Professors Don't Care?

I really loved our rally in support of public workers in Wisconsin and everywhere across the country. One thing, however, bothered me and keeps doing so today. Aside from me, there was only one faculty member from our university. We are a public university, and are being constantly threatened with losing our health care benefits. The institution of tenure is being eroded constantly. We had all our funding frozen last year because the state wasn't giving us our money. The situation is very precarious for all of us.

David Ruccio has the following to say about the current state of affairs in higher education:

It looks like public universities that can (like Madison) are becoming more like private universities. Meanwhile, well-endowed private institutions may be the only universities where the idea of the university is being safeguarded. Combined, the two tendencies—the privatization of public universities and the privatization of the idea of the university—represent a bridge to the end of the public university system as we have known it in the United States. That leaves us nowhere.

The last sentence of this comment is literally true for those of us who work for public universities.  If (when) public universities fall apart, we will have nowhere to go. Of course, those of us who have been publishing like crazy this entire time, can expect to be picked up by private schools. The rest, however, will be left behind. Why, then, are professors so unwilling to join the struggle for the rights of employees?

Part of it, I believe, is snobbery. What do we have in common with all those carpenters, steel workers, and teamsters? We are still middle-class while they have been displaced from it. We forget, however, that when these intelligent, politically active workers cannot afford to send their kids to our university any more, we end up with the student body that is impoverished intellectually.

Another reason why professors don't care is their belief that this will not touch them. Even though we keep hearing news about tenured faculty being fired all over the country, many of my colleagues like to pretend that this will never happen to them. I can't tell you how many times I heard senior colleagues say, "Of course, this will not touch me. I'm tenured." Have the SUNY Albany, the U of Southern Mississippi and other places never happened, I always wonder when I hear that?">

Of course, I will be told that I'm exaggerating. People are just too busy, I will be told. I don't buy that, though. If a huge crowd of our faculty members had come to the rally, this would have sent a really important message to our administrators. And that would have benefited us a lot more than any silly committee and any useless meeting.