Professors and Other Aging Institutions

An aggravated Columbia undergrad yesterday used the arrival of a new LGBT programs director as an opporunity to attack full-time faculty as well as African American and Women's Studies programs in a Spectator op-ed piece.

Claiming that sexual, gender and racial identities are "the greatest modern fabrication," Nellie Bowles berates "a whole generation of academics" who squandered the economic boom of the 1990s by quibbling and categorizing rather than rethinking social issues: "As experts, not revolutionaries (though they masquerade as such), they have more of a stake in the status quo than anyone, for their place as expert is threatened by change." Bowles seems to advocate the replacement of full-time faculty (whose studies have kept them "safe from reality") with instructors who have "real world" experience. Her lament that "we ought not have allowed professors so much power" chimes nicely with the trend toward casualization of the academic labor force.

Bowles follows up her critique of full-time faculty with an assualt on gender and ethnic studies programs: "How can we take power away from race, from the words black and white, and destroy their ability to divide people, when classes on race are separated from the rest of 'non-racial' academic departments? The separation of these departments hinders intellectual debate, institutionalizes a philosophy we need to destroy." While first calling on the "second-wave feminists" of the women-only Barnard College to replace their shoulder pads with "unisex skinny jeans," she then problematically commands Columbia to "strip Barnard."

Bowles has re-worked a social constructionist critique of race, gender, and sexuality into an assualt on the "liberal folly" of "political correctness." Her vision of a powerful administration that can "strip" Women's Studies, "integrate" Ethnic Studies, and hobble the academic decision making of professors demonstrates the inerconnectedness of threats to ethnic studies and fair labor practices in the corporate university.