Reader Mark Spahn has brought to my attention some teaching assistants at the University of California at Santa Cruz who were fired for not turning their grades in on time. They refused to turn them in as a protest against the low wages they were getting. The university gave them a deadline, but eventually they had had enough and fired them.
This is reminiscent of a strike back in the year 1995 by teaching assistants at Yale. They, too, withheld grades in order to get better working conditions. And how did that go? It did not go well at all. More important is the reaction of tenured leftists:
Sara Suleri, a brilliant postcolonial critic whose work I have taught in my own classes, urged disciplinary action against one of her teaching assistants who joined [the grad student union’s] 1995 decision to withhold undergraduate grades until Yale’s administration agreed to negotiate. Nancy Cott, a widely admired labor historian, spoke out against the union, and David Brion Davis, a distinguished historian of slavery, sought college guards to bar his union-identified teaching assistant from entering the room where undergraduate final exams would be given.
This paragraph comes from page 143 of Cary Nelson’s book Manifesto of a Tenured Radical. No matter what one thinks of Nelson’s radicalism, his willingness to chastise fellow radicals is admirable. And right-wingers who refuse to throw this in the faces of leftists every chance they get are being idiots.
I had never heard of any of these people, but when I showed this passage to a young leftist a few years after it was written, she exclaimed with astonishment and disbelief, “Nancy Cott?!” It was clear that seeing the name of a fellow leftist engaging in something that those on the right would do upset her. I doubt that this had any long term effect on her views, but if she had been constantly reminded of this and other such incidents, she might have decided that leftism was something to be avoided, because leftists just don’t stick to their principles or stick up for their own as much as they ought to.
By the way, the decision by the teachings assistants at Santa Cruz to block traffic was a bad one. Blocking traffic is always a bad idea because it makes enemies of people who are neutral. They have to wait in line because of your issues? To hell with you, they will say. Plus, if an emergency vehicle can’t get through, then the bad consequences will be put on you. Just don’t do it.
That’s not all that can happen when you block traffic. I saw some lovely video of Xtinction Rebellion weirdos blocking traffic in London. Suddenly an enraged driver ran up from behind them torn down their banners, and began chasing them yelling “I have to to get to work.” The weirdos managed to run off, screaming and crying, with (unfortunately) not too many bruises. They are fortunate he didn’t just run them over.
As for the leftist profs wanting a crackdown on unionized TA’s, it’s probably the only time these profs have been right about anything. TA’ing isn’t a career or a real job, Plenty of grad students don’t have such positions; take away these assistantships and give to them.
Posted by: Charles N. Steele | 03/02/2020 at 06:57 PM