Victory to the proletariat

Last updated on August 9th, 2017 at 11:15 am

Social justice at the City University of New York!

1. One of the advertised jobs has social utility and therefore demand and therefore a better pay rate.  The other one, well a teacher of Rhetoric – is Goebbels still available, or maybe Kayser Trad.

   Posted by platey mates on 2006 02 27 at 08:51 AM • permalink

1. Those who can, plumb. Those who can’t, teach.

   Those who can’t do either work for the government and watch excessive amounts of reality television in their smelly apartments.

   Posted by joe bagadonuts on 2006 02 27 at 09:13 AM • permalink

1. It reminds of the time I told a lefty friend of mine to go and see Steven Seagal’s bllodfest “out for justice” as it was about social justice in South America. She went and I’m still laughing.

   Posted by Nic on 2006 02 27 at 09:23 AM • permalink

1. #2. Priceless, Joe.

   Posted by paco on 2006 02 27 at 10:35 AM • permalink

1. Those who can’t do either work for the government and watch excessive amounts of reality television in their smelly apartments.

   Are we defining welfare recipients as gummint workers, now?

   Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 02 27 at 11:04 AM • permalink

1. Well, richard, who’s paying them?

   :^0

   When I lived in San Diego, I had a tiny studio down the hall from one of those smelly-apartment government drones. The place always reeked of dirty laundry and some strange herbs she was growing. (Not the recreational kind, AFAIK). One of her other neighbors made the mistake of complaining to the building management about the smell and became the target of unending petty harassments. The woman’s obvious mental problems apparently entitled her to a “Disabled Person” placard for her car, which was festooned with bumper stickers either promoting some wacky left-wing cause or denouncing Republicans and/or Israel.

   Not surprisingly, she worked at the county welfare office.

   Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 02 27 at 01:45 PM • permalink

1. Is it just me who sees the City University of New York’s acronym and does a double-take?

   I worked in and around academia for the best part of a decade. Outside the elite research-based insitutions, university staff are split about fifty-fifty between gifted educators/researchers and deadweight wastes of skin (this is in engineering/scientific departments). In the humanities, I’m highly doubtful that as many as one in twenty is of any societal use whatever. One could shut every English Literature department in the Anglo-Saxon world and not negatively affect the level of scholarship in the field (in fact, one could probably shoot every faculty member and it would do a power of good to the subject).

   Posted by David Gillies on 2006 02 27 at 04:22 PM • permalink

1. As a distinguished arts alumnus of the Southern Highlands Institute of Technology I must take exception to the unnecessary level of anti-intellectualism being displayed in this thread.

   Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 02 27 at 05:03 PM • permalink

1. #7 From my observations at a few universities, I agree the 50/50 split is about right, ballpark anyway. but in what field of employment is it any different? You get great plumbers, you get lousy plumbers.

   Posted by daddy dave on 2006 02 27 at 08:37 PM • permalink

1. I suspect there are more plumbers who can deconstruct Proust than there are Lit Professors who can fix a faucet…

   Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 02 27 at 11:29 PM • permalink

1. Richard,
   you may be right about that.

   Posted by daddy dave on 2006 02 27 at 11:36 PM • permalink

1. but in what field of employment is it any different? You get great plumbers, you get lousy plumbers.

   Sure, but the market tends to take care of that, and in relatively short order. Meanwhile, even censuring an utter fuckwit academic such as Ward Churchill is a Herculean task.

   Posted by PW on 2006 02 28 at 02:10 AM • permalink

1. The market seems to be working in this case, too.

   We’re too obsessed in America with everyone going to college. We’ve got lots of potentially good tradesmen wasting their time getting useless degrees when then could be much more useful (and handsomely paid) as electricians and plumbers.

   Posted by Dave S. on 2006 02 28 at 08:57 AM • permalink

1. #13

   The market seems to be working in this case, too.

   right, you’re not going to find Harvard school of medicine paying that kind of money.

   Posted by daddy dave on 2006 02 28 at 10:22 AM • permalink

1. People are willing to pay for knowledge and skill.

   Posted by rhhardin on 2006 02 28 at 12:33 PM • permalink

1. One of the main reasons we get geniuses like Ward Churchill is that almost no one with a skerrick of ambition and capability would consider becoming an academic these days – particularly not in the humanities. Job prospects minimal, salary laughable.

   As the old saying goes, if you pay peanuts …

   Posted by Lionel Mandrake on 2006 02 28 at 08:34 PM • permalink

1. lionel,

   Didn’t you read that Ward Churchill makes over $115K USD a year?  That is not exactly peanuts, especially in a flyover state.

   Posted by dick on 2006 02 28 at 08:46 PM • permalink

1. #17 Yeah, I guess he’s become something of an academic “star” these days, which is a very sad reflection upon his university …

   But my comment was directed at the smart graduate who might be deciding whether to go for a PhD in humanities. They’ll see the deals on offer like the CUNY (must be very careful with spelling!) instructorship above, and think, “Hmm, how do I get into law school?”

   And then we’ll just end up with the mutants running our arts faculties a la Prof Churchill.

   Posted by Lionel Mandrake on 2006 02 28 at 09:11 PM • permalink

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