Are you studying, fishing, hunting, or everything at once? All of this can happen at the same time on the shores of Como. For, the lake has fish, the forests around the lake have beasts, and your most isolated retreat supplies constant opportunities for study. But whether you are doing it all at once or just one thing, I cannot say that “I hate you for it”, but I am still anguished that I can’t join in when I long for them the way a sick man desires wine, baths, and springs.
Ah! how shall I ever drop these tightest of bonds if there is no way to untie them? Never, I suspect. For new business grows on top of the old before what was there is handled. As many links as already exist are added anew each day as my chain extends ever on.
Goodbye.
Plinius Caninio Suo S.
1Studes an piscaris an venaris an simul omnia? Possunt enim omnia simul fieri ad Larium nostrum. Nam lacus piscem, feras silvae quibus lacus cingitur, studia altissimus iste secessus adfatim suggerunt. 2Sed sive omnia simul sive aliquid facis, non possum dicere “invideo”; angor tamen non et mihi licere, qui sic concupisco ut aegri vinum balinea fontes. Numquamne hos artissimos laqueos, si solvere negatur, abrumpam? Numquam, puto. Nam veteribus negotiis nova accrescunt, nec tamen priora peraguntur: tot nexibus, tot quasi catenis maius in dies occupationum agmen extenditur. Vale.
“Blameless [corresponds] to swift to criticize [which he says later]. And he is explaining his temper, furnishing an excuse for himself in case he cannot persuade him.”
The Chronicle has another article out on the death of the humanities-—this opinion piece is one variation on the genre that blames humanists (mostly tenured professors) for their (our) failure to react and adapt to save the profession (in this case history departments). I am reluctant to critique the piece too much, because the authors are early career scholars and because they are not wrong. The last generation of professors tenured has failed in any ways to rise to the occasion and rally in defense of the humanities.
And I totally agree that what the authors conclude for the AHA is applicable to the other major organizations as well: “The AHA must instead adopt a more active role that challenges the casualization of labor that has degraded academic work. The jobs crisis is not natural; it is a crisis of political economy caused by a series of decisions made by corporate, governmental, and, yes, academic elites over the past 50 years.”
Before I say anything else, let me be unequivocal about this: our professional organizations have either been incapable or unwilling to agitate for needed changes in employment and professional life over the last two generations. We have especially failed the last two decades of PhDs, a majority of whom work in less favorable and endurable conditions than the generation before them (if they are lucky enough to work in the field at all). And, we have failed to acknowledge and understand the economic and demographic challenges ahead of us.
At the same time, we have failed to help our students and future colleagues understand the way things are and might be. Let’s think about the last line quoted above: the corporations and governments. Academic elites? Sure, they—we—are all complicit in the system. But I would hazard a guess that no amount of concerted effort by this class over the last 50 years would make a difference at all.
Professional organizations are not equipped, funded, or designed to combat the base problem: an economic and political system that values utility and profit over humanity. All the professional organizations and all the professionals of the humanities could unite and the economic power we wield would still be less than a Bezos or Koch.
The scarcity of the academic job market and the ostentatious leap in ‘standards’ for employment, retention and tenure over the past generation has turned academic careers into zero sum exercises. The desperation and alienation that attends us at nearly every stage of our careers conditions us to turn on each other, to blame those who are closest and more familiar, instead of taking hard looks at the system itself. We use our considerable training to turn censorious voices against the younger generation or to attack the lazy complicity of the older one. It is as if we are the sown soldiers from the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, bewitched to assail one another and to never acknowledge the authors of our pain.
Based on the pabulum the Chronicle typically publishes, it does not surprise me that it would embrace and foster the kind of essay which leads the reader away from the systemic problems and towards the symptoms. It profits from perpetuating strife. The Chronicle’s nearly chronic administrative friendly and supply side reporting—when it is not salaciously reveling in scandals that make humanists look like fools—is indicative that it is reflective not of some professorial ideal or professional standard, but rather of the messy patchwork quilt of corporate and political interests that make up modern academia, combined as well with a 21st century’s news outlet’s desperation to print the news that gets the clicks.
“Why do we train our children in the liberal arts? It is not because these studies can grant someone virtue, but because they prepare the soul for accepting it.”
“Quare ergo liberalibus studiis filios erudimus?” Non quia virtutem dare possunt, sed quia animum ad accipiendam virtutem praeparant, Seneca, Moral Epistles 88.20
Here’s the truth, as I see it. Only two things can subvert the trends that are turning higher education into vocational factories for the lower classes and finishing schools for the 1%: huge amounts of money and collective action. Professional organizations lack the first tool by several orders of magnitude; when it comes to the second, as faculty we are so blinded, bruised, and psychologically mutilated by the system that has shaped us, that it is almost inconceivable that we would walk out collectively to protest something happening to colleagues in another discipline at another institution.
Almost every week—if not every day—there are indications of where the power and priorities of higher education now lie. From the recent heist of the humanities and the soul of the University of Tulsa, to Stanford University’s decision to enforce financial austerity on its own press, Harvard out-raising its goals by 50% to yield 9.6 Billion new dollars and then claiming austerity to freeze wages and health benefits for graduate students, evidence for a foundational shift of budgeting models in education is everywhere. Students and faculty are often overwhelmed by budgetary detail, but the essential framework that guides our institution is something that we should care about.
The classic model of a university budget is the “everything in one bucket” model which assumes that the institution will pay for all of its expenses from the same pot of money. This allows “profitable” segments of the university to offset the costs of other units and communicates either financial incompetence or a commitment to supporting the core values of an academic community without worrying about line-item costs. More and more universities, however, are following models that demand each school or academic unit have a balanced budget, or, even worse, meet externally imposed projections of growth. These ‘business models’ when applied incompetently or insidiously almost inevitably destroy the humanities, as is happening with the slow death of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Cincinnati.
While many Universities apply ‘hybrid’ models that try to balance institutional values against market demands (There are, of course, many models for university finance), the cumulative effect of proposing and then assuming and demanding that an educational institution work like a business will inevitably reduce Universities to massive displays of Coca Cola and Pepsi Products. We all know they are bad for us and, in truth, little different from each other, but we eventually buy them anyway. (But oh, wait, there’s artisanal soda at three times the price!)
Essays like the Chronicle’s that blame the players—even if we may be complicit, blind fools—and not the game actually work in service of the rhetorical regime that supports an oppressive dehumanizing system. The elegant rhetoric and fine argumentation are smoke and mirrors obscuring the fact that we don’t really understand the rules of the game. By blaming the historians and the field, we are claiming agency where we have none and making real action impossible.
Of course, when I tweeted about this last week, there was protest:
Humanities that do not force us to question our assumptions about what it means to be human and how we should best live together are dehumanizing and not worth saving. Period. As I have mentioned several times before, the subjects under the ax are those which help us see the ax and imagine different futures that don’t require the ax. It is not accidental that the proto-fascist Brazilian strongman, President Bolsonaro, wants to cut all funding to philosophy and sociology. We don’t (yet) have the same political regime, but we are in the same systemic danger.
“Let this be your business, let this be your leisure; let this be both your work and your rest.”
Hoc sit negotium tuum hoc otium; hic labor haec quies; in his vigilia, in his etiam somnus reponatur #Pliny
“He was the first to establish annual salaries of 100 thousand sesterces for Latin and Greek teachers of rhetoric from the treasury.”
Primus e fisco Latinis Graecisque rhetoribus annua centena constituit
While doing some spring cleaning in my department, I uncovered some salaries for classicists from 1968 (aside: I really love the font on the letterhead):
For comparison, as chair of what is now the Department of Classical Studies, I have just done salary reviews and this makes our current low salary 9.1% higher than the 1968 low while our current top salary for an associate professor is 11% lower. Based on current ratio between our highest full and lowest assistant, our maximum salary is between 7% and 9% higher than an equivalent ratio in 1968.
These numbers, of course, ignore that the living costs in the area have skyrocketed over the past generation (now Boston is among the 10th most expensive cities to live in in the US). The historical cost of a home in Massachusetts in 1970 was $79,100 (adjusted to 2000 dollars which would have been $15,737.41 in the buying power of 1970).
Just to make this a little clearer, based on government inflation calculators, an associate professor’s salary for a single year could almost buy a home at the average price of Massachusetts homes in 1970. The current median home value/price in the Boston area is just over $600,000. Again, to translate this back to the halcyon days of 1968, this would a equivalent home price would have been $80,959.24 (which, to make rough calculations, means a five-fold increase in cost).
Plato, Lysis 208b
“They trust some contract worked more than you to do whatever he wants when it comes to the horses and they give him a salary in addition to it?!”
— Mike Aubrey – Koine-Greek.com (@michaelgaubrey) April 23, 2019
For comparison, here are numbers from 1984.
According to the US CPI calculator, the top salary of $43,000 here is equivalent to $105,000.00 in current buying power (actually a decrease since 1968) while the minimum for assistant ($20,800) is equivalent to around $51,534.13 (average Massachusetts home prices had risen to $95,500 in 1984).
If these numbers teach us anything its that faculty salaries on the tenure track have stayed somewhat stable in relation to general inflation over time, but that they lost value between 1968 and 1984 and then lost considerable value in comparison to cost of living despite making modest gains relative to inflation.
The story for contract or contingent faculty? There is no data for 1968, but the $9850.00 above for 1984 translates into $24,572.03 worth of buying power in the current economy. I can say that we do better for contingent faculty who have a full time appointment, but certainly not nearly enough.
From the Oxford English Dictionary: Etymology: < Anglo-Norman salarie = Old French salaire, Italian salario, Spanish salario, Portuguese salario, < Latin salārium, originally money allowed to Roman soldiers for the purchase of salt, hence, their pay; substantive use of neuter singular of salārius pertaining to salt, < sal salt.
Well, it is from 'sal', but I believe there's no evidence of a 'salt allowance'. That was a conjecture of 19th century lexicographers. It doesn't appear in the ancient sources! https://t.co/0q6GVPSNwL
“Therefore, by Hercules, a rather civilized life cannot proceed without salt. This substance is so necessary that the word is transferred to significant pleasures of the mind too. Also named “salts” [sales] are all the charms of life, the pinnacle of humor, resting after work—the matter is made clear by this simple word more than any other.
It is also among the honors of the military too as “salaries” were coined from the root sal with great authority among ancient people—this is clear from the Salarian way since, by its course salt was conveyed to the Sabines. The King Ancus Marcus gave the people a grant of 6,000 bushels of salt and was the first to have salt pools built. Even Varro stands as an authority that the ancients uses salt as a condiment and that they ate salt with their bread (as is clear from the proverb). But the greatest indication of the importance of salt is in sacrifices which cannot be completed without the salted meal.”
ergo, Hercules, vita humanior sine sale non quit degere, adeoque necessarium elementum est uti transierit intellectus ad voluptates animi quoque nimias. sales appellantur, omnisque vitae lepos et summa hilaritas laborumque requies non alio magis vocabulo constat. honoribus etiam militiaeque interponitur salariis inde dictis magna apud antiquos auctoritate, sicut apparet ex nomine Salariae viae, quoniam illa salem in Sabinos portari convenerat. Ancus Marcius rex salis modios v͞i͞ in congiario dedit populis et salinas primus instituit. Varro etiam pulmentarii vice usos veteres auctor est, et salem cum pane esitasse eos proverbio apparet. maxime tamen in sacris intellegitur auctoritas, quando nulla conficiuntur sine mola salsa.
Lord, the people of Nicomedia have spent 3,318,000 sesterces on an aqueduct which was left unfinished and then it was taken down. Then they allotted two hundred thousand sesterces to a second one. Because this one was also abandoned, they need to spend more to have water when they have wasted so much money badly.
I have gone to the cleanest spring myself, the one from which it seems likely that water could be conducted by an aqueduct as was tried from the beginning, if we want the water to make it beyond the lower levels of the city. There remain only a few arches standing there still but there are others which could be made from stones which remain from previous attempts. Another part, I think, should be built from brick, which is easier and cheaper.
But foremost, we need you to send out a water-works engineer or an architect so what happened before does not happen again. I will encourage only this, that the work should have a function and beauty worthy of your era.”
C. Plinius Traiano Imperatori
1In aquae ductum, domine, Nicomedenses impenderunt HS |X̅X̅X̅| C̅C̅C̅X̅V̅I̅I̅I̅, qui imperfectus adhuc omissus, destructus etiam est; rursus in alium ductum erogata sunt C̅C̅. Hoc quoque relicto novo impendio est opus, ut aquam habeant, qui tantam pecuniam male perdiderunt. Ipse perveni ad fontem purissimum, ex quo videtur aqua debere perduci, sicut initio temptatum erat, arcuato opere, ne tantum ad plana civitatis et humilia perveniat. Manent adhuc paucissimi arcus: possunt et erigi quidam lapide quadrato, qui ex superiore opere detractus est; aliqua pars, ut mihi videtur, testaceo opere agenda erit, id enim et facilius et vilius. Sed in primis necessarium est mitti a te vel aquilegem vel architectum, ne rursus eveniat quod accidit. Ego illud unum adfirmo, et utilitatem operis et pulchritudinem saeculo tuo esse dignissimam.
Are you studying, fishing, hunting, or everything at once? All of this can happen at the same time on the shores of Como. For, the lake has fish, the forests around the lake have beasts, and your most isolated retreat supplies constant opportunities for study. But whether you are doing it all at once or just one thing, I cannot say that “I hate you for it”, but I am still anguished that I can’t join in when I long for them the way a sick man desires wine, baths, and springs.
Ah! how shall I ever drop these tightest of bonds if there is no way to untie them? Never, I suspect. For new business grows on top of the old before what was there is handled. As many links as already exist are added anew each day as my chain extends ever on.
Goodbye.
Plinius Caninio Suo S.
1Studes an piscaris an venaris an simul omnia? Possunt enim omnia simul fieri ad Larium nostrum. Nam lacus piscem, feras silvae quibus lacus cingitur, studia altissimus iste secessus adfatim suggerunt. 2Sed sive omnia simul sive aliquid facis, non possum dicere “invideo”; angor tamen non et mihi licere, qui sic concupisco ut aegri vinum balinea fontes. Numquamne hos artissimos laqueos, si solvere negatur, abrumpam? Numquam, puto. Nam veteribus negotiis nova accrescunt, nec tamen priora peraguntur: tot nexibus, tot quasi catenis maius in dies occupationum agmen extenditur. Vale.
