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UNC's faculty did something interesting to counteract the fact that they, like most faculty, have almost no leverage over their administrations. They aligned themselves with those who do have leverage: students. https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/lessons-leverage-time-coronavirus
That I can write a post analyzing how different vectors of leverage are at play as supposedly public institutions make decisions about operations during an unchecked pandemic is a sign of the core sickness of the system. Leverage would not be at play if they were truly public.
Chuckling to myself that I've become the guy who appears to be defending TT fac. and throwing contingent fac. (including grad students) under the bus. I've been pleading with faculty to act collectively on behalf of the contingent for years. I should've been clearer in the post.
FTR: I think faculty should to everything in their power to try to make sure that campuses prioritize safety and well-being over tuition and operations. That could include labor actions if necessary.
But I also standby the analysis that tenured faculty now find themselves largely without leverage over their administrations. Even if they withhold their labor, they can be replaced, and with financial exigency, tenure is not a protection.
Don't get me wrong, that tenured faculty largely lack leverage now is the fault of generations of tenured faculty who failed to act to check the growing corporate and administrative university. The original time for concerted collective action was long ago.
We are where we are, a shitty place with a corporatized university where revenue is the main source of leverage, that is in the hands of undergraduate students whose tuition funds the operations of the university. It's terrible that it's true, but it is true.
It's why Pac-12 football players have such a strong hand. Their refusal to play risks billions of dollars in revenue. That is leverage. Faculty, on the other hand, are largely fungible. I know this because I was contingent for 20 years and I was treated as fungible.
I've written dozens of posts arguing to TT faculty that allowing institutions to treat some laborers as fungible put their own security at risk because it was proof of concept. All faculty are replaceable. Tenure was a speed bump, but under financial exigency, it's nothing.
Again, this is terrible, but institutions would love to have a rationale to get rid of expensive tenured faculty and replace them with much cheaper contingent faculty, particularly now when budgets are being destroyed by a pandemic.
I feel confident that administrations across the country are calculating how they can shrink their institutions in order to survive. Having a less inexpensive professorate is at the top of the list because it's actually a strategy that's been used for 30 years already.
The big picture solution is to make sure our public institutions actually operate as public goods. I'm working on a blueprint for that as fast as I can, but for now, we've got some crises to manage. https://beltpublishing.com/collections/pre-order/products/sustainable-resilient-free-the-future-of-public-higher-education
Status is not by itself, leverage. Relative wealth is security, but not leverage. Leverage is brute power to force the other side to your will. Faculty don't have it because they failed to keep their tenured muscles in shape. The didn't use it so they lost it.
