there are pockets of the profession that simply refuse to understand that coming up through PhD programs amid intense precarity radicalized large numbers of historians— many of whom, having “made it” are now approaching mid-career. for many younger historians there never was a “good old days” - ThreadSky

melanienewport.bsky.social • 53 days ago

there are pockets of the profession that simply refuse to understand that coming up through PhD programs amid intense precarity radicalized large numbers of historians— many of whom, having “made it” are now approaching mid-career. for many younger historians there never was a “good old days”

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dwaldstreicher.bsky.social•52 days ago

yes. when we were organizing GESO at Yale in the early 90s, the best argument that the admin had was that grad students weren't really workers and so radicalizing would inhibit their otherwise inevitable rise to equivalence of yale faculty. There is a reason why that argument rarely works now.

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•53 days ago

Certainly true, though I also worry about the gap left by the all those scholars simply swept out of the profession - or swept out of the parts of it (tenure-line) that we've decided matter - by the jobs collapse.

I worry the voices we need have been forced to make their way elsewhere.

drchrisdeutsch.bsky.social•53 days ago

Terribly important point

melanienewport.bsky.social•53 days ago

that absence is so keenly felt— particularly given the intimacy of knowing friends and colleagues who should be at the table.

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•53 days ago

In grad school, the chunk of pre-modernists (ancient and medieval) that came +/- one year fro me, we stuck together and of the 12 or so of us, one didn't finish, 1 teaches community college (and loves it), 2 have tenure-track jobs.

And that's it. The rest are precarious or left academia.

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•53 days ago

Good colleagues, teachers and scholars and just...it didn't matter. And very much a "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong" - it wasn't the best who grabbed hold of something so much as luck. Everyone who got a job deserved it, but many who deserved found nothing.

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•53 days ago

When I came into my program in 2012, my advisor had a something close to an 80% placement rate for his graduate students; for the group that moved through when I did the rate plunged to about 30%.

Nothing he did changed, but not amount of advising can fix there being no jobs.

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•53 days ago

Sorry, didn't mean to dump all of that on you, it's just still very sore, as I imagine you understand all too well.

thetattooedprof.bsky.social•53 days ago

Yeah, that was never more visible, I think, than at this evening's business meeting.

thetattooedprof.bsky.social•53 days ago

Especially when some of the senior folks speaking against the resolution tried to use a "we need to protect our students and precarious colleagues and junior/marginalized scholars" argument for not passing the resolution. It...did not go over well.

shannanclark.bsky.social•53 days ago

This ventriloquism by which very privileged AHA members claimed to represent the precarious majority was especially galling. The AHA has done little to fight against casualization, and it refused to back College For All in the brief moment in 2021 when it was a possibility. So much for "advocacy."

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