Yeah, but you’d think a university professor would be smart enough to comprehend that this was not generally seen to be the case, and certainly not in academia. It’s basically admitting, “Yes, I am an idiot who shouldn’t be allowed near students.”
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Because STEM is where I have made a point of knowing the numbers. I’m genuinely curious about History, as I have a few friends in my campus’s department, which is around 2/3 men.
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Mental state is pretty detached from smart.
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Did anyone else notice this little gem in that article?
“There’s also a telling point in the interview that suggests that Rectenwald, who described himself to Siu as a “left communist,””
He self identifies as a communist? WTF? Wait … actually some things may be starting to make sense. If the alt right and the communist left are the same thing, would explain why Trump and Putin are reaching out to each other?
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At this point one should just hope that he gets the mental health care he needs, he’s a rather unreliable narrator.
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Yes. That’s the think, so many universities are cutting costs, so hiring for non-tenure track in some capacity instead of keeping open tenure lines- meaning when people do leave or retire, they aren’t getting replaced. Adjunct positions are especially dominated by women and POC. In fact, not too long ago, an editorial in the monthly magazine of the AHA (American Historical Association) talked about the adjunct issue in just those terms, mainly from a gendered perspective. @d_r is on point when he talks about the administrative part of this problem, though, in that there is no $$ for tenure lines. But that has manifested in gendered/racialized ways. It’s a shame that our university is so diverse, and the faculty isn’t.
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Wut?
Joking aside, this is pretty true in my experience. I’d say that historians are not a radically inclined bunch and more prone to caution and conservatism, not necessarily politically, but certainly with regards to their work and their views of the academy and it’s purpose.
@d_r, this is a good point about historians being conservative in nature. I’ve noticed there is a big emphasis on not rocking the boat and in many ways, it’s a field still dominated by the traditional white, male academic in most of the fields. They tend to bristle at the newer, post-60s fields of study as “not being real” history. I know many, MANY of these types.
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I’d say yes, with the caveat that many of the lecturing and VL and adjuncting jobs are going to women.
None of this is to say that things aren’t better. But also see my comments to @Phrenological below (I notified you on the comment, too, so you’ve probably already seen it).
I think the thing about this stuff is how… invisible it can be? If that makes sense. There are all sorts of subtle things that are hard to track and pin down that happens. it can be some sort of sexual harassment (which has happened to other women I know in the PhD program), preferences for people who can more easily spend time away from their families (tends to be men still), and often more institutional support for more traditional types of history projects (which I think attract men) with some fields experiencing some marginalization if you will (into women’s studies, or Afro-American/Africana studies, or to cultural studies, etc). Some of it is just preferences for what is “real” history vs. what should be some other field (women’s studies or cultural studies). Some of it can be out and out sexism (though that kind of blatant stuff is rare to be found, but often considered the only REAL problem that should be discussed). Some of it is structural in nature. Since men do less of the family care, they are freer to put more time into their work and freer to put in the travel necessary to write more, meaning they get to tenure faster, often have publications earlier. But men are more often still getting tenure track jobs and women are more often getting shuttled into the gauntlet of adjuncting. I agree it’s not just a problem of misogyny (or racism, etc), but it has manifested in gendered/racialized ways, I think.
Of course, this is just my personal experiences in the my own field (which, as you know, is indeed history). And some of that is just my own existential despair! 
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Words mean nothing now a days…
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Yeah, my father was a historian (and the sole, lonely, radical leftie of his department), so many, many years ago I got to hear about the shift away from tenure track positions; my father was pretty disgusted by it. So many of those tenured positions were created for and then filled by white guys who got their degrees via the GI bill post-WWII, and when they retired the rest tended to hire people just like them, so another generation of tenure track positions got locked up by white guys, despite efforts of people like my father who were making conscious efforts to diversify their departments. When I finished grad school (in another discipline entirely) I knew there just weren’t tenure track positions available anymore, so academia was kind of a non-starter. (Ironically, my particular discipline was a new one, and new tenure track positions had just been created for it - but filled by my classmates who graduated a year or two before I did.) Hearing stories of people doing 200 mile commutes between two universities just to get a full teaching load didn’t make it very appealing.
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A wise move! But you’d likely have a smoother run of things, as you have a family background in academia, which seems to be helpful. [quote=“Shuck, post:70, topic:88737”]
Hearing stories of people doing 200 mile commutes between two universities just to get a full teaching load didn’t make it very appealing.
[/quote]
It’s not, I’m afraid. The job I’m applying for is quite a ways away from home and I’d indeed be commuting, at least for a while (even I even get a campus interview!). Otherwise, it’s some VL positions for me next academic year, either at my current university or one of the others in the ATL area. Oddly, enough, my uni would not have the best paying VL position, but a smaller, less prestigious uni would! I haven’t even looked into UGA for a VL, though. But one of my committee members is a lecturer there, so I’ll ask her about it perhaps.
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It’s worth noting, and I feel gets overlooked, that the whole victim narrative was a joke in the first place. Having a side twitter account where you joke about students killing themselves at a university that had to install aluminum screens to prevent suicides at one of its main libraries only a few years ago is… worthy of investigation and punishment, possibly removal from classes!
The fact that the narrative wasn’t even defensible when it was fictionalized is a pretty sad state of affairs for the anti-PC crowd. Perhaps the academy is more permissive than they think?
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As someone who just saw the aftermath of a recent suicide in my building on my universities campus, this is fucking sick and beyond the pale. It can’t be waved away as a joke. This guy doesn’t deserve his position if this is how he talks about students struggling with their mental health. Fuck him. We don’t need assholes like this teaching students.
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As someone who was at NYU when three jumper suicides occurred within one month, fuck this guy indeed.
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