by Brian Caterino

WHILE MORE CIVILIZED pursuits like NFL Football have outlawed the practice of taunting one's opponent, adjunct faculty and graduate students still have to endure the verbal equivalent of the throat-slashing gesture: the job crisis discussion. It usually involves calling adjuncts' character or judgment into question: "get a real job."

Conservative columnist George Will knows what motivates adjuncts. He argues in an April 25, 1999, column that academic activists are Marxists who hate capitalism and ignore the discipline of the market. Like other greedy consumers, they hold an "entitlement" mentality. While not seeking a new Cold War, ex- MLA president Elaine Showalter's contention that grad students should "corporatize" is equally troubling. Echoing the logic that the market is an irresistible natural force to which we must submit, she claims that protest against employment conditions is "outdated and self-destructive." Even some sympathetic critics find those who stay in academia to be brainwashed by a narrow, cult-like atmosphere that makes them fear entry into the outside world.

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