B1-B2) describes some of the common | practices being undertaken to undermine the legitimacy of even success_ ful ethnic studies programs and research centers: installing weak directors and heads even against the wishes of faculty, hiring few full-time: faculty and swelling the ranks with part-timers, dividing teaching and

research functions into separately administered units, and delaying approval of degree programs. She argues that such administrative slights have precluded ethnic studies from gaining the secure foothold

and programmatic advances many women’s studies programs now enjoy.

Academic values are being increasingly penetrated and redefined by a postcolonial yet recolonizing corporate hegemony. It is important to

note that this reconfiguration is emerging at a historical conjuncture when biodeterminist scholarship such as that represented by The Bell Curve (Herrnstein and Murray 1994) is being revived and legitimated, and when gender and race cognizance is being repudiated by political assaults on the social contract (namely, affirmative action and welfare). OS Also within this historically specific context, issues of economic need are

being manipulated rhetorically in a divisive politics marked by mean-

spirited policies that facilitate both the dislocation of labor and the upward redistribution of wealth. During these unstable times, anthropology is as vulnerable as it is necessary for what it can contribute to public intellectual debates over issues of growing consequence for both

academia and the world. |

Anthropology is strategically positioned on the intellectual landscape by virtue of its broad scope, which extends from the natural sciences to the humanities, and by virtue of its commitment to questions concerning diversity and common ground—absolutely important concerns at a time when the problems of negotiating diversity appear to be

growing and intensifying around the world. Anthropology, however,

Diversity, Production, and the Free Market 77 compromises its ability and promise to account for and to resolve struggles

over diversity when it neglects to both hear and understand its new voices speaking from a variety of perspectives and positions. Anthropologists should be receptive to these new perspectives, because of anthropology’s extensive ethnographic record on Otherness and its orientation toward participatory inquiry. As a potent investigative strategy and style, participant-observation demands the kinds of sensibilities, communication, and interpersonal relationships that give us access to both public and hidden transcripts of peoples too often denied both

- historical and intellectualagency. | Universities are faced with the challenge of negotiating diversity—confronting old and new problems, and embracing new opportu-

nities. Currently these negotiations—which span the conservativeprogressive political continuum—are being undertaken in the face of a

growing ambivalence and, very often, a visible hostility toward the politically salient and emotionally charged differences designated by conservatives as “special interests” which supposedly contradict and undermine the interest of the larger national body. In the conservative view, the “nation” is envisioned in terms of either putatively homogeneous values or a naive, facile pluralism that denies the structured inequalities that order relations among ethnicities, races, and other interest groups.

An instance of flagrant hostility is evidenced by the experience of former law professor Jennifer Russell, who was subjected to racial harassment in the form of receiving an anonymous copy of National Geographic

with a cover photograph of a gorilla. This incident occurred in the | aftermath of two events: white students’ objections to her teaching about the subtle workings of racism and a racially charged hiring of a minority over a white male candidate (The Women’s Review of Books 1996). In an informative and very useful report written for the Association of American Colleges’ Project on the Status and Education of Women, Yolanda Moses (1989) documented black women’s perceptions and experiences

of hostile academic environments, whose double standards and racist and sexist biases impose barriers to their success. Another work that illuminates black women’s struggles for space within academia is the edited collection by Joy James and Ruth Farmer, Spirit, Space, and Survival: African American Women in (White) Academe (1993), which contains

a number of essays—including that of anthropologist Helan Page (1993)—concerning matters of philosophy, theory, autobiography, and

pedagogy. The essays express a shared sense of confrontation and

ize weaker spirits. ,

opposition to the forces and obstacles that would alienate and demoral-

78 Transforming Academia Even well-intentioned attempts to come to terms with diversity are being infused with assumptions and values from prevailing corporate ideology. Chancellor Snyder of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has produced and circulated a document, “Toward a Climate for Enhancing Diversity on the UTK Campus” (n.d.), which articulates his vision and position on diversity for a university that has a long history of exclusionary policies and practices. Even at present, the university is under the obligation and watch of a state court order to desegregate, and

a few years ago the results from a survey indicated that the climate for - women was/is hostile. Snyder’s “Toward a Climate for Enhancing Diversity” was written in the wake of growing agitation from both women and blacks. A past dean of the school of engineering, Snyder had

been involved in a successful long-standing engineering program designed to recruit and retain minority students,so he hasatrack record ~ that lends credibility and intellectual honesty to the document, which asserts that “diversity [must] be embraced as a moral imperative as well as an opportunity for personal growth and development. . .[and that] a philosophy of collective ownership of all institutional problems should

exist” (n.d.:5). }

Recognizing that diversity is “no longer an option but a necessity,” Snyder writes of the striking technological, organizational, and demographic shifts which have “drawn all of us into their vortex” (n.d.:5). Diversity, he writes, is an admired principle in both the natural and business worlds. To “continue to play a strategic role in the future of our nation and the world. . .the land grant university of the 21st century will continue to be an essential partner with business and industry in enhancing the global competitiveness of the United States” (n.d.:10). The chancellor’s famous motto is that UTK must be “value driven, customer oriented, and learning focused” (n.d.:5) to be a university of choice. While Snyder should be commended for articulating a vision in —which diversity is seen as an opportunity that should be embraced, his attempt to accommodate diversity within a model of university development oriented toward corporate constituencies and the market values of customer orientation is problematic, to say the least. The market analogy presents a false image of fair and free exchange when in the real

world of free-market development—with its rampant indebtedness and structural adjustment programs—buyers and sellers are differentially and hierarchically positioned. That inequality of positioning by race, gender, class, and their intersections with national or transnational status places concrete limits on how diversity can be managed and integrated into the university’s core culture. The commodification of information and the uncritical alignment of higher education with the agenda of an increasingly transnationalized corporate capital reproduces ,

Diversity, Production, and the Free Market 79 or—if the upward redistribution of wealth is any indication—even intensifies the very inequalities Snyder claims to want to overcome.

Instructively, Snyder points to a number of models of and for diversity enhancement within the university: an influential Fund for the Improvement of Secondary Education (FIPSE) program that uses video to help faculty and staff work through their own prejudices and racism,

the minority engineering program already mentioned, the Office of Minority Student Affairs, the Women’s Center, and the Office of Diversity Resources and Educational Services, established to replace the more controversial Affirmative Action Program. Why is it that the chancellor, the top-ranking officer of an institution of higher learning and research, neglects to mention the good works and successes of academic units such

as the African and African American Studies and Women’s Studies programs? Why are these erased from the map he charts of routes to progress and diversity promotion? In a university where the main order

of “business” is pedagogy and knowledge production, why weren’t academic programs included as important and deserving sites for invest-

ing moral and material support? Can we interpret this omission as an indication of the status of women and people of color at UTK? Is this - erasure reflective of a deep-seated ambivalence regarding what new voices have to say?

Mixed Messages The once growing and now contracting numbers of people of color and the women who have come to people academic institutions have had to make sense of mixed messages being sent from trustees, administration, faculty, and students. I speak of mixed messages rather than

outright hostility. Although the latter certainly shows its face often enough, and may even dominate the climate in particular places at particular times, I think that we are living through a period marked by considerable duality. For instance, in professional anthropology women

are well represented in graduate schools and in faculty ranks, though _ mainly in the lower ranks. They are professionally active, productive, and their extensive scholarship—whether feminist or not—has contributed important new data, perspectives, and modes of theorizing to the field. Nonetheless, despite having come a long way since, for instance, 1954, women’s scholarship does not seem to be read, appreciated, and

cited according to the “principles of equal opportunity employment” that prompt departments and universities to hire us and admit us into training programs (Lutz 1990). The politics of reception and reproduction (Vincent 1991), both within the discipline and within academia at

80 Transforming Academia large, intervene in the formation of the disciplinary canon, whose gender

equality or inequality can be discerned through citation patterns and required reading lists for core graduate seminars (Lutz 1990, 1995). The

- canon and the core body of ideas represented within it seem to have a gender, and that gender is masculine. The politics of reception and canon formation is not only gendered. The value and power disparities within which intellectual validation and authorization are conferred also have a raced or racialized dimension. This dimension is operative even within intellectual arenas where feminists and other critical anthropologists are active (Bolles 1995; duCille | 1994; Harrison 1991, 1993; Lutz 1995). The racial economy of anthropol-

ogy is constituted by hierarchy-producing assumptions, discourses, and practices that result in the peripheralization of anthropologists of color

(Harrison 1995b). This outcome is particularly evident among those | whose people symbolize the bottom rungs of American society and, hence, are less likely to be conferred the status of honorary whites (Harrison 1995a). Paradoxically, in a discipline that claims human diversity and commonality as its central concern, anthropology is less racially

and culturally diverse than some of its sibling fields in the humanities and social sciences. Alvarez (1994) shed some light on this contradiction in his contribution to Race (Gregory and Sanjek 1994), based on data that are now dated. According to the AAA’s 1995 survey, not quite two out of every ten new Ph.D.s in anthropology were minorities. That composite minority person is mostly of Asian origins with a hint of a Hispanic

accent, three drops of African blood, and a barely discernable trace of

American Indian quantum (AAA 1995-96:308). :

Bifurcated Positioning It is heartening to see that dark faces have become more visible and | that a number of the celebrities among the nation’s public intellectuals are African American; however, the commodification or “commodity faddism” of a handful of African American cultural critics—bell hooks, Cornel West, Henry Louis (Skip) Gates, and the like—is no reliable

indicator that racial divisions of intellectual labor are unproblematic. Indeed, in the age of The Bell Curve and structural adjustment here at home and abroad, racialized/ gendered relations of intellectual production are all the more significant as a front of intense ideological and intellectual struggle. The hyperprivileging (Dominguez 1994) of a few colored people as “stars” occurs in a context of academic market segmentation within which a wider pool of intellectual workers bears the brunt of less disguised forms of racialization. Unlike the stars, ordinary

Diversity, Production, and the Free Market 81 rank-and-file subalterns infrequently experience any privilege of Other-

-ness apart from the benefits they may enjoy from belonging to a community of kindred spirits often formed in opposition to the intense hostility, alienation, and depreciation built into many academic environments (cf. Moses 1989). The widely felt vulnerability of minority intellectuals, particularly women, to invisibility, isolation, misrepresentation, , and attack was underscored at the 1994 mega-conference held at MIT

entitled “Black Women in the Academy: Defending our Name, 1894-1994.” A number of black women anthropologists participated in

_ that historic meeting at which black women shared their frustrations, yearnings, critiques, and visions for a prospective agenda and more supportive spaces within U.S. academia. If we take seriously the voices of those women as well as those of

all women of color who have expressed themselves in other forums, organizational activities, and published works, we can learn from their stories and experiences important things about, at worst, hostile and, at best, ambivalent, work conditions within departments and programs. These women’s experiences can teach us about the politics of intellectual

discourse and professional practice. They can also teach us about the constructive potential of interfaces and collaborations between departments and interdisciplinary programs. Last, but certainly not least, these stories and struggles teach important lessons about new data, theoretical perspectives, and methodological strategies and repertories, which—if engaged and embraced—diversify the intellectual work that can propel

disciplines and interdisciplines into the 21st century. In the case of anthropology, both “new voices” and “older voices” that have never 7 really been carefully heard or understood shed important light on the dangers of treating anthropologists of color, and those of feminine gender, as glorified key informants or “mammyfied” providers of pro- ” fessional service, rather than as colleagues in the fullest sense of the term,

for the formal and informal organization of our profession and the intellectual development of our disciplinary modes of thought (Harrison 1991, 1993, 1995a; Obbo 1990). Francis Hsu’s (1973) warnings about the counterproductive effects of prejudice on the field should be revisited

, today in light of more current arguments concerning the discipline’s still _ powerful Eurocentric and androcentric biases. Paradoxically, certain changes in the world are taking us back 30 years or more. Are we progressing with one foot only to regress with the other? While there is certainly a critical mass of black intellectuals on the national scene, we cannot claim to have transcended the “crisis of the Negro intellectual” that Harold Cruse (1967) problematized nearly three decades ago. A disturbing trend has emerged in which Black women are being targeted for public depreciation and discreditation. Lani Guinier’s

82 Transforming Academia legal scholarship, which won her a tenured position at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Law, was erased from media coverage on the

debate over her merits for an appointment in the leadership of the Department of Justice. Her voice as an innovative legal scholar was muted by her portrayal as a “quota queen,” a putative spokeswoman for the inner-city “welfare queens” who make up the so-called undeserving and dangerous poor. Recently, Angela Davis was appointed to a prestigious chair of excellence at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

The Board of Regents, however, initially opposed the appointment _ because of her politics and the “questionable” quality of her scholarship

as a philosopher who has dared to work outside a more narrowly and

conventionally defined field of competence. Highly acclaimed bell hooks, who has been catapulted into intellectual stardom by the media, was misrepresented in a front-page article published in The Chronicle of Higher Education (Leatherman 1995). This high-profile article trivialized

the substance and underpinnings of her scholarship by paying more | attention to her rich and famous lifestyle in New York City. In an essay published in leftist Z Magazine, hooks (1995) claims that while the actual

interview seemed to focus on the ideas that she brings to feminist discourse and cultural criticism, those spoken ideas were not included in the published article. This pattern of erasure and selective, stereotyped

misrepresentation illustrates that even the most visible and famous are not immune from being “put in their places,” regardless of whether they

are seen as exceptions to the presupposed rule of black intellectual inferiority. This troublesome pattern is also recounted in ordinary black women’s stories about their experiences in academia. ~

Academic Freedom ,

Erasures, Silencing, and Peripheralization as Limits on Peripheralization or erasure can result from the way an academic

audience receives an intellectual product such as a publication. As Catherine Lutz’s (1990) work demonstrates, this can be measured by citation and content analyses. Erasure and silencing also take place in the everyday and not-so-publicly displayed behaviors constitutive of the

conditions under which ideas are developed—or underdeveloped. Among these behaviors are the communications and interactions that

| influence—by facilitating or obstructing—the production of work deemed to be “publishable.” The editing and revisions required before scholarly work is considered publishable can become entangled in a

struggle over the values and meanings of scholarly significance and merit. Of course, peer review and the consequent revisions are a necessary

Diversity, Production, and the Free Market 83 component of intellectual production that should and can serve the purpose of quality control and enhancement. This I do not dispute; however, sometimes the line between fair, constructive criticism and censorship can be crossed in a patterned way that implicates problematic, divisive, and hierarchizing biases. For instance, several African American anthropologists of earlier generations have told “war stories” about having had research papers rejected by mainstream anthropology publications on grounds which many of us would question and disapprove of today. Ironically, most of these “rejects” were eventually published in ethnic and other social science journals. What about the values that operate in evaluation now? Can the unintended consequences of any of them implicate a racial/ gendered economy of knowledge? It is not uncommon for black women in anthropology and other disciplines to report informally how their writing, published primarily as descriptive accounts, has been denuded of much of the theoretical and metatheoretical content of earlier drafts. In other words, at least some of their experience with peer review suggests an enforcement of an intel-

lectual division of labor by gender and race, which assigns them the “housekeeping” role of collecting and describing data (cf. Lutz 1995). Because publishing is the key to career development, denuded articles are better than more theoretically elaborate manuscripts buried among unpublished papers. Nonetheless, the ubiquitous “publish or perish” phrase might be rephrased as “publish while perishing” for minority and feminist scholars whose productivity fails to lead to scholarly authorization and canonization. Another common experience one can _ surmise from the stories black women anthropologists tell each other is | that even when theory survives revision and editing, their work tends

to be read and cited largely for its description. In other words, the theoretical elements embedded in the texts are subjected to a process of “whiting-out” (Jackson 1993). “Whiting-out” is a form of the partial erasure or “tracking” that I have described elsewhere (Harrison 1991:7). Lutz (1995) argues cogently that theory (or the authority/power to explain and to set the terms of authoritative discourse) has a gender as

well as a race and class. If we take her insight seriously, then it is important to understand the intellectual and sociopolitical processes through which much of black women’s scholarship comes to be written and/or read as particularistic description—storytelling—rather than as

data-grounded explanation with relevance for cross-cultural inquiry. Also needed is a critical examination of the processes whereby abstract, jargon-laden discourse is likely to be labeled “theory,” while concrete ideas accessible to women and men on the street are, too often, presumed to be atheoretical. As literary theorist Barbara Christian points out, much of the theorizing that people of color do assumes “forms quite different

84 Transforming Academia from ... Western ... abstract logic.... [Their] theorizing ... is often [embedded in narratives]” (1987:52). However, an ethnocentric and class-biased reading of such narratives would interpret them as theory-

less. Christian’s analysis alerts us to the importance of situating black women’s writing, analysis, and theorizing—in its multiple forms—in , relation to both the politics of reception and the politics of resistance to the ethnocentric and sexist elitism many authorized discourses represent. In the specific context of feminist scholarship’s ambivalent reception.to difference, literary theorist Ann duCille (1994) interrogates the racial politics of white feminists’ reading of black women’s texts. She argues that black women are commonly excluded from the category of “feminist theorists” and are read through lenses clouded by essentializing fantasies that lead white readers to expect “to leave high theory behind when [they] go slumming in low culture” (1994:610). This biasmay lead -

them to read low culture into the texts and to fail to appreciate or acknowledge anything else. It may predispose them to read the texts as — unconvincing and threatening, aggravating the common fear and anxi-

ety that some whites have of black feminists. Critical black women thinkers are frequently cast “somewhere between monster and mammy: demanding, demeaning, impossible to please” (1994:609). At the same time, black feminists may be imagined to possess “irresistible custodial power and erotic allure as the larger than life (racialized) Other” (1994:609).

This sort of blatant racial division of labor that duCille describes may be breaking down now, but until literary criticism, anthropology,

and any other disciplinary field are no longer racially biased, issues of “theory” and other forms of academic capital will continue to be salient.

As long as both racism and sexism persist, black women’s intellectual production—whether written as narrative, abstraction, or a synthesis of

produce knowledge. BO the two—will be a site of struggle over the authority and power to

Toward a More Proactive Anthropology Decolonizing and democratizing anthropology are imperative to the field if the discipline genuinely prioritizes diversity, minority affairs,

gender equality, and tolerance and respect for the forms of alterity constitutive of anthropological practice today. Representation and voice are issues relevant to all spheres and sites of anthropological practice: organizations, committees and boards, review panels, editorial committees, advisory and policy-making bodies, and the cohorts of students and faculty which make up departments. We must be aware of the gatekeeping and gate-opening roles of these organized bodies. We must also recognize

Diversity, Production, and the Free Market 85

leaders.

the importance of having the most strategic units of organized anthropology reach out to the public, bringing anthropology into the intellectual debates that inform political decision making on the part of citizens and

Within the academy, anthropologists ideally need strong, supportive departments. However, sometimes individual anthropologists and departments do not have legitimacy until their significance is realized on the outside, particularly by programs and departments with some measure of institutional clout and credibility. Cross-fertilization with outsiders can be fruitful to disciplinary development, but whether crossfertilization is an explicit goal or not, organizational connections and bridge-building are absolutely integral to the alliance-building and constituency expansion that is politically expedient and necessary for anthropology’s institutional well-being. This kind of political organizing is particularly imperative for departments and programs (e.g., ethnic studies) being jeopardized in the current climate of fiscal instability and exigency. Effective political mobilization can create conditions more conducive to the academic freedom and institutional democratization that anthropology’s postcolonial intellectual advances presuppose. UItimately—and I believe we have already reached this point—anthropology’s well-being, and the material and ideological contexts within which

its well-being can be achieved, demand that anthropologists intervene in the public sphere and not restrict themselves to academic circles. The discursive circle around the ivory tower can become a vicious cycle if little input or direction is offered to those worldly debates that have

practical consequences for real people’s everyday lives. This means that , we have to overcome the biases academic purists and elitists have about advocacy, political engagement, and popularization. Moreover, we need

to embrace and seek effective means of articulating and bridging the plurality of anthropological knowledges and the diversity of existential situations—and predicaments—that make them possible. Outside of this web of connections (Haraway 1991) and the shared conversations and debates emerging from them, anthropology could very well reach a point of diminishing returns and face its displacement. The repositioning

of anthropology within a more democratically restructured academia and society should, among other things, be linked to a repositioning of the subaltern, whose voice should not be heard as noise to be drowned out or silenced.

7 Restructuring and the Changing Roles of Faculty TOM GREAVES

In January 1996, the New York Times reported the collapse ofalong and bitter strike by graduate teaching assistants at Yale (Judson 1996b). The strike organizers conceded defeat and told their members to return

to the classroom. The collapse of the strike at Yale was instructive because it illustrated stresses on the academic employment environment, stresses that simultaneously pressure academic institutions to change while entrenching the status quo. Anthropologists teaching in colleges and universities find that these stresses affect their professional futures. Many who seek teaching appointments find themselves wondering whether there is a future at all. What is the employment picture for academic anthropologists? The intention of this essay is to attempt to bring some factual information to bear on that question. Before we can adequately visualize what is happening to our pro-

fession, we need to abandon certain obsolete perceptions about ourselves that are still in circulation. As anthropologists, we are familiar with societies that see themselves through the lens of the past. People in

such societies tend to view current events against the backdrop ofa traditional lifeway that has a continuing hold on the present. To some extent, our discipline is like that. In subtle and unconscious ways, many

U.S. anthropologists are tempted to think of the profession as still fundamentally configured in ways established in the classic middle period of anthropology, from the 1930s to the 1960s. That was the period dominated by such preeminent figures as Margaret Mead, Julian Steward, J. O. Brew, Gordon Willey, Francis Hsu, Abram Kardiner, Morris Swadesh, and Leonard Bloomfield. What was anthropology like in that era? Then, anthropologists were nearly all based in the academy, nearly all received their Ph.D.s from a fairly small number of graduate institutions, and senior anthropologists

placed their students in tenure-track positions through collegial telephone calls. None of that is true any more.

86 |

Anthropology’s Professoriate 87 Anthropologists in the middle period accumulated large personal libraries. It was mandatory to subscribe to the American Anthropologist, and one looked with some satisfaction on the “long blue row” that the copies gradually created on an office shelf.’ And then there were books: between the campus office and the study at home one would accumulate hundreds, and then thousands, of books by anthropologists. We were

on our mettle to keep up with at least our particular sector of the anthropological enterprise: to be knowledgeable of what had been written, author by author, and to view what was being done as the product

_ of a community of known individuals. It was not easy, and being __ publicly shown to be unaware of a relevant new book entailed gross embarrassment. Professional meetings of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and certain specialty meetings.were those periodic occasions when faces were put to authors’ names, when late-breaking ideas were aired, when leads to new publications were exchanged, and when gossip was propagated. All of this reflected the way we practiced anthropology: we inhabited a professional village. It would be misleading to idealize this middle period of anthropology. Pay was low. Research funds were hit or miss, publishing outlets

were limited, and all those manuscripts were written on mechanical typewriters and copied by carbon paper and mimeograph. This abbreviated sketch overlooks the abundant exceptions that made the middle period a more complex picture, yet we might agree that the shape of our discipline was, at bottom, a face-to-face community, broadly acquainted with the same shared literature, pursuing a widely understood range of

' questions. To what degree is that true today?

Some Data on Anthropology’s Professoriate Our profession has changed. Taken as a whole, U.S. anthropology has dissolved into an aggregate of small groups that are largely strangers ‘to each other. Our interpersonal networks are mainly confined to smaller

subcommunities, a fact abundantly illustrated by the AAA’s welter of sections, units, subunits, newsletters, and online networks. The AAA ~ now has nearly 11,000 members, and its national meeting attracts several thousands of them each year. On a Friday morning at its most recent annual meeting, no fewer than 20 panel sessions began simultaneously at 8:00 aM., together with various workshops, film showings, and other

, events. Today the AAA is more like a confederation of subunits than a unitary professional membership. We are no longer a village. Anthropology’s diaspora is not solely a matter of growing numbers; certainly the recent demographics of our profession strongly impact the

88 Transforming Academia character of our professional life. In this paper I will focus on that part of our profession employed by colleges and universities. Numerically the academic sector is not even the largest part of the profession, absorbing fewer than half of the Ph.D. anthropologists and virtually none of

the master’s degree anthropologists generated each year by the nation’s , graduate programs (AAA 1996:1—2). It is, however, the focus of inquiry of the present volume, and hence of this paper.

Characterizing the nation’s academic anthropologists leads one to a familiar source, the AAA’s Guide to Departments.* Two Bucknell stu-

dents, Gail Newfield and Jason Stevens, put in some long hours in support of my effort to get a rough picture of what has been happening to anthropology’s academic community over the past 25 years. They tallied the faculty listed in the Guide to Departments every five years from , 1970-71 to 1995-96, a very laborious job.* In these editions of the Guide

we looked only at the academic departments, omitting the listings of museums, government agencies, consulting businesses, and otheremployment entities that have come to fatten the Guide in recent years. We also excluded academic listings outside the United States, Canada, and

Mexico because our focus here is on the institutions that plausibly constitute the academic employment base for anthropologists trained in the United States.* The Guide, of course, is far from an unblemished source of data, and before proceeding, I want to suggest the nature and

gravity of some of those defects. :

Having filled out the Guide's annual data form many times, I suspect

that frequently it appears in the mail while a harried department chair is preoccupied with more pressing matters, and this or other local foibles result in omissions or other flaws in what is sent in. Unassailable data the Guide is not. On the other hand, we should not set our expectations too high. No great data exist for college employment. I served in academic administration for nearly two decades, and I can affirm thatjust - __ knowing exactly how many full-time faculty one’s own campus has in the classroom is nearly unattainable: some teachers are on medical leave with colleagues filling in; a sudden vacancy in the dean’s office has — meant that a faculty member has been reassigned to administrative duties; two faculty from Beijing are teaching without contracts because’ their immigration hasn’t cleared. No number in academia is rock solid. So, although the Guide's data have their weaknesses, there are no data on academic anthropologists without weaknesses. With respect to anthropologists teaching at colleges and universities, the Guide, despite its apparent flaws, contains the best data currently available.° Of course, if we can identify areas within the Guide where the data’s strengths and weaknesses are most likely, we are likely to improve our

results. While the listings for graduate departments are probably very

Anthropology's Professoriate 89 nearly complete, there likely are some gaps among institutions offering only undergraduate degrees. Then, too, there are many small or specialized institutions where anthropologists are on the faculty, but no anthropology degree is offered, so no department of anthropology exists, and hence no listing gets into the Guide.® Similarly, the Guide lists very few two-year community colleges, although we know that basic courses in anthropology are often taught at community colleges and that it is not unusual to have anthropology faculty members on staff. Indeed, one of the units of the AAA consists of anthropologists teaching at community ~~ colleges. Part-time faculty are a regular category in the listings, yet one suspects part-time faculty may be substantially underlisted. They are often contracted at the last minute, long after the department’s Guide entry has been mailed off. The part-time undercount is, I suspect, the most serious limitation the Guide offers us. These various lacunae notwithstanding, however, the Guide's data can still give us a basic picture

of anthropology’s professoriate because its data are most complete | where the large majority of anthropologists are employed: the large universities offering graduate anthropology degrees and in the undergraduate institutions where anthropology faculty are a sizable presence. 7 The Guide’s weaker data cover academic anthropology at the peripheries and, aside from the part-time data, the omissions are probably too small to materially affect the larger, national trends.

Academic Employment over the Last 25 Years , The tabulations derived from the Guide yield a number of observations. First, as seen in Figure 1, in the last 25 years more institutions have started offering anthropology degrees.’ Since 1970 the number of departments offering graduate anthropology degrees has grown by 40 percent (from 134 departments to 187). The rate of growth has slowed since the

boom years of the early 1970s, and is slower still in the 1990s, but growth , continues. Between 1990-91 and 1995-96 the number of departments listing master’s degrees and doctorates grew by seven. The increase in _ the number of undergraduate-only departments listed is still more ro-

bust. Between 1970 and 1995, baccalaureate-only departments grew by 180 percent, from 76 to 214. Twenty more are listed in 1995-96 compared

with 1990-91. What is happening to the actual number of teaching jobs? In graduate departments the number of full-time faculty in anthropology depart, ments continues to climb (see Figure 2).’ So does the number of positions for anthropologists appointed to departments other than anthropology.

90 Transforming Academia

300 aa | ° . Depts. - ~~

450

350 , ee

400 Total Departments_. -—~ ~~ _

;||a

150 pene | 100 T.-7NNW... 50 fo — Masters Depts. . 250 ve

a“

200 ee ETTBE. PEP

an Doctoral Depts. ——

Figure 1

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995

Number of Anthropology Departments Listed, by Degree Level, in Five-Year Intervals, 1970-1995. Sources: AAA 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995. Tabu-

lated listings exclude institutions outside the United States, Mexico, and Canada, as well as listings in categories other than the Guide section “Academic Departments.” For economy of presentation, the years listed on the horizontal axis denote the first half of the academic year; for example, “1990” refers to academic year 1990-91. Institutions are categorized only by the level of the highest academic degree (i.e. doctoral , masters, or non-graduate-level). Included are not only degrees in anthropology but also other degrees listed

by the department in which it evidently participates. Thus a department listing a B.A. in anthropology anda M.S. insocial work is ranked at the masters level. Undergraduate departments list no degree above the baccalaureate level.

stopped growing yet. | a Looking at the numbers nationally, anthropology’s professoriate has not ,

Employment in institutions where only a bachelor’s degree is offered (i.e., undergraduate institutions) constitutes about a third of an- | thropology’s professoriate, so what happens there contributes to, but does not dominate, the aggregate academic market for anthropologists.

Thus, although full-time faculty appointments in undergraduate institutions from 1970 to 1995 climbed 327 percent while full-time appoint- 7 ments in graduate institutions rose less than 200 percent, the graduate faculty still made up nearly % of the combined total in 1995 (see Figures __ 2 and 3). In both arenas, the number of full-time positions in anthropology programs continues to rise. The number of anthropologists housed in other departments is also rising, but as a percentage of the whole, they are not yet a major component of the employment picture. The growth

in anthropology faculty exceeds the total growth of higher education

3000 , |

Anthropology’s Professoriate 91 2500

2000 : 7 Full-Time Faculty in Anthro. Depts. 1500

500 en ne

1000 Faculty In Other Depts. _ ew ST .Faculty on ne Part-Time

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 Figure 2 Faculty Trends, Graduate Anthropology Departments, in Five-Year Intervals, 1970-1995. Sources: AAA 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995. Tabulated listings

exclude institutions outside the United States, Mexico, and Canada, as well as listings in categories other than the Guide section “Academic Departments.” For economy of presentation, the years listed on the horizontal axis denote the first half of the academic year; for example, “1990” refers to academic year 1990-91. Faculty listed are from the Guide's categories: “full-time faculty,” “part-time faculty,” and “anthropologists in other departments, schools, or institutes” and, where encoun-

tered, plausible variants of these. Omitted categories include “part-time research,” “full- time research,” and a variety of other nonteaching titles.

faculty employment. Although the data are not entirely comparable, from 1975 to 1990, a 15-year period, the total U.S. professoriate appears

to have grown by about 75 percent (U.S. Department of Commerce — -1996:183).

The number of undergraduate degrees awarded, an output upon which the academic stability of most of the nation’s anthropology departments depend, has been rising for the past decade and has been | setting annual records. A recent report from the AAA concludes, “At the - current rate, the 1990s will eclipse the record set in the 1970s, leaving

_ anthropology well positioned for growth in the next century as U.S. higher education expands” (AAA 1996:2).

_ We need to bear in mind that these are national-level figures. . Responding especially to budget pressures, the employment picture in certain states and local areas, such as the New York City area, may show quite a different trend. Although the Guide's information could be sorted by region, the present analysis has not looked below the national level.

92 Transforming Academia 1200

600 , 200 eee ee |

1000

800 Full-Time Faculty in Anthro Depts

400 , : Faculty in Other Depts.

0 -—Figure 3 3

ener Part-Time Faculty |

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 - 1995

Faculty Trends, Undergraduate Anthropology Departments, in Five-Year Intervals, 1970-1995. Sources: AAA 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995. Tabu-

lated listings exclude institutions outside the United States, Mexico, and Canada, as well as listings in categories other than the Guide section “Academic Departments.” For economy of presentation, the years listed on the horizontal axis denote the first half of the academic year; for example, ” 1990” refers to academic year 1990-91. Faculty listed are from the Guide's catego-

ries: “full-time faculty,” “part-time faculty,” and “anthropologists in other departments, schools, or institutes” and, where encountered, plausible variants of these. Omitted categories include “part-time research,” “full-time research,” and a variety of other nonteaching titles.

Part-time employment, a central issue in labor’s 1997 strike against

the United Parcel Service, focused renewed national attention on the _ practice in some industries and companies of replacing full-time workers

with part-time workers, generally at lower wages and with less costly benefits, and perhaps with less ability to mobilize collective opposition.

There is widespread fear that cash-strapped colleges and universities may be inclined to reduce their expensive full-time faculty, replacing them with low cost, easily furloughed, part-time teachers. Papers in this volume describe the hardship that practice places on qualified workers who want full-time work with full benefits.

Are we seeing an increase in part-timers in anthropology? In the Guide, part-time appointments appear to be rising slowly, though at a much slower rate than the increase of full-time positions.’° However, as pointed out above, Guide listings of part-time faculty may be unreliable. At the same time, it is doubtful that substituting part-time for full-time _

Anthropology ’s Professoriate 93 faculty could become a major national trend in anthropology departments at four-year and graduate institutions. In most localities, a dean deciding to base the anthropology curricular offerings heavily on parttime faculty will soon be in trouble. To offer core offerings to students using part-timers requires that there be, within commuting distance, a reliable pool of competent anthropologists available on call to teach, on short notice, an unpredictable number of courses. New York City, certain other Eastern seaboard cities, and perhaps San Francisco and Los Ange-

les meet these conditions. Elsewhere, a dean who builds a staffing strategy for the anthropology curriculum on part-time appointments runs a high risk that revenue sections of anthropology courses will have to be canceled because no qualified teacher can be secured."

Nonetheless, some anthropologist colleagues are entrapped in an insecure existence of commuting between multiple campuses, collecting small sums for each course, and bearing severe hardships. Given their predicaments and the Guide's lack of usable data on the part-time situation, members at the 1996 annual business meeting of the AAA passed a resolution requesting that the AAA collect usable data on the prevalence and trends in academic part-time employment among anthropologists. Unfortunately, at this writing no results are available.

Leaving aside the part-time situation, what are the major trends shown in the Guide's data? What still characterizes academic anthropology is not stasis, not decline, but growth. Though the rapid growth of

the 1970s has slackened, the rate of growth both in the number of departments and in faculty positions has not slowed materially in the past five years as compared with the previous ten. Also, employment of anthropologists in departments other than the one in which an anthropology degree is offered continues to grow, although this is primarily

true of institutions where graduate anthropology degrees are also offered. In national terms, these data do not support a pessimistic assessment about where the profession’s job inventory has been heading.

Where Will the Price Be Paid? If the number employed in anthropology’s academic sector is not declining—at least not yet—how do we reconcile that trend with our awareness that the nation’s colleges and universities, both public and private, are generally facing severe financial constraints? State university systems have seen their budgets strongly restrained and sometimes cut.

Private institutions as lustrous as Stanford and Yale have found themselves financially pressed. Tuition has risen dramatically at both public _ and private institutions (increasing revenues), but the private institutions,

94 Transforming Academia either fearing buyer resistance or already having encountered it, are reining in those increases and lowering estimates of budgetary growth. Because research “overhead” funds are also declining, money on every

campus, public or private, is tight. Slowing dollars have resulted in salary increases for existing faculty that make the “Where’s the beef?”

commercial look positively corpulent. ,

The picture these data paint is of an anthropology professoriate that is still numerous, indeed still growing, but which is finding its working

environment more difficult. With respect to its working conditions, anthropology’s professoriate is hunkering down, resigned to poor pros- "

pects for annual salary increases, with travel funds and other profes- | sional supports falling behind their former levels. We are paying more

attention to ensuring adequate classroom enrollments and to what our « state governor and regents are saying. The professional support system that gets us to meetings, pays research assistants, gives us released time ~ from courses, and gets the phone answered in the departmental office is being impoverished.” What about the employment prospects for student anthropologists now in the doctoral pipeline? The challenge they will face is not mysterious. For years our graduate institutions have produced almost twice the number of Ph.D.s (400-500 per year) as there were openings (vacated pre-existing positions plus growth positions) in the professoriate (about 200) (AAA 1996:2). Though the number of positions in anthropology has

grown larger, the output of new anthropologists continually outdistances it. Not surprisingly, one-third to one-half of all new anthropolo-

gist Ph.D.s and virtually all of the master’s-level graduates go into nonacademic jobs (AAA 1996:2). While many, perhaps most, of the latter

seek and prefer nonacademic employment, there is still a significant

number who hope to get academic appointments and come up short. ~ | What are their prospects? Anthropology’s professoriate can be likened to a railroad train that follows a circular route, returning to the same station once a year. Its coaches are filled with passengers who permanently ride the train, year after year, until they die, retire, or otherwise leave the train. Each year

many newly minted anthropologists arrive at the station hoping to board, crowding the platform. The train arrives. The crowd surges forward but tickets are few. The train pulls away with all empty seats filled, but many are left on the platform while others crowd into the aisles or on top, hanging on for the journey though not occupying secure seats.

Why does the supply persistently and substantially exceed the demand? Because graduate institutions produce almost twice as many _ doctorates annually as can find openings in the professiorate, hence each

Anthropology’s Professoriate 95 year not only do new doctorates seek these openings but they join those who failed to obtain desired positions last year and before. If you miss the train on your first try, you can rejoin the crowd at

the platform in successive years, but under many circumstances after another year or two or three your chances of being hired in preference to anew Ph.D. declines sharply.’ Many new Ph.D.s try to board the train

only two or three times, then pursue other paths, at least for the time being. Can you extend your platform viability by taking short-term postdoctoral appointments? Yes, but these are few. Alternatively, one _. can apply for nonacademic positions or for nonanthropological positions within academia; many stop waiting for the train and board other vehicles.

This situation has several consequences. One is disillusionment, as able professionals are denied employment in disciplinary departments. A second is the possible curtailing of efforts to diversify the discipline. A third affects opportunities for women and people of color. Networks and connections become limiting mechanisms in situations of scarce resources for new voices and entrants to the discipline, especially as affirmative action comes under increasing attack. And even if special efforts are made to hire women, people of color, and younger people, these efforts will be limited if there are few vacant seats on the train. Given downsizing, many new opportunities are not traditional tenured seats but instead are temporary and part-time, so newer members of the workforce, many of whom are women and people of color, may find themselves clambering into the train aisles and other transient niches while the permanent passengers continue to occupy the seats, at least for

the moment. ,

Fiscal Pressures on Colleges and Universities We all know the nation’s fiscal patterns put enormous pressures on the status quo. Due in part to the nation’s deepening political conserva-

tism and- what amounts to a gradualist tax revolt, the body politic at | federal and state levels is now disinclined to fund the public good at prior ~ levels. Education, being a significant part of public expenditures (especially at the state level), is necessarily a target. And the current political context is likely to be more than transient: the conservative trend is as wide as the planet and likely to last for a long time. All of this means that the finances underpinning higher education, already weathering heavy reductions in state after state, are in for worse. So what will it be like? Commentators predict we will finally see the

college and university broken apart and remade. “Restructuring,” we

96 Transforming Academia are told, will do away with tenure and faculty governance; presidents will become corporate CEOs beholden only to boards of directors; and the faculty will be converted to a cheap, enrollment-driven, transient labor force. Expensive graduate programs with small enrollments will

be dropped, salaries and benefits will fall, and academic research will be | displaced by whatever brings in money or students. But, will this happen? So far as I know, nobody has yet been crowned as the official diviner

for the academy’s future. Into that vacuum I have the temerity to bring

my own guesses. Here’s what I think. .

Economic pressures, led by conservatism, tax revolt, and balanced national budgets, will, by themselves, impoverish, but not fundamentally restructure the professoriate. If these forces were going to do that, we

would already have quite a number of institutions that would have , closed, merged, or otherwise shown such changes. Tobe sure, California, _ under various governors, has drastically cut higher education’s budget. So have Oregon, Massachusetts, Florida, and New York. Yet closures — and dramatic restructurings are hard to find. Yes, Eisenhower College closed. Yes, the University of Bridgeport (Connecticut) is owned by the Moonies. Yes, Adelphi (New York) was imperiled. Yet the national pattern is overwhelmingly to hunker down, enlarge the classes, freeze new positions, recapture vacated ones, furlough the support staff, do everything more cheaply, but keep the instructional staff basically like it has been.* The sociologists were alarmed when Washington Univer-

sity closed its department, and the mathematicians were stunned by Rochester’s plan to eliminate its Ph.D. in math (but not the department), but Iam hard pressed to think of an anthropology department that thus far has been eliminated and its faculty fired. Doubtless there will be some

closings, mainly through consolidation of the multiple campuses that were established in the boom times of the 1960s and 1970s, but nationally

I think the hunker-down pattern is more likely to characterize the next quarter-century than is radical restructuring. There is enormous momentum in the academy and in the public’s picture of college education © as a process in which faculty teach students in classrooms. If I live long enough to look back from the vantage point of 25 years from now, my hunch is that the basic outlines of the professoriate will remain in place. Professors will probably look back on the 1990s with nostalgia. They will note the subsequent spread of bare-bones working conditions from some institutions to most institutions, but the fundamental outline will still be

there. If anything, the failed strike of the teaching assistants at Yale supports the point that academic momentum is hard to redirect. In the employment figures reviewed above there is a mixture of good news and bad. On the negative side, we dysfunctionally encourage an unrealistic number of graduated Ph.D.s to seek a place on the academic

Anthropology’s Professoriate 97 train, with inordinate disappointment arid altered lives the result. We also will, I think, see salaries lag and many fewer institutions provide supportive infrastructure for professional work. Yet there is a positive side. Academic anthropology is numerically large, still growing, and generating record levels of classroom interest, as measured by enrollments. Judging from the number of new journals begun, books published,

and the size of the annual meeting program, our profession is astonishingly productive. On balance, anthropology’s professoriate has the resources to respond and adapt. We have left the professional village. -- Wenow need to figure out how to make our city work.

Notes 1. The American Anthropologist, perhaps not surprisingly given the argument of this paper, is now resized and bright red. 2. The Guide to Departments is published annually by the AAA and has functioned as the professional directory for anthropologists with academic affiliations in the United States. It also has served as a central source of information on graduate programs for prospective graduate students. Nearly all departments at the graduate level list their faculty in the Guide, as do a large proportion of departments offering only undergraduate degrees in anthropology or related areas. In recent years editors of the Guide have worked to expand its coverage to nonacademic anthropologists as well, and, reflecting this, now title the volume

The AAA Guide.

_ 3. We have also looked at each individual year between 1990-91 and

1995-96 for signs of recent fluctuations that would not be re’lected in the every

fifth year sample. | 4. It is important to be keenly aware that these limitations intentionally restrict our attention to the academic sector of anthropology—that is, those anthropologists holding appointments on the faculties of colleges and universities. Probably fewer than half of all Ph.D.-trained anthropologists are employed

by academic institutions, and virtually none of the large number of applied anthropologists trained at the master’s level are found there. 5. There are, of course, data sources on higher education in federal agencies and from private consortia that are of generally high quality, but within those there are little data that focus specifically on anthropology. 6. For example, some years ago a prominent anthropologist served on the _ faculty of Ross Hulman, an engineering school that did not list in the Guide. 7. Institutions are categorized only by the level of the highest academic degree (i.e., doctoral , master’s, or non-graduate-level). Not only are degrees in anthropology included, but also other degrees listed by the department in which anthropology evidently participates. Thus, a department listing a B.A. in anthropology and an M.S. in social work is ranked at the master’s level. Undergraduate departments list no degree above the baccalaureate level. Faculty listed are from the Guide’s categories “full-time faculty,” “part-time faculty,” and “anthropologists in other departments, schools, or institutes” and,

where encountered, plausible variants of these. Omitted categories include

98 : Transforming Academia “part-time research,” “full-time research,” and a variety of other nonteaching _

titles. For economy of presentation, the years listed on the x-axis denote the first half of the academic year. Thus, “1990" refers to academic year 1990-91.

8. Some of that growth may include long-existing departments that finally decided to list in the Guide, but even if that accounted for all 20, at least it suggests

that more departments feel it important to claim the professional identity that goes with a Guide listing. And that says something about the professional

self-image of those places.

9. In this paper, “graduate departments” refers to departments offering master’s and doctoral programs. “Undergraduate departments” refers to departments that offer bachelor’s degrees but list no graduate-level degrees in the. Guide. Institutions offering only two-year undergraduate degrees, rarely listed in the Guide, are not included in these categories or calculations. 10. The growth of full-time faculty nationally, including all fields and all

types of postsecondary institutions, has remained rather steady at about twothirds of the total faculty (U.S. Department of Commerce 1996:183). 11. There are, of course, other constraining penalties to be faced: the insti-

tution’s accrediting agency will object if a high reliance on part-time faculty continues, or if the credentials of those teaching courses are a poor fit with the subject matter. Purther, for students to progress in a timely manner toward their degrees, courses have to be offered with predictable regularity; widespread objections from students that their progress is being thwarted is politically untenable unless an institution is in open crisis. 12. This comment, of course, is true in reference to those who now have jobs. Only about half of newly graduated Ph.D.s will find jobs in academia. For those aspiring faculty who do not find jobs, the possibilities are bleak. 13. The decline in marketability comes from various factors. Those supporting themselves in the interim with other employment are less likely to publish

articles and may not be able to attend professional meetings and give papers. Consequently, their resumes begin to show a hiatus in professional productivity, which, for a hiring committee, is difficult to distinguish from that of a candidate who is disinclined to be professionally active. Then, too, entry-level faculty need to rapidly build professional networks in the early years to position themselves for retention and tenure reviews. This is difficult for those whose positions do __ not encourage and support these activities. Also, most new positions arepegged > — at “entry-level” salaries that have a diminishing fit with the needs of many who

have had alternative employment for several years. | | 14. Clearly tenure has played a played a part in this, encouraging administrators to look elsewhere for budget savings, but the faculty’s position is also supported by the public’s view that university education is centrally about students learning from teachers.

.8

Restructuring, Downsizing, Surviving? The CUNY Case

- LUCIE WOOD SAUNDERS During the past decade, academic restructuring has become a continuing feature of university life. In some places, it is foreshadowed in negative comments about the quality of students’ education; in others,

it is pushed forward by the financial pressures of expanding enrollments. This restructuring is carried out through dropping both faculty and disciplines. Market models drawn from the world of business have become the driving force behind university restructuring; thus, considerations of student demand, public expectations, and competitiveness penetrate the decision-making process. Under different names and in varying degrees, restructuring has been an element of life at City University of New York (CUNY) during the past 35 years, especially during the early 1960s, the mid-1970s, and the 1990s. In this paper, I will examine some of the consequences of the last two restructurings for anthropology

at CUNY and ask what can be learned from the CUNY case about the impacts of different restructuring strategies. Restructuring at CUNY is achieved through increased centralization, amid shifting definitions of educational purposes, student capabili-

ties, and faculty roles as well as the changing functions of a public university for city people, urban society, and political interests. Not surprisingly, the thrust of restructuring is restrictive, limiting access to undergraduate education in various ways that deflect the earlier democratization, which was accomplished through the commitment of New

York City colleges to provide both high-quality education and free - ~ tuition. Late-20th-century global economic and political transformations have led to changing perceptions of both the colleges and their students; these perceptions have often become negative as many, including former city residents, now affluent and suburbanized, have reacted to the new ethnic and racial proportions of the city population. Elements of national debates about higher education have surfaced

in restructurings at CUNY; these include issues about (1) student | body—a question of who shall be educated surfaced dramatically with

99 :

100 Transforming Academia the imposition of tuition in 1976 in this formerly free institution; (2) access based on high school graduation, that is, challenges to the open admissions policy that prevailed for six years; (3) accommodating the enlarged student body produced by open admissions (to this end, classes

were enlarged and courses in remedial English expanded); (4) the quality of CUNY students, with an occasional public surfacing of this debate in news reports on critical incidents indicating poor student performance; (5) intercollege structural realignments emerging from the formation of

the university from a number of independent colleges; (6) recurrent efforts to curb the growth of some disciplines; and (7) the development of interdisciplinary courses. Who defined these issues and how they were addressed often remained obscure to most faculty and possibly to many administrators as well, though faculty reacted from time to time

to issues they perceived as important, including the loss of free tuition. By the mid-1990s, CUNY consisted of ten senior colleges, six community colleges, a graduate school, a medical school, and a law school. Its student enrollment was over 200,000 (projected to increase to 215,000 | in 1996-97), and it had about 5,600 full-time faculty as well as thousands of part-time faculty who made up more than 50 percent of its teaching staff. I write from the perspective of a faculty member of one of the senior colleges, Lehman, where I was chair of the department of anthropology from 1970 until 1996. I was also a member of the Executive Committee of the General Faculty governance body for a decade and chair of the

committee for five years; as committee chair I also belonged to the university’s Inter-College Governance Leaders Council. The first restructuring of CUNY was its formation as a university from formerly independent colleges in 1961. This was contested vigorously in some college governance bodies, but it prevailed though it was

not highly bureaucratized. At first, CUNY was an umbrella structure _ | with a small central administration, and the college presidents, who had ! established themselves as independent heads of their institutions, continued to make their own decisions for their respective colleges.

1976 and Its Aftermath ‘Restructuring in 1976 tested the centralized power of the university as the chancellor advocated a program to consolidate five colleges and

reduce or eliminate some disciplines on some campuses (John Jay, Richmond, York, Medgar Evans, and Hostos were candidates for consolidation).. Anthropology was included in the disciplines to be reduced, as shown in the following statement:

The CUNY Case 101 There are [sic] a basic core of programs, departments, and majors. . .essential to any college offering a baccalaureate in the arts and sciences... .They are judged to be history, English, political science, economics, sociology, psy-

chology, biology, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. In addition, some fundamental offerings in foreign language are essential... .This assumption leaves the senior colleges with a wide range of programs that become candidates for consolidation, including among others, the following: foreign languages (other than Spanish), anthropology, philosophy, home eco-

nomics, ethnic studies, geology, astronomy, physical education and

recreation. . .it seems clear that on the basis of both student demand and cost, major programs should be available only at a relatively limited number

7 of locations. [quoted in Silverman n.d.:3] This restructuring proposal was made in response to the severe financial crisis in New York City in 1975-76, when the city government declared it

was unable to fund the university as the city teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.’ As a consequence of this situation, the state took over financing the senior colleges while the community colleges remained funded by the city.

Another consequence of the situation was backtracking on the open admissions policy initiated in 1970, which had allowed matriculation of any city high school graduate in one of the colleges. In the tradition of free public education, this policy had expanded the student population greatly and increased the proportion of minority students. By the 1980s, open admissions was replaced with a policy that required high school grade averages of 80 or above (with some exceptions) for admission to

the senior colleges. ,

Most important, the financial pressures of the time offered a justifi-

cation for reversing the policy of free tuition for the first time in the history of the colleges. While the initial payment was small, the step was significant in that it ended the city practice of providing free, high-quality

postsecondary education toits citizens. =~ _ Though financial pressures appeared to drive restructuring, its context must have been the ongoing reallocation of social wealth from public goals to private ends. The restructuring proposal was fought by a number of interests outside as well as within the university. Class and race biases had been perceived quickly, since the student bodies of some of the colleges slated for closure were predominantly African American, ~ and tuition was a financial hardship for all students of working-class backgrounds. Political pressures from borough, ethnic, and racial constituencies defeated the proposals to merge colleges at that time. The proposals to cut out disciplines were fought by faculty, with Silverman, then chair of the graduate program in anthropology, leading the battle to preserve the discipline at all the colleges. She mobilized anthropologists within the system, then within the city, to support the discipline, and also enlisted the strong support of the American Anthropological

102 Transforming Academia Association (AAA). The AAA sent statemefits and representatives tospeak _ at board hearings and at a press conference that Silverman convened. As a result of these efforts, anthropology remained at all the colleges. After the battles, the college budgets were reduced, but the separate colleges retained autonomy in deciding what cuts to make. Here college

presidents made a significant difference, with anthropology faring well under sympathetic presidents.* Overall, CUNY lost anthropologists, some through resignation because of the uncertainty they perceived in the situation of the discipline. The American Anthropological Association Guide to Departments listed_111 full-time anthropologists in the fall of 1975-76 at CUNY; the 1976-77 listing showed 94 (AAA 1975, 1976, 1996; Silverman 1976). The number of part-time faculty, however, showed an

increase. Twenty years later, the Guide showed 81 anthropologists full

time at CUNY, 74 of whom were in departments of anthropology. In the aftermath of the 1976 crisis, higher teaching loads were imposed at some of the CUNY colleges, and sporadic efforts were made >

to increase class sizes. Core curricula were instituted in some of the colleges. They were presented first as a solution to the problems of underprepared students, then argued for as a means of saving money, though how this would be done was demonstrated rarely. Core courses were usually designed to be interdisciplinary, and it was argued that they gave faculty a chance to work in disciplines other than their own, an opportunity said to invigorate them. The view was advanced that anybody could teach anything to our students; what this said about our

respective disciplines or our students remained mercifully obscure. Minimally, however, it indicated the absence of understanding of what prolonged work in a specific field means not only for research but also for teaching.’ At Lehman, we managed to place anthropology within the basic requirements in four of five areas; the result was that we main- |

tained our proportion of students at about 12 percent of the college population. Until now, only biology has outdrawn physical anthropology among students who are filling their requirements in basic science. | Thus, student exposure to anthropology continued and even rose, but this often meant we were unable to spend as much faculty effort on the major courses, which had consequences for the most recentrestructuring __ proposal.

Restructuring in 1992 A new chancellor at CUNY appointed a committee of college presidents and senior faculty to make recommendations for restructuring the university. They issued a report in December 1992, known popularly as

The CUNY Case 103 _ the Goldstein Report.* The committee supported the new chancellor’s expressed interest in “creating a unified institution through a central planning effort. ... to achieve efficiencies in program delivery; and to enhance University-wide collaboration.” (Reynolds, quoted in CUNY 1992:2). The committee’s strategy was to achieve unification by reducing

the duplication of majors, and indeed courses, through sharing faculty and directing students from one college to another for the courses they needed. Specific programs were selected for review on the basis of the committee’s “desire to cover a broad stretch of the University’s pro-. grams, to address a selection of programs where enrollments appeared to be a concern” (The Report 1992:40). Recommendations concerning

science, math, and history were generally supportive, encouraging maintenance and often growth. Languages were mentioned for further

review in several colleges; physical education and recreation were viewed with concern. Anthropology and philosophy, but not sociology and psychology, were also reviewed. The result for Hunter and Queens Colleges was that they were encouraged to not only maintain but also

expand their anthropology departments. Lehman’s program was referred for further review because of the low number of majors reported, , with the implication that the program would continue if enrollments improved. Anthropology departments in the other colleges were not recommended for support. The overall effect of the Report was to support two dominant colleges, Hunter and Queens; some others, including Lehman, would offer less but remain comprehensive, and the remainder would become narrowly vocational. While the doctoral programs at the Graduate Center were not affected directly, they would obviously be damaged by recommendations restricting positions in disciplines at the colleges that staffed the Graduate Center. This was the case with anthropology. Again anthropologists mobilized across campuses to develop arguments and strategies to counter the Goldstein Report. Graduate students and faculty argued against it at public meetings held by the CUNY board of trustees and elsewhere, pointing out the value of anthropology in undergraduate education, the difficulty of sustaining it without departments, the great difficulties multicampus courses posed for students already juggling work and college, and also the perceived racial and class biases in the proposals, which consigned City, with the highest propor-

tion of African American students among the senior colleges, and Lehman, with the highest proportion of Hispanic students, to the lower tier of colleges. This time, massive pressure against the proposals came from the campuses, representing a cross-section of faculty opinion and suggesting that both anthropologists and philosophers had made their cases to their colleagues. Faculty perceived this restructuring was potentially

104 Transforming Academia an attack on their departments as well, and should be understood as simply the first round in reduction.

Over time, the proposals led to votes of “no confidence” in the chancellor on many campuses, but the Lehman General Faculty was the first to vote this way. She took faculty opposition seriously and came to Lehman to argue her case with the Executive Committee of the General Faculty before the meeting at which the no-confidence vote was taken. Later, the Intercollege Governance Council (made up of heads of governance structures at the different colleges and the University Faculty Senate) opposed the Goldstein Report recommendations through force-

ful resolutions of “no confidence” in the chancellor because of her support for its proposals. By the fall of 1993, she backed away from supporting the recommendations of the Goldstein Report and stated

publicly that it was no longer operative. Instead, she initiated the “academic program planning” system on

— each campus; this system required faculty and administrators to work together to develop yearly plans. The central office specified again that local plans must show cooperative efforts with other colleges, and the implication was that older collaborations were not adequate. The local

plans were submitted to the central office for approval and were rewarded selectively with positions or funds. Although on the surface this system returned some control to local campuses, it obviously maintained

power centrally. ,

The next major blow to the colleges came in spring 1995 with anew

state budget crisis. Campuses were threatened with cuts of up to 25 percent of their budgets if the full effect of the new funding formula was realized, and tuition would be increased by $750, or 23 percent. Enor-

mous political pressure was organized to increase state funding to the : institution. Students from the State University of New York (SUNY) as

well as CUNY converged on Albany repeatedly in huge numbers, while faculty and administrators made the case in Albany and in meetings there and elsewhere with legislators. Many legislators were sympathetic | to the university or became so, and eventually the cut in state funds was reduced, but tuition was raised. While the negotiations were going on, however, the CUNY Board

of Trustees passed a resolution declaring that the university was in a , state of financial emergency; therefore, college campuses must draw up plans to cut staff. Presidents appointed committees—some with considerable faculty representation—to make recommendations about what should be cut. Significant agreement emerged across campuses about what to cut, with decisions reflecting the Goldstein Report; thus, common targets for closure or reorganization were physical education, remediation, and some languages. The anthropology department at City was threatened

The CUNY Case 105 with closure, and the department at Lehman was threatened with loss of a faculty member. The major impacts of downsizing in spring 1995 were an overall loss of faculty and staff as well as demoralization. The effect of downsizing was exacerbated by the preceding decline of 12 percent in the university faculty between 1988 and 1994. At Lehman, the drop during the decade had been dramatic, with an overall reduction of full-time faculty from about 350 to 250 between 1991 and 1995. Faculty

were reduced through eliminating untenured members and tenured faculty as well if their departments were closed; the latter were urged to ___ take early retirement where possible. The interests of particular college presidents again were important in determining what remained, reflecting, I think, the continuation of some degree of local autonomy for the

presidents. | ,

The massive funding cut did not materialize, however. The tuition increase compensated for the drop in funding, and colleges began the fall semester with almost adequate funding. The colleges, however, had been reorganized; as one person put it, “We could have debated endlessly about whether to close particular departments, but the financial emergency made it possible to implement parts of the Goldstein Report.” The changes imposed put faculty governance in opposition to centralized administration again. As the chair of the University Faculty Senate saw the events, © _ The assumption that Retrenchment Guidelines so fully override existing college structures, remove the authority and responsibility of the faculty to design curriculum and absorb colleagues in their departments, eliminate peer review, and establish presidential authority (as well as 80th Street authority) to achieve academic program planning... is not collegiality. ... [We] no longer believe financial exigency exists. [Cooper 1995]?

~The initial events of 1995 were replayed in spring 1996. Again, a threat of funding reductions for CUNY loomed in the state budget proposed by the new Republican governor. Again, lobbying efforts were intensified with the state legislature; this time, massive demonstrations

_ were eschewed in favor of visits to legislators in Albany and letter writing. Many legislators expressed understanding and support for the ~ university. The chancellor again asked the board of trustees to declare financial exigency, which it did in March, and she informed campus presidents that their budgets would be cut about 15 percent. By April, some campuses had formed review committees again to advise and consent to administrative proposals for cuts. Lehman’s was the first college administration to present its proposals to its review committee at the end of April. In these proposals, the anthropology department was slated to lose five of its 11 faculty, all tenured except one, and it would

106 Transforming Academia be combined with sociology, which was also to lose just under half of its members. The new entity was to be named the Department of Cultural and Social Studies. Other departments to be cut in half were music and economics, while nursing would be reduced mainly by dropping substitute faculty and cutting admissions. A public hearing was held by the committee, and faculty argued for their departments, their disciplines,

and the principle of tenure. Additionally, when the anthropology de-

partment made this threat known, letters of support came in from anthropologists at other colleges in the university, outside the university, the AAA, and graduate and undergraduate students. In May the threat receded, when the decision in the lawsuit filed by the faculty union and the Senate Chair about the 1995 restructuring found for the plaintiff, that

is, that the university could not reorganize and abolish faculty positions under threat of financial emergency when such an emergency didnot ~- | yet exist. By June 1996, the threat of retrenchment faded as it became widely known in the university that funding would be restored by the legislature (while there was a slight overall decrease in funds from the previous year, it was offset by retirements). ©

Lehman was the only college in the university to propose cutting anthropology in 1996, a choice that must be analyzed in part as a local event. The key here seemed to be what Judith Shapiro calls social science

illiteracy (Shapiro 1995). No one on the retrenchment committee or in academic administration had any training in social science; hence, sociology, anthropology, and economics must have all seemed dispensable. Arguments about academic quality or student enrollment were not put forward by the administration and would have been contradictory, since the anthropology and sociology departments had just received very favorable reviews from outside evaluation teams; moreover, the anthropology department inciuded people well known in the field for their

scholarly work.

The music faculty also included well-known composers, while the economics faculty had the largest number of majors in the college. One characteristic these otherwise diverse departments shared was that their chairs had poor relationships with their deans; thus personal relationships seemed to play a significant role in administrative decision making at this level’ Such choices would have been unlikely, however, had there been any indication at the time of university-level support for anthropology. The outlook for anthropology at CUNY seemed to change again during summer 1996, when a committee appointed by the chancellor issued a report on the doctoral programs. The anthropology doctoral

program was included in the highest category, and was thus recommended for support. Unlike the reports of 1976 and 1992, the basis of this

last judgment was the quality of the program as indicated by national

The CUNY Case 107 ranking. Since the graduate program depends heavily on the colleges for staff, this favorable report would alse-seem advantageous to the undergraduate departments.

Why Restructure CUNY in the 1990s? While I recognize that any organization can be improved, in my opinion the major reasons for restructuring CUNY were financial and political, not the improvement of education. A new chancellor had to do

-- something to show she was taking charge, hence the Goldstein Report. Surely, its proposals had been intended to show legislators she could handle a system that appeared to them to be out of control, and if she could do that, then they should meet her requests for the institution she was re-creating. Her strategy was probably effective on this level, since she appeared to gain considerable political support at first for various proposals she made. However, the effect of restructuring CUNY so far

has not been to enable it to meet the goal of providing a high-quality education more effectively; education is less available because of higher tuition, which made CUNY less accessible to the people for whom it was intended. In fall 1995, student enrollment dropped 10 percent, much of it attributed to the tuition increase, but by fall 1996 a few colleges had increased enrollments. Faculty were fewer, and offerings constricted. Budgetary cuts may make some of this unavoidable, but questions about the underlying goals of higher education for the city’s working people and the purposes of instruction in different disciplines remain undefined. The second factor in bringing the restructuring of CUNY to the fore at the time must have been the emergence of market models in higher education. The pressure of market models is indicated in a 1994 report of the Pew Higher Education Roundtables. The roundtables were influential gatherings of college administrators sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts, a major foundation that funds projects in higher education. .

The report states that “changes most important to higher education today are those that are external to it. What is new is societal demand—in

the American context, market forces—to reshape the academy” (Pew _ 1994:1a). The 1992 proposal to restructure CUNY was based on a market

model, using a simple measure of disciplinary viability, that is, its numbers of majors at the different colleges two years earlier. Anthropology needs to take a critical perspective on this model; minimally, one needs to ask what the justification is for a market model. For example, what predictive value does choice of major in the past have for ascertain-

ing future choices? Will students’ choices be cyclical? Will there be predictable downward trends in choice of specific fields? What relationship

108 | Transforming Academia does choices of major have to socioeconomic and political contexts? Using market models, the range of choices is defined by administrative committee, not necessarily conversant with the discipline and distant from educational practice—is this sound procedure? The hegemony of a market model in educational planning and its acceptance by leaders in the field encourages administrators to find it acceptable. I suggest this model spreads in ways familiar to ethnographers; that is, we can document the process if we ask who speaks with whom. Higher administrators talk with other administrators more often and more regularly than they do with faculty, which must lead to more

exchanges of information and understandings among them. Once a market model is established in the administrative sector, challenges to it

are resisted as attacks on both progress and the system. It is important to recognize that questioning market models does not mean questioning financial responsibility and prudence. Clearly both are essential. Concern with costs does not necessarily go along with market models, and its absence adds an unreal quality to debate. For example, if we look at CUNY again, two large gyms were opened between 1993 and 1996, one at the cost of $57 million and the other at the cost of $45 million. Within the same period, faculty were cut and the physical education requirement was removed from the curricula of the colleges with the new gyms,

with the consequence that potential student use of the gyms was reduced. Plans for the gyms were made long before the crises, of course, and must be evaluated not only in terms of educational practice but also in relation to the support they allowed the public purse to-provide to the private construction industry during periods of few contracts. The third factor in restructuring in 1992 must have been the pre-

dominance of reorganizing and downsizing in popular talk in this country. If that worked for business, why not for a university? This . approach is related also to a political and ideological shiftinthecountry which has led to downsizing in government, reduced spending for social needs, and calls for privatizing public services, including schools. (Something of this emerges now at CUNY, where one of the gyms is expected to make a profit by seeking contracts with private health clubs for its use.)

Interestingly, the Lehman case shows that when the process of | restructuring begins, it may take on a life of its own, losing its relationship to the initiating factors. The 1996 restructuring proposals at Lehman largely ignored immediate market demands. Economics had the largest number of majors, sociology was heavily enrolled, and the number of majors in anthropology was growing, hence decisions did not reflect student demand. Any connection with a market model must have been on the basis of anticipated shifts in student interest and job possibilities

The CUNY Case 109 for graduates, reflecting perhaps an increasingly vocationalized definition of the college by the central administration.

Why Anthropology? Anthropology appears to be more or less dispensable in all the restructuring proposals at CUNY, and it differs in this way from other social sciences and sciences. This vulnerability can be attributed partly to the continuing marginality of the discipline in precollege education. _ Anthropology appears rarely, after all, in elementary and high schools, and must appear less important since it has no long-standing association with the essential training of an educated person. As anthropologists, we must find ways to show that anthropology is essential in this global economy with its shifting employment possibilities. In the CUNY case, it is important to note that no discussion of anthropology’s content or contribution to education took place in the Goldstein committee meetings. Similarly, the 1976 proposals seem to have been made with no particular discussion of the disciplines targeted for reduction (Silverman 1976).

Two differences between the restructuring efforts in 1976 and the mid-1990s are that a market model was explicit in the latter and that the university is increasingly centralized. This is why restructuring is succeeding. The market model measured viability primarily in terms of thenumber of majors. In a student population in which almost a third work full-time

and have family responsibilities, fewer students major in anthropology. Anthropology is not perceived as offering specific job training, thus it becomes a target in a market model. But it does provide essential skills for operating in today’s shifting multicultural job market, especially in a multicultural city. Specific job training is less relevant today because of a shifting job market that requires many job changes in a lifetime. We know anthro-

pology offers training in critical thinking, encourages adaptability, and informs students about cultural diversity. Interestingly, elite institutions emphasize these skills as the means of succeeding in higher-level work, yet restructuring reduces their availability to working-class students for whom the search for managerial jobs is much more difficult.

7 What is the outlook for anthropology at CUNY? The various restructuring proposals made no examination of the value of anthropology in undergraduate education, and this discussion still needs to take place. We must argue the case for anthropology forcefully. The centralization of control and administrative expansion that have taken place at CUNY, however, may reduce informed input by academic specialists into decision making, thus making it easier to create massive changes through administrative directions. Appointing faculty members to review committees is not

110 Transforming Academia a sufficient solution to this problem because they usually lack the broad | experience of their institutions necessary for critical evaluation of admin-

istrative proposals. While faculty participation is essential, we must develop more effective ways to enlist it. It is also necessary in the

changed CUNY structure to build alliances both within and between colleges. Until such changes are achieved, we continue to face power in the

familiar ways Eric Wolf has noted, with “disgruntlement, foot-dragging, escapism, sabotage, protest or outright resistance” (Wolf 1990:590). Two tasks for anthropology emerge from the CUNY case. First, we

- must show colleagues and administrators how anthropology contributes to a general education through varied undergraduate courses as well as through courses offered mainly to majors. This point was made

about the 1976 crisis (Silverman 1976); the support faculty in other. disciplines offered in recent restructuring crises suggests we have suc- ~_ ceeded in making the case to them. We need to make it more effectively to both administrators and boards of trustees. In doing so, we also need to engage in more comprehensive debates about the purposes of undergraduate education. Second, we need to bring a critical perspective to bear on currently popular market models in academia. Why this kind of restructuring? Why now? What purposes does it serve in creating an educated student? What does it contribute to maintaining universities as places of independent inquiry? In other words, anthropologists must become more involved rather than less in defining the issues facing academia; if we do not, we, too, will contribute to the impoverishment of higher education through structuring its content to meet market demand.

Notes Acknowledgments. 1 thank the faculty and administrative colleagues at Lehman College with whom I discussed issues raised here for their observations ~ —

and insights. I also want to thank Linda Basch and Jagna Sharff for their : comments. The interpretations are my own. 1. For an analysis of its political basis, its social costs, and the chasm it created between public good and private interests, see Tabb 1982. 2. At Lehman, the fact that the president’s father-in-law was an anthropologist was quite important, and the president’s respect for Eric Wolf, who had

joined the department in 1970, was also influential. ; 3. Other faculty rarely saw anthropology as interdisciplinary initially, yet it fits into almost any program designed to give students exposure to different

kinds of disciplines. . 4. The formal designation of the committee report (CUNY 1992) was The Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Academic Program Planning: A Report to the

~ Chancellor. Goldstein, who was the chair of the committee, was president of a community college within the system. 5. 80th Street refers to the office of the chancellor of the university.

Il Administrative Vantage Points

9

Schism and Continuity in the Academy JUDITH SHAPIRO Faculty members who become academic administrators are often asked whether they are able to keep up with their fields and, if not, Whether they miss practicing their scholarly disciplines. My own response to this question is that, while Iam not able to keep up in the sense

intended by the question (reading the current issues of scholarly journals, pursuing research for publication), I have the good fortune to have chosen a discipline that you practice as a way of life, no matter what you

happen to be doing. When you are an anthropologist by vocation, you are incapable of not being one. The tools of your craft are always at hand

to help you understand the environment in which you are moving, whatever it might be.

I believe our vocation as anthropologists enables us to play an active, creative, and interesting role in moving our institutions ahead in tough and complicated times. Times are indeed tough and complicated for institutions of higher education—that is clear to all of us—and things

will no doubt get tougher yet. The alarming decline in government support for higher education has made a major impact on many of our activities and operations—notably, research and financial aid. For some time now, we have been watching Congress the way the ancient inhabitants of Pompeii must have watched Mount Vesuvius. In the area of financial aid, we have monitored the fate of proposals

to tax institutions on their student loans, to weaken or eliminate the interest subsidy on students loans, and to end some lending programs altogether; these proposed changed all threatened to impose severe financial hardship on our students, their families, and the institutions seeking to offer them educations. As of the time of this writing, the picture is brighter than we had expected, with renewed support for some of the major federal loan programs and with the President seeking to use the tax system to encourage investment in education. Yet, the pressures continue because state and federal support will not, in fact, increase to cover increases in expenses; students and their families are, moreover, 113

114 Transforming Academia bumping up against the limit on their ability to borrow. As we seek in © this environment to maintain student bodies that are both academically qualified and diverse, we confront financial aid burdens that are becoming unaffordable. Those of us in private institutions live with the general

fear of pricing ourselves out of the market, given the necessarily high 7 cost of the education we provide. Meanwhile, we are in the midst of a major technological revolution that will affect the way we teach and conduct our research, the way our students learn, and the way we do our administrative business. The pace of change is rapid, the directions hard to predict, and the costs high both

in material resources and time. . a

Significant changes are also taking place in the scholarly and curricular shape of our programs, as the various academic disciplines shift —_their boundaries and come into new alignments. Our students havealso ~ been changing, as they come to us from a wider range of backgrounds and, in the case of undergraduates and their families, bring along an

expanding set of expectations about the services and supports that should be available to them during their college years. These challenges have made life uncomfortable for many of us in the academy, where security and stability have been among our major fringe benefits. We need, however, to confront our changed circumstances and, in so doing, take care to operate as anthropologists and not simply as natives. We should remember to exercise the good habits we had to develop to cope with one of the most stressful experiences any of us has ever gone through, namely, fieldwork. We should be advantaged not only by the specific theoretical and empirical perspectives that we bring as anthropologists to the understanding of our social surroundings, but also by our distinctive practice, as fieldworkers, of combining total immersion with a certain detachment. Detachment may not be fashionable in these postmodern times of -

free-floating complicity, but if construed ina suitably sophisticated and critical manner, detachment remains the cornerstone not only of anthropological insight, but also of wisdom and maturity more generally. The distinctive stance of being observer/analysts of our worlds, even as we are participants in them, should never desert us, and should provide an

advantage both in understanding what is going on around us and in addressing it in imaginative ways. At the very least, adopting the role of participant observer is one of life’s great defense mechanisms, because

any stressful or unpleasant experience can be construed as fieldwork. , Let us turn now to some of the issues before us, beginning with one that has occupied a great deal of our attention already: the increasing fluidity within and between academic disciplines, including, in particular, the emergence of what has come to be known as “cultural studies.”

“Schism and Continuity 115 Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Drift One observer of the cultural studies scene, quoted in Change maga-

zine, states: “Cultural Studies is part of the noise made by the great academic ice-flows [sic] of Literature, Sociology, Anthropology, and so on as their mass shifts [sic] and breaks apart” (Collini 1995:9). The same short piece reported on the expansion of the Cultural Studies section of

the Harvard bookstore and noted that the same books that didn’t sell __ well in the Sociology section of Olsson’s bookstore in Washington, DC, sold much better when they were moved to the Cultural Studies section. In thinking about this, we as anthropologists can congratulate ourselves on our degree of success in spreading the gospel of culture. We

can also appreciate all that is positive in the lively interdisciplinarity abroad in the academy—releasing a lot of creative energy and providing the freedom to follow problems wherever they may lead without being held up by disciplinary boundaries that are inevitably arbitrary. At the same time, it would be fair to say that the game of musical chairs going on among the disciplines—in which literary critics become cultural historians, historians become anthropologists, and anthropologists become literary critics—reflects not only intellectual adventure and creativity, but also a certain element of flight, of ennui with one’s own craft. Or perhaps, to put it in religious terms, a loss of vocation. In our eagerness to set sail for more exotic scholarly shores, we may have left too much of our valuable intellectual baggage behind. How do we best reach out to other disciplines without losing sight of the distinc-

tive contributions of our own? If we really believe that the field of anthropology, in all its historical contingency, has something of great and unique value to offer, this is an important time to engage in focused reflection on what that something is. ~

Just as institutions of higher education have felt the need, in recent years, to clarify their goals, to specify their niche, to decide what it is that will take the highest priority when hard choices have to be made, so we must do that kind of thinking within academic programs. The thinking _that goes on within programs will determine how their contributions to

one another and to the more general purposes of the institution are evaluated. The choices made within departments will affect the choices that one day may be made between departments. To put it in Marxist terms, now it’s time to play you bet your life. As we think about the future shape, or shapes, of anthropology, we know that it will not be a question of simply continuing to do the same thing in the same ways. However, as anthropologists, we should understand that a distinctive identity and a strong tradition are assets; they are

116 : Transforming Academia resources one does not simply squander. Weneed a compelling narrative to tie who we have been to where we are going—just the way all the folks we study do.

This project of linking past and present is something leaders of academic institutions must take very much to heart as they seek to guide | their colleges and universities through times of radical transformation. Those of us who come to academic administration with a background in anthropology have an advantage in this regard. While the influence of corporate culture on the world of higher education has led to the view of college and university presidents as Chief Executive Officers, we as anthropologists are in a position to understand how the president operates as a Chief Interpretive Officer. It is the president who must identify

those aspects of the institution’s mission that should be given prominence at a given moment in its history, in order to focus the attention of _ the community and to move the institution forward. It is necessary for each academic program, including anthropology,

to do similar work: to take stock of the discipline’s distinctive past contributions and to develop a sense of innovative variations on this . heritage to move the field into new intellectual territory. This activity takes time, energy, and focus, and it really must be done. This task of focused reflection and intellectual consolidation is made more complex by the ramifying ties that link a department’s members to a variety of other programs, pointing them in different directions. The

proliferation of interdisciplinary programs causes individual faculty members to feel overextended and leveraged out. Those who play central roles in their disciplinary departments also commonly play central roles

in interdepartmental programs. The cross-cutting ties are cross-cutting __

some of us to ribbons.

We will have to find ways to deal with this multiplication of entities |

in our curriculum and in the social organization of the university. ~ However that plays out, anthropologists must consider the distinctive role of their department within the wider academic institution and their own distinctive roles as individual anthropologists within other programs in which they participate. In addition to developing ties with colleagues in other disciplines, anthropologists should create new links with colleagues in other institutions. The combination of resource constraints, technological opportunities, and shifts in the intellectual landscape of the disciplines will make it increasingly important for colleges and universities to take better

advantage of what they have to offer one another. Consortial relationships of various kinds have developed at an increasing rate and continue to do so. Anthropologists should be very much a part of this process by actively seeking out such ties and exploring faculty exchanges with

Schism and Continuity 117 neighboring institutions that will expand one’s program and one’s circle of colleagues.

Multiculturalism and Its Discontents Our institutions are profoundly affected by an increasing level of cultural heterogeneity, both in the curriculum and in the community. The multicultural dramas being played out on our campuses are very ~ muuch those of the wider society. However, many in the wider society seem bent on holding academia particularly responsible for multicultural conflict, as we have seen in the continuing backlash over “political correctness” on our campuses. Anthropologists have had their own arguments with the multicultural movement, which has, in fact, taken some highly problematic

directions. We have seen our own message of cultural relativism fetishized to the point where difference has become the terminus of the cultural train of thought and the culture concept has been used to give parochialism a whole new lease on life. If anthropology has contributed

to this condition, this is the time to remember that we also have the antidote. We must take special care to foreground certain aspects of our

intellectual heritage at this time so that we can play a productive and much needed part in the conversations around diversity going on at our respective institutions. We should be calling attention to our discipline’s role in showing how cultures are not separate islands, how their bounda-

ries are not firm and unchanging, how history is made through the contact of peoples and traditions, and how cultural identities are themselves inherently relational. We, as anthropologists, can and must help

our students understand how knowledge is gained by the movement from one cultural world to another because this has been at the very center of our project as a discipline. The flip side of fetishized individual cultural traditions is the preva-

lent view that any and all interactions between cultures fall within a postcolonial master narrative of power and oppression. This encourages

- disinclination to cross cultural boundaries and a suspicion that those who want to do so, including anthropologists, are up to no good. While anthropologists certainly have the obligation to engage in a self-reflective

critique of anthropology’s location in the political scheme of things, many of us have gone overboard in applying a hermeneutic of suspicion to our own professional activities. We have also perhaps suffered too many slings and arrows from colleagues in other disciplines, who have themselves wandered in no forest beyond the groves of academe.

118 Transforming Academia

Social Science Illiteracy , We have seen the center of intellectual gravity in cultural studies

shift from the social sciences to the humanities. While many welcome | and imaginative contributions to scholarship have been produced by this development, much has been lost. Scholars in the humanities often seem to be breathtakingly unfamiliar with social science research and theory in the areas to which they turn their attention. This ignorance on _ the part of our colleagues, who should reasonably be expected to know better, is but the tip of a vast iceberg of social science illiteracy that afflicts both our students and the wider society. It is time to start worrying about

and innumeracy. _

this in a focused way, just as we worry about other forms of illiteracy .

Social science illiteracy is a major ingredient in the anti—affirmative , action movement that has been gathering a fairly full head of steam in our country. The opposition to affirmative action rests on the culturally familiar view of society as made up of a collection of individuals; it draws

on the culturally familiar inability to understand how membership ina _ social category or group affects one’s experience and life chances. It is all

too easy these days to chuck concepts like gender, ethnicity, and class into the PC dumpster and have done with them. Social science illiteracy is behind so-called identity politics, with its simplified, essentialist views of ethnicity or sexual orientation. Social science illiteracy leads us to see our political life in terms of a play of personalities. This idea is responsible for an interesting reversal of the stance many of us remember from the late 1960s and early 1970s when we asserted that “the personal is political.” Where this once meant that

we must understand and lay bare the ways in which our personal circumstances are shaped by history and by broader social forces (in° — . other words, C. Wright Mills’s ideas about the “sociological imagination”), instead we see today a focus so intense on the personal that it. simply absorbs the political. The tools of social, political, economic, and cultural analysis we once used to understand how even our most private lives were shaped now lie rusting in some infrequently visited shed. It is time to be worried that too many of our students may never have used them at all. Our students need to know where to turn for intellectual help in the

work of great social theorists of pre-postmodern times. They must be encouraged to seek that help in addressing specific questions about social identity and social action. Anthropologists, together with colleagues in the other social science disciplines, need to reflect on the contributions they should be making to the general education of undergraduates. Responsibility

Schism and Continuity 119 must be taken for establishing intellectual priorities in the curriculum of

the social sciences. Our increasingly decentered approach to course offerings and requirements is not serving our students well. However contingent our curricular choices may be, we are still accountable for

making them. a Whose Education Is It Anyway?

There is a great deal of public concern about the state of undergraduate education and whether it has received short shrift in universities where the reward structure for faculty revolves around achievements in research and where there is an inverse correlation between prestige and teaching load. We are already seeing an increasing emphasis on undergraduate education in universities, and this will continue. For financial

reasons, there will be continued pressure on some universities to increase the size of the undergraduate student body as other sources of funding shrink. In any such plans, careful attention must be paid to the quality of the undergraduate experience. The cost of higher education is

right up there after the cost of health care as a national concern, and people are paying a lot of attention to what they are getting for an investment that is becoming for many people financially comparable to the investment in a house. _ Anthropologists should seek to play a central role in the curricular rethinking going on at our institutions. We need to pay close attention not only to our own disciplinary programs, but also to general education requirements. This includes the academic program for first-year students, which is of special concern to many colleges and universities. We as anthropologists must also contribute to another of the currently hot topics in undergraduate education: what has come to be called “service-based learning.” The term refers to an educational experience that takes students outside the university walls and into the surrounding community, where they are expected to contribute as they learn. Anthropology clearly has much to offer here, both in terms of the theoretical and methodological traditions of our discipline, and also in terms of what we have learned over time about the ethics and politics of fieldwork. A heightened focus on undergraduate education should lead us to build stronger habits of collaboration around teaching that are comparable to the collegial habits we more commonly have around research.

This will mean moving beyond the individual contractor model of teaching that generally characterizes our mode of academic production.

Academic departments, which are important planning bodies within

120 , Transforming Academia colleges and universities, will have to expand the way in which they take corporate responsibility for their programs. We will need to spend more time talking together not only about what we are teaching, but also about how we are teaching.

The incorporation of new information technologies into our teach- | ing will, of course, be an important impetus for such conversations. We will, for example, need to consider the role that lecturing to large groups of students should continue to have in our teaching. How much of our teaching in the future will take the form of directing the work of small groups of students or individual students? How will we best combine real and virtual interaction with them? And what will all this mean for teaching loads? Up tonow, wehave |

been used to talking about teaching load in terms of the number of , individual courses we teach in a year: a 3/2, 3/3, 2/2, or 4/4, and so ~ forth. In the future, the teaching loads of faculty members may be put together in different ways, and we may be exploring units of course

duration that differ from the semester-long course. :

Faculty and Administration The various issues I have been considering, taken together, raise some general questions about what we might call the social contract between faculty members and their institutions. Faculty members will need to consider their investment in the well-being of their institution as a whole, and not just their own particular department or program. Faculty who have been blessed with a high degree of mobility and

choice in their employment careers should be where they want to be, which is a good reason for commitment. Those who have not been so

fortunate are at places where they must be and are likely to remain, which is certainly another strong basis for commitment. Either way, we would do well to appreciate and act upon the fact that our own fortunes will be very much tied to those of our institutions in times we administrators like to call “challenging” and the Chinese like to call “interesting.” In this connection, it is worth thinking back to a research project that

sociologist Alvin Gouldner carried out almost 40 years ago among ~~ faculty members and administrators at a small liberal arts college. He was exploring the so-called latent identities and roles people assume in organizations, as opposed to their explicit or manifest roles. Thus, while the manifest roles in the college he was studying would include such _ things as “assistant professor,” “department chair,” “dean,” and so forth, there were latent roles in which he was particularly interested, and these were the roles of “cosmopolitan” and “local.”*

Schism and Continuity 121] Cosmopolitans were characterized by their greater commitment to their professions or special skill than to the institution for which they

worked. They had more opportunity for outward mobility and were disposed to seek recognition outside the institution. Locals, on the other hand, showed a higher degree of loyalty to the institution and a lower

within the institution. . . commitment to their professions; they found their reference group

It is clear that the professoriate in general has become increasingly cosmopolitan since the time of Gouldner’s research. This is good news _ in that faculty suffer less from the occupational hazards of localism, which

include intellectual stagnation, parochialism, and underachievement. There has been a cost, however, in the general decline of institutional commitment. Recruiting policies that focus heavily on professional expertise yield faculties who may have minimal loyalty to a particular institution and who will go wherever they feel they can best pursue their specialty. The incentives commonly used to retain star faculty (which, in

addition to salary increases, may include lighter teaching loads and greater freedom from other institutional demands as well) are also a part of the syndrome. These categories of “cosmopolitan” and “local,” in their pure form,

can be seen as extremes—or, to put it in more technical terms, as Weberian ideal types. We see all around us colleagues who balance both identities, who are both eminent in their professions and deeply committed to their institutions. They have been the backbone of all of the institutions of higher education where I have had the great good fortune to find myself: from Brandeis to Columbia to the University of Chicago

to Bryn Mawr to Barnard. We must see that they do not become an endangered species, since we never needed them more than we need

them now. }

- Back at the time of Gouldner’s study, administrators tended to fall

into the category of “locals.” Over time, however, the trend toward cosmopolitanism has affected administrators as well as faculty, drawing administrators into extra-institutional professional worlds of their own. Administrators are also more likely these days to leave one institution for the greener pastures of another. We have seen a trend toward what I call the “Clint Eastwood style” presidency: unlike the president who stayed in office for many years and became strongly identified with an institution, the Clint Eastwood president rides into town, sizes up the _ situation, sees what the main problems are, tries to solve them, and then rides off. (Or, perhaps, is run out of town on a rail.) The cosmopolitanizing of both faculty and administrators has increased the distance between them. Each group spends a lot of their time in different academic subcultures. They have, to some extent, developed

122 Transforming Academia into different sociolinguistic communities, speaking different jargons. This problem must be addressed. We have to do everything we can to counter the centrifugal pull between faculty members and administrators because the relationship between the two is, I believe, a major indicator of the health of an academic institution and a major determinant of whether an institution can do difficult, painful things and come out all right at the other end. Faculty members must be able to look at administrators and see in them colleagues who share their values and who care about the same , things they do. Administrators must be able to look at faculty members and see in them colleagues who really understand what it takes to keep

Notes ,

a college or university going and to make it strong. ,

This article is adapted, with minor modifications, from a paper presented at the 1995 American Anthropological Association annual meeting (Shapiro 1995). Some of the arguments in this article were presented previously in a talk to the Anthropology Section of the New York Academy of Sciences, entitled “Anthropology ina Changing Academy,” on September 14, 1995. 1. Gouldner (1957:287) notes that he has taken the terms cosmopolitan and local from Robert Merton, who used them to analyze patterns of community

influence.

10

Whither the Comprehensive Land-Grant University? ART GALLAHER I come to this task from 30 years experience, two-thirds of it as an administrator in a comprehensive land-grant university. Along the way,

I have interacted extensively with faculty and administrative peers, students, trustees, business leaders, and politicians at local, state, national, and, in some cases, international levels. What follows, then, is a synthesis of what I have learned from all of these sources.* There is so much happening in the academy these days, and so much

more expected to happen, as to make it impossible to deal with all relevant variables. I have opted, therefore, to focus less on the changes expected in higher education’s inventory and more on those that, in my estimation, will impact its future configuration. . In considering the future of the public land-grant university in this country, there are two intervening variables that I ask you to keep in mind—because these will influence every decision in the academy over the next couple of decades. The first of these is: higher education 1n our society today is without a national agenda. Following World War II, the federal government shaped the national agenda for higher education, but with the close of the cold war and, more recently, with the increased concern for the national debt, the federal government is opting out of that role completely. With no intent to be dramatic, I suggest, nevertheless, that we are at the moment floundering because there is no agenda, other than, perhaps, survival, and because there isn’t one, certain critical variables make an impact on the academy from all sides. The second, intervening variable is: the gap between the way the academy looks at itself and the way people outside the academy perceive it has never been greater. This

observation comes from those who have recently worked with focus groups representing the publics outside of higher education (students, parents, politicians, and employers). Further, in the view of these publics, higher education’s view of the world is almost totally self-referential

(i.e., no matter the issue, the academy begins from and ends at an inwardly derived perspective). 123

124 | , Transforming Academia With the caveat that what follows, though cast on a broad canvas, may very well not affect all state systems of higher education similarly, I shall get right to the point. Probably the most critical variable making an impact on the future of public higher education in our society is the

financial matrix in which it must operate. And to focus the centralissue more sharply, public higher education has become an extremely expensive commodity and is, therefore, a major element in the budget picture of every state in the union. We may, in fact, have created a system of higher education that society is unwilling to afford. Last year, for example, as reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac Issue (Evan-

gelauf 1995), some 33 states had higher education budgets that topped the billion dollar mark, some, substantially; public institutions, in fact, spent right at $105 billion dollars, with only $43 billion of that coming ~ from host-state support. In real dollar terms, public higher education in - _ this country had roughly the same purchasing power in 1993 as in 1983, but saw its student numbers over this period increase by some 15 to 20 percent. If one looks only at the research and development side of the budget, one sees that 60 percent is funded by the federal government. Now, with Washington opting to reduce its expenditures and individual states over the same period reducing their contributions, the burden of keeping up has fallen mainly to student fee and tuition increases. This past year, for example, for the first time in history, the amount of money collected from student fees and tuition in public-sector higher education exceeded the amount allocated for instruction and student services by the states themselves. And it is estimated that the percentage of total expenditures made from state revenues will fall even further, to a national average well under 20 percent. Comprehensive land-grant universities in several states, in fact, are already there, meaning we are moving to a

posture of state-assisted rather than state-supported institutions. Viewed another way, so-called public higher education in this country, — . at all levels, is increasingly viewed as private goods as opposed to public

goods, a perspective that will, incidentally, give students and their parents a new kind of empowerment. I caution, however, that reduced support by states does not mean diminished control at their level; quite the contrary, state control, perhaps interference is a better word, is increasing. For some time now, an economic reconfiguration of our culture and

society has been underway, and with this continuing and intensifying, there is no reason to assume any improvement in the economic matrix of public higher education in this country. Quite the contrary, it will remain static at best but is more likely to deteriorate even further. In this regard, as federal support devolves to state and local levels, disturbing signs indicate higher education’s relative position in the queue for state support, probably now at a four or five priority level, may drop even

Whither the Land-Grant University? 125 more. And if that is not enough, it is already apparent in many states that the political process will not tolerate continuing increases for fees and tuition. Possible exceptions will be some professional schools, such as

law, management, and public administration, which may well be required to become self-supporting. To offset some of the consequences of this economic downturn, expect public universities to look favorably on the development of high-fee, part-time degree and certification programs, and other academic entrepreneurial activities, as revenue generators. _ From a self-referential posture, one may ask how can society do this - to the best higher education system in the world? The answer is simple: external publics believe the system is adequately funded—that its problems are inefficiency and poor management. This belief, which is quite strong and already the source of much monitoring, is building increas-

ingly toward performance funding at all levels. Performance funding has long been an issue in the teaching sector, but now, increasingly, will target faculty research and service activities. This move, incidentally,

will enable states to assume much stronger roles in determining and assessing directions for both. Therefore, expect specific legislation toward these ends to be passed in most states; expect to become much more involved with service to the community and not to the discipline. Having made the preceding observations, I want to make the point that external publics do see the academy as a center of expertise, one that

can help solve their problems. At the same time, these publics express their frustration at not being able to get the academy’s attention. In line with this, research, especially that labeled “departmental,” and funded, therefore, through state appropriation, is coming under close scrutiny. For example, one state is attempting to deal with the research allocation side of its higher education budget by cost accounting, in dollar terms, the time faculty devote to such research. The intent, then, is to subtract this amount from the university’s appropriation, allocate these funds to specific state-problem pools, and force faculty to earn the dollars back

through proposals to research particular state problems. It takes no mental giant to understand that this type of budgetary innovation, if successful, will easily diffuse through the Council on State Governments _to other states. I suggest to you that, among other things, this trend will

pose very significant problems for the institution/ discipline interface. It , calls into question, for example, the basic assumption of our prior national agenda, namely, that individual faculty interest, translated into research effort, expands disciplinary boundaries and that society as a

whole is the major beneficiary. , Before leaving the financial matrix notion, I would be remiss not to

comment from the personnel side. If one looks at the total budget of public comprehensive universities in this country, it is not uncommon

126 Transforming Academia to discover that 85 to 87 percent of operating costs are for personnel and that the dollars left over generally are in fixed-expenditure categories. It follows, therefore, if budgets are reduced, or held static, the immediate impact will be on personnel. Be prepared, then, for further reductions in faculty and support personnel, for those who are left to teach and work more, for there to be increased proliferation of temporary and part-time appointments, and for fewer services to be performed in-house. I suggest, it may well be time for the academy to come to grips with the delivery of information and, where appropriate, instruction, via electronic technology. There is pressure building on this front, currently, for the most

part, economically driven, but pressure is also coming from students, most of whom are familiar with technology long before they get to the university. Students are, increasingly, questioning the academy’s ability

to meet their perceived needs through a conventional pedagogy vested mainly in lecture and sequential learning modes, and that does not, under most circumstances, encourage their active participation. Further, it is time that we in the academy face a future in which more and more higher education will be purchased by consumers from the computer via the Internet. In line with this, and not incidentally, there are organizations already working toward the granting of college degrees delivered through computer learning, with assessment to be done | by a kind of College Level Examination Program (CLEP) testing. It is not too much of a stretch, in fact, to imagine that the virtual university, with its assessment center, will soon be a reality,? and that it may well put some institutions out of business and cause others to radically rethink the way they are doing things. I suggest that the issues involved in this type of delivery system are not a lot different than those in electronic publishing and that it behooves those of us in the academy, therefore, to become more involved, more experimental. Such change is of too great moment to be left only to those who are developing the technology. In ~_

making this suggestion, however, I do not wish to imply that new technology is the silver bullet to solve all our problems, only that it is here and will be a part, maybe even a major part, of the solution. Ishould like to move now toa slightly different variable, one related to student dissatisfaction with traditional learning modes, and that is the problem the academy has accommodating to the rapidly changing society and culture surrounding it. Suffice to say, no less an authority than the National Academy of Sciences estimated a few years ago that our culture inventory is growing by some 40 percent per annum. Since our society traditionally has seen higher education as one of its major players

| to generate, store, and disseminate the knowledge component in this inventory, it follows that rapid change in the knowledge base will pose serious problems for the academy.

Whither the Land-Grant University? 127 There are many issues germane here, but most cluster around the lightning rod of flexibility, not a hallmark of the academy, even when its own interest historically has been at stake. For example, as one of the major socializing forces in our society, are we in the academy preparing our charges, either in their majors or their general education, to function adequately in a social and cultural milieu in which they will, we believe, on average, change career patterns, not simply jobs, as many as three or four times in a lifetime? Social survival under these conditions requires decision-making capabilities based on one’s ability to synthesize and discriminate among and between large numbers of quantitative and

qualitative variables. In this regard, it is no accident that potential employers are most critical of the problem-solving skills of our graduates. |

I suggest the answer to the question just posed does not lie with a . general education committee somewhere simply prescribing another required course in statistics. At issue 1s the efficacy of instructional strategies __ focused on substantive content as opposed to process. Put simply, should the emphasis in teaching continue around what one should know, in our case, about anthropology, as opposed to how one should learn, in our case, how

to approach and to explore, for whatever reasons one may wish, that increasingly large and complex slice of knowledge that we label anthropology? One need only look at the exploding knowledge base in virtually every discipline to know that each base should be more organized and stored in ways that will more efficiently facilitate selective retrieval from it. Again, this is an issue that should be addressed at the discipline level, not left to those who are developing the technology to make such things possible. And, while it is easy to ignore looking at how we have done things for so.long, there is much more here than simply what transpires

in the classroom. It is no accident, I suggest, that the growth of the community college system over the past several years has exceeded that _ of four-year institutions. This sector has been much more attuned to the

special needs of nontraditional students, especially those needs that result from the continually changing job content and the life-long learning requirements underlying the economic restructuring of our society. It is amazing the extent to which so many universities are able to ignore the aging of their student populations. Expect this situation to change,

and radically. There are other points at issue on the matter of flexibility, and they

strike more at institutional autonomy than at function. In the public sector, expect the pressure to resolve equipment, facilities, and program duplication—between institutions, between institutional levels within a state system, and between program segments within an institution—to both continue and intensify. The consortia concept is already very much with us, but expect more, and more complicated, consortia to emerge,

128 Transforming Academia especially to manage high-tech and high-cost science development and experimentation. Also, expect them to be extended much more into the international arena. Related to all of this, expect disciplinary imperial-

ism, rampant in so many places, to yield to more cross-disciplinary

activity, if for no other reason than that the nature of contemporary : problems will demand it. One final point bearing on university flexibility has to be entered, and that is the overly zealous interpretation of academic tenure by many in the academy as life-long job security. Threats to the tenure concept, as we currently know it, are driven more strongly now by concerns for the economic restructuring of our society rather than as a device to protect

academic freedom. I have little doubt that over the next one or two

decades tenure, as we know it, will disappear from many institutions and in others will be redefined around the notion of periodic term-limits. -

- For those who believe the picture just painted might portend change of an unmanageable magnitude, I hasten to note that higher education over the past 50 years already has undergone trerhendous and fundamental change. The public university, for example, has moved away from a natural community form of organization based on networks of mutual and reciprocal relationships, to one that now holds the university | to be a rational legal system, bounded by formal rules and sanctions, and grounded in concepts of efficiency and secular management. The university today is a system of subsets interacting with other subsets—internally, of disciplines; and externally, of government, industry, and, in

the land-grant model, varied constituent groups. These networks, whether internally or externally generated, may bond on one issue but on another see alliances shift radically. We have created a university subculture in which some patterns remain near static, while others are

highly fluid, and temporarily normative, until the next crisis falls. I suggest that in this environment the issue is not whether change canor _ | will occur, it will; the question is, can our internal networks bond around

a common good? I suggest a start for the comprehensive univer_ sity—and here I shall borrow from Robert Redfield (1953)—is to develop a unique hearing aid, one that not only lets us hear plainly the voices of others, but also allows us to hear the sound of our own voices as these

fall on the ears of others.

Notes | This paper was read at the American Anthropological Association presidential symposium “Whither the Academy,” at the 1995 American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.

Whither the Land-Grant University? 129 1. I was invited to think about the future of the land-grant university from my own long experience as an administrator at this type of institution. The operant words here are “think” and “experience.” Most of the observations and conclusions that follow, therefore, have been developed from what now seem to have been endless streams of meetings with administrative peers, faculty and administrative committees, and task forces in my own institution; journal and newspaper articles; staff budget analyses; and conversations with students, their parents, faculty, staff, politicians, and so forth. Thus, except for a couple of instances,

I have not bothered to credit a specific source for a specific conclusion. Further, to explain how some conclusions are developed would lead one through a boring discussion of how statistics developed for one conclusion get massaged to try to understand something about another for which such statistics do not exist. 2. Shortly after this paper was presented, governors in five western states agreed to establish a consortium to develop and operate a virtual university.

11

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors: Keeping Anthropology’s Subfields Alive and Growing in the 21st Century

PETER T. ELLISON , Editors’ note: As anthropology completes the 20th century, a fundamental question is the composition of the discipline itself. Will it remain holistic in the American “four fields” sense, encompassing archaeological, biological, linguistic, and sociocultural anthropology? Will it splinter into specialities? Will it become more interdisciplinary, being absorbed into (or absorbing) sister fields

while losing the classic four-fields core? Will it disappear? | Anthropology mirrors trends in knowledge generally, expressing many of the issues of contemporary culture. Whether it retains, loses, or transforms its holism is part of a general question of whether integrative understanding is sustained or whether scholarship devolves into the narrow and specialized. If devolution, who has the power to unite or at least to meaningfully interrelate specialized inquiries—perhaps no single discipline or individual, but dynamucally shifting combinations and permutations of specialists? The integrative vision of the four fields is particularly pertinent because it treats relationships that define fault lines, as well as productive synergies central. to human thought—the relations between past and present, between nature and culture, between scientific and humanistic methods, between laboratory and

partictpant-observation experiences of knowing. Anthropology ts distinctive in . its struggle to sustain productive dialogues among these fundamental directions (perhaps best conceived not as four fields but as “force fields”) of thought, within one discipline. _ In organizational terms, the question of integration is pertinent at several

levels. At the national and international level, the issue has already profoundly affected membershtps. Specialized organizations abound, including separate organizations for each of the classic four fields as well as numerous other specialized interests—these are intellectual groupings, to be sure, but they also pertain to cultural identities. The largest organization, the American Anthropological Association, endeavors to include sections representing the four fields, 130

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors 131 as well as many other specialities and somehow to integrate diverse interests

within a unified organization. .

The most immediate effect, however, is at the level of the academic department. Even as universities, colleges, community colleges, and distance-learning _

programs reconfigure higher education, the several hundred departments of anthropology remain crucial locales for sustaining the intellectual integrity of the discipline; departments remain the major vehicles for teaching anthropology,

for training anthropologists, and for carrying on anthropological research. Therefore, the larger questions of what shape anthropology will take and what __ it will encompass are closely linked to the intellectual configuration of departments. Will departments sustain integration of the four fields? Will departments divide into separate specialities? Will departments be transformed in other ways?

, Such questions take on immediacy and urgency tn the current situation of restructuring and downsizing. How will anthropology departments fare in these circumstances if they are internally divisive or if they splinter into new units?

In some situations, the creative reorganization of anthropology departments—including splintering—might be encouraged by broader academic transformation (e.g., creation of new interdisctplinary combinations), so that anthropology flourishes, albeit in new shapes and through new alliances. It would seem, however, that smaller units, the result of fission, stand less hope for survival than do more established, larger units. We would argue that anthropology departments should maintain their integrative format, with the opportunities this organization provides for intellectual synergy, while exploring ways to transform themselves internally, instead of splintering. At the same

time, anthropology and anthropologists will, of course, adaptively radiate, finding new niches in the broader ecology of academia and the world. Among the spectrum of solutions departments have explored in response

to the issue of integration, the Harvard format is distinctive and appears to succeed in a kind of civil “agreeing to disagree” mode, recognizing the advantage

of aunified common department as well-as the distinctive needs of three of the four classic fields.

Whether this or other solutions work and how these relationships are expressed within departments will profoundly affect the shape of anthropology in the coming century.

} How can we balance forces in the university of the 21st century? Can anthropology remain a living, growing field of intellectual life while remaining a single unit of academic administration? Can we not only tolerate the activities of our colleagues that seem to be carrying them to more remote corners of the intellectual universe, but actually support them, without undermining ourselves? This is, I think, a central question

to be faced by all the larger departments of anthropology in the next decade, at least those that seek to maintain credible activity in more than

132 Transforming Academia one or two subfields. New and creative solutions will be required, and

the best solutions have probably not yet appeared. : At Harvard we have adopted one solution—not the best, certainly. And perhaps it is temporary, even for us. I think of it as the “good fences”

solution. We have organized our local-level administration into three : virtual subdepartments with three undergraduate majors; three graduate programs with separate admissions and pools of funding; and three parallel but largely separate mechanisms for faculty recruitment and promotion. I say separate, in that each so-called wing of the department _ manages its own destiny, but the other two wings remain interested and involved partners. We teach each other's students, sit on each other's committees, review each other’s hires and promotions. But, by limiting

the competition for resources and administrative control within the department, we weaken the forces that would make fission seem attrac- ~ tive. Intellectual vigor is maintained, and we retain as well the political clout of a relatively large department within the university structure.

But at what cost? Do our students suffer from being denied the panorama of a holistic discipline of anthropology? Is the faculty poorer for the lack of intellectual engagement with colleagues in other wings? _ These arguments can be made, but I do not find them persuasive. Our students thrive at all levels and cross wing boundaries without prejudice whenever the desire is there. We require all our undergraduates to take a series of three courses in common, exposing them to all three subdisciplines (social, biological, and archaeological anthropology) represented in our department. But, after that, we allow them the freedom either to focus on one area or to combine two or more into their undergraduate concentration. Forced to generalize in so many areas of education, weary of introductory courses, and eager to involve themselves in research, the students relish the opportunity to dive into an intellectual

area more deeply and substantively. When given the choice—andwedo give them the choice—they overwhelmingly choose to concentrate in one or another wing of the department rather than spread their efforts over all three. The faculty thrives as well and finds greater respect for

each other’s work where it is truly exciting—at the developing frontiers—than they do for the forced and stale conventionality of anintel- _

lectual unity that has passed. When areas of true common interest _ emerge, such as the interaction of culture and biology in reproductive health, engagement across the wings is enthusiastic and not forced. “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors” presents the particular solution we have arrived at, for now, to the problem of balancing intellectual and administrative tensions. It is a local solution to the way the general problems

of intellectual expansion and institutional stasis manifest themselves at my institution. I offer it as an example of such a local solution only,

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors 133 not as a global solution. Each department in each university will have to find its own path to the 21st century. But I might have gone to Robert Frost for a different title and called this paper instead “Something There Is That Doesn’t Like A Wall” to draw attention, not to a different solution, but to what I perceive as a great danger. Intellectual vitality cannot be walled in by the intellectual past. We cannot let ourselves be afraid to grow, to expand, and to create new intellectual space around us. If we try to constrain each other’s intellectual activities, we have surely lost our way. At the same time, we must find a way to sustain such growth without turning on our intellectual relatives or ordering things in such a way that our gain is their loss. A true tragedy of the commons looms for academia if we cannot.

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Will Inclusion Be More than an Illusion in the Academy of the Future? NIARA SUDARKASA a The presumption that all Americans would have free and equal access to publicly supported basic education dates back to the 1954 United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of | Topeka, which declared segregated schools unconstitutional and called for the desegregation of schools “with all deliberate speed.” Although Brown v. Board of Education did not speak directly to the desegregation of

higher education, the Congress did so by adopting three key pieces of legislation a decade later. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, and the Higher Education Act of 1965 would shape the future of higher education for the rest of this century. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited federal funding for institutions that discriminated on the basis of race, color, or national origin. To comply with the law, most of the nation’s colleges and universities adopted and/or announced policies of nondiscrimination in hiring and admissions and included these policies in their official publications and advertisements. The Economic Opportunity Act established the college work-study program to aid financially and academically disadvantaged students. The Higher Education Act of 1965 expanded the college work- ___

study program, established a program of need-based grants to financially deserving students, provided for federal financial assistance to qualified but struggling colleges and universities, and generally set forth ; several broad objectives to promote equal access to higher education for minorities and other disadvantaged students. This set of legislation, followed by that which established the TRIO programs in 1968 (Upward Bound, Talent Search, and Special Services

for Disadvantaged Students) and the Basic Educational Opportunity Grants in 1972 (later to be renamed Pell Grants), created an official optimism that America’s traditionally white higher education institutions would open up to significant numbers of underrepresented minority students. Indeed, the new federally funded educational initiatives, sometimes referred to collectively as “opportunity programs,” led to a

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Inclusion in the Academy of the Future 135 new public rhetoric that envisioned “equal access” and “equal chances for success” for all students, especially for those who had been historically excluded because of race. By the mid-1970s, some observers even questioned the continued need for the historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) that were established in the 19th and early 20th centuries when segregation was the prevailing law of the land. Focusing on the education of African American undergraduates, this essay is a brief assessment of the results we have achieved after 30

years of policies and programs officially intended to provide equal -_ access and equal opportunities for success for these and other students , of color. And even though the essay deals with African Americans, with the exception of the information on the specific enrollment trends, much of what is said could apply to Hispanics and Native Americans as well. Today, 30 years after the passage of the legislative initiatives designed to open up higher education, neither the goal of equal access nor that of equal opportunity for success has been achieved. This essay will

document that we made some steps forward but some giant steps backward in the area of access for African American students. The national enrollment data for 1994 show that we still are not where we were 20 years ago in terms of the percentage of African American 18- to

24-year-old high school graduates who are enrolled in college. If we judge success by the retention and graduation of those students who enter college, African Americans rank significantly below the national average in terms of the percentage of students who remain in college and earn their bachelors degree within six years. Yet, nationally, we continue to speak as though “one day” African Americans will attain the equality in higher education espoused in our official public policies. I suggest that we will not achieve the goals we seek—at least not in the foreseeable future—if we continue to follow the course we have pursued so far. As we look toward the academy of the future, with “inclusion” and “diversity” as the official goals of many of our colleges and universities, it is appropriate to if, when, and how we can make these goals a reality. This is an especially urgent question in light of recent challenges to the very programs that helped us to achieve the modicum of progress we have seen in some areas over the past 30 years. IT refer, of course, to the recent legal restrictions on affirmative action in hiring, the limitations on what are mislabeled “race-based” scholarship programs, the disallowance of some special admissions programs for underrepresented minority students, and the cutbacks we have seen in academic support programs directed specifically toward minority students." To date, with respect to African American students, we see what I call the illusion of inclusion within the higher education arena made up

136 Transforming Academia of some 3,600 colleges and universities.* There is no question that Ameri-

can colleges and universities are more integrated now than they were three decades ago. Fully 84 percent of the African Americans enrolled in higher education are enrolled in traditionally white institutions, according to Minorities in Higher Education, 1995-96 (ACE 1995-96:15). Yet, when we look more closely at that enrollment, particularly at the undergraduate enrollment, which accounts for 90 percent of all African Ameri-

cans in higher education, we see integration but we do not see much inclusion.

, Over the past 20 years, we have seen an increase in the number of African American undergraduate students enrolled in college, but for more than a decade (between 1976 and 1988), we saw a steady decline in their percentage of the total national undergraduate population. Since | 1990, we have witnessed a rise in the African American percentage ofthe | _ total national undergraduate enrollment—back to where it was 20 years

ago! By some enrollment measures that I shall discuss later, African American students are even further behind than they were 20 years ago. Thus, although many observers point to the number of black students

on predominantly white campuses as a sign of progress, when we actually examine black enrollment trends over the past 20 years, we see that

we have retrogressed rather than progressed in our quest for inclusion. Moreover, when we ask where African American undergraduates are enrolled, we see that almost half of them are enrolled in two-year

community colleges that offer only associate degrees. Twenty-eight percent of the African Americans who are pursuing baccalaureate degrees are enrolled at historically black colleges. Another large cluster of African American undergraduate students attend various urban-based city or state colleges and universities located in or near areas heavily populated by blacks and other minorities. The historically black colleges and universities, as well as some of the urban institutions that have large __

African American enrollments—such as most of the institutions in the City University of New York (CUNY) system—often find themselves

, struggling to make ends meet while educating students who otherwise probably would not receive a four-year college education. We see a revolving-door syndrome at many of the “more selective” institutions that mainly admit “the cream of the crop” among African American students. Many African Americans who enter these institutions with high expectations exit in disappointment without their college

degrees. We see African American students who are marginalized, stigmatized, and humiliated on many of these campuses. We see good students who are expected to fail and are made to feel grateful when they

do not fail, even though the students themselves entered these institutions expecting to be motivated to excel.

Inclusion in the Academy of the Future 137 For these and other reasons discussed in this essay, I maintain that, as far as African American students are concerned, we have the illusion of inclusion in higher education. We have growing numbers but continued underrepresentation. We have presence without full participation. We have integration without inclusion. In short, we have a situation that on the surface looks like progress, but on closer examination reveals

retrogression and the perpetuation of the status quo. |

When we strive to make inclusion a goal within higher education, as well as a goal of higher education, we must understand that inclusion has to mean more than integration. Every institution must view inclusion as |

a process that goes beyond providing access, to promoting academic achievement, providing a supportive environment, and preparing students for success after college, whether they pursue a higher degree or enter the world of work.’ It is suggested here that we must reevaluate our strategies for the inclusion of African Americans within our colleges and universities. We need to begin by increasing our support for those institutions that have a track record of success in educating these students.

Most of our federal and state resources for higher education are directed toward the support of predominantly white institutions on the premise that they are educating all students, majority and minority alike.

Yet, the data on African American recruitment, retention, and graduation show that even though many institutions recruit these students, a relatively small proportion of America’s 3,600 colleges and universities are responsible for most of those who successfully complete their college

education. To the extent that we want to “level the playing field” for African American students, we need to focus our efforts on those institutions that go beyond affording them access to providing them with the preparation and support necessary for academic and professional success. By these measures, it is obvious that historically black colleges and universities and the underfunded urban-based “minority serving” insti-

tutions deserve much more support than they now receive. | Even when one compares the predominantly white and historically black institutions that grant the largest number of baccalaureate degrees to African Americans, one is struck by the great disparity between the _ resources available to these two sets of institutions. The list of predominantly white institutions comprises colleges and universities that, with few exceptions, are much better supported and better endowed than the historically and predominantly black colleges and universities on the second list (Table 1). Twenty-nine of the 50 predominantly white institutions that award the most baccalaureate degrees to African Americans are listed among the colleges and universities with endowments of over $55 million (Chronicle of Higher Education 1996:28). The predominantly white institutions that

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