2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

Although many academics today still enjoy the prestige and autonomy that comes with economic privilege, the position of liberal arts faculty in Community Colleges is precarious. Evaluated primarily based on teaching, and thus on care-labor, they are denied the status of “real” academics. In addition, their own employers increasingly treat them as easily replaceable by adjunct faculty, and prefer to direct resources into vocational and career programs. Demands for accountability and ultimate flexibility in terms of what, when, and where an instructor can teach are rising, and faculty increasingly struggle to justify their role and pedagogy in front of a public skeptical of the larger good of a comprehensive education for the masses. In short, the work experience of people who teach in community colleges resembles that of most workers, and the behavior of students reflects that they have difficulties distinguishing between an educator and any other service-provider.

Panel presenters will contend that, if left unchecked, the trend towards the de-skilling of labor, combined with concerted attempts to impose a regime of oversight and control, is bound to engulf all of academia. Drawing on their experience with shared governance, as union officers, and as scholar-teachers, the panelists will argue that teaching professionals of all ranks must support one another in their commitment to academic rigor and freedom, and use their position as knowledge workers to promote among the general public a sense of higher education as a public good that cannot be measured according to a market based logic alone.