TAMU shows that weakening academic protections will cost lives

A recent controversy at Texas A&M, which is really going the wrong direction in terms of political interference in university business, demonstrates that strong protection for academics is not just about protecting professors from being unfairly fired (although it is about that)–it can also be a matter of life and death.

A highly regarded opioid expert, Joy Alonzo, was suspended during an investigation for allegedly making statements critical of Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. This started because Alonzo apparently pointed out (accurately) that “tough on crime” approaches to stopping opioid overdoses are less effective and cost lives compared to harm-reduction efforts. We know, as objectively as we can know things in social science, that Dan Patrick supports policies which do not work as well as other approaches. If Alonzo said that, she was right to say that.

Apparently Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham, a Patrick ally whose daughter attended the lecture and snitched to mom, brought the matter to Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp. He then communicated with Patrick’s office and got an investigation going, with the apparent aim of firing Alonzo, almost immediately (before Alonzo had even finished driving home).

In this case, Alonzo kept her job, but that’s almost beside the point; this will have a chilling effect on any academic in Texas who thinks about saying something critical, or even something that could be construed as critical, of the political regime. Scholars will avoid controversial topics for fear of reprisal, leading to less effective policy-making that, in some cases, will mean lives lost. It is a case almost tailor-made as the strongest example of why we need tenure: An academic expert makes a factual, grounded critique of government policy and as a result almost loses her job. If experts cannot make objective recommendations of the best policies without fear, then they won’t make them. In life-or-death situations, that means people will die.

The New York Times explains all of its higher ed coverage in one graph

Do you wonder why we see so much coverage of Ivy League (and Ivy-adjacent) institutions in American media, when a tiny proportion of students attend such schools? Do you wonder why affirmative action in higher education has gotten so much attention, when the large majority of American colleges and universities admit more than half of applicants? The New York Times has just published an article explaining its coverage (and of peer media institutions) of higher education in America. Spoiler alert: it’s all about class anxiety.

“Study of Elite College Admissions Data Suggests Being Very Rich Is Its Own Qualification” shows how the top 1% are more likely to get into elite institutions. Here’s their graph:

I think “2.2x likelier admission” probably undersells things, and there are some other potential problems I can imagine with this analysis (like how much likelier some people are to actually apply to some institutions) without looking too deep into it, but rich people getting into rich colleges isn’t news. What I want to point to is that 70th-~96th percentile, where you’re slightly less likely to be admitted than average (which in the USA is household incomes very roughly between about $130,000 and $300,000).

That upper-middle-class group is the kind of people who consume non-tabloid media in the United States; they’re the ones who drive much of what is covered at “good” media outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and so on. These are the people who are most uneasy about their social position. Being a high earner but not “rich” is an anxious place–the top 20% chasing the top 5%, the top 5% chasing the top 1%. The NYT, NPR, etc are all stuck on elite college admission because their readers are worried about sliding down the socioeconomic ladder, especially generationally–they want explanations for why their kids aren’t getting into Yale. Those are the people who are obsessed with affirmative action, mostly white and mostly-upper class people worried about losing spots to mostly black, mostly poor people. It reminds me of the scene from Succession where Greg gets roasted for only getting $5 million. They are by any measure a privileged class in America, but they don’t see themselves that way; they’re all worried about being the weakest strongman at the circus.

Academic unions are unfortunately more necessary than ever

The University of California is cracking down on its graduate student union, which just recently won major concessions, including arresting protestors on what appear to be ginned up charges designed to intimidate. From where I’m sitting, it looks like UC lost during the graduate student strike and refuses to accept it. Protests began with proposed changes that, union leader say, would violate their contract with the school, and now UC is trying to discourage union activity through brute force.

I think it’s bad that graduate students have to unionize, but they do and should. It would be better if graduate students could primarily think of themselves as students, as apprentices, and not as employees. Most people’s idealized version of higher education (the life of the mind! mentorship!) does not include collective bargaining. But I also don’t see how we can avoid unionization by graduate students (and for that matter faculty) at large and at public universities. Just look at what’s happening in California, where grad students are getting the squeeze and are apparently completely on their own to fix it. To the extent that something that looks like your idealized version of higher education ever existed, it certainly doesn’t exist anymore.

There is a reason that unionization efforts among graduate students and faculty members have accelerated so much in the last few years, and it’s not because of pro-labor propaganda. Higher ed just doesn’t work for grad students and faculty members like it used to work. The old deal (do this lengthy and poorly-compensated apprenticeship, move frequently and/or to places you might not want to live, and sacrifice lifetime earning potential, but get a secure and enjoyable position in a respected career that gives you considerable control over your working conditions) is gone. Conditions for academics, which by any reasonable definition must include graduate students, who are absolutely crucial as teaching and research assistants to the operation of a large university, have gotten much, much worse.

The root problem here is that college administrators want to have it both ways. They want to be businesses when it suits them, ruthlessly cutting majors or eliminating tenure or firing employees in the name of efficiency and budgets. But when academics start thinking the same way, suddenly teaching is a calling, and all of the concern is about academic freedom and research output and academic excellence.

If you are an academic and you work somewhere that doesn’t have an adversarial relationship between administrators and faculty, good–although that almost certainly means you’re somewhere (likely a private and/or small school) that is too rich to have much of a financial problem or too poor to do any different. And if you’re a winner in academia, already a tenured professor with a secure future, great. Both of these actually apply to me, because I am extremely fortunate to be a tenured professor at a tiny private school that has a good relationship between faculty and administration (and one which does not offer graduate degrees, so no graduate students to potentially mistreat). But that makes me, and perhaps you as well, a tiny sliver of the academic world–an outlier.

A union wouldn’t do much for me, but it would be both foolish and unjust for me and people like me to only worry about my situation right now. Part of how we got in this spot is senior and privileged academics letting the lower ranks struggle–it’s astounding how many senior faculty members still think of adjuncts as not only having different interests but as completely separate kinds of beings, not real professors or academics. It’s wrong for administrators to mistreat faculty and graduate students. It’s even worse for academics to let their less fortunate colleagues be mistreated without helping.