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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32429 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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This story is noteworthy because it happened to a professor; hardly anyone cares or talks about people who get fired from other professions for stupid, arbitrary reasons. Just as profs are at the mercy of students, other employees are at mercy of customers complaining, bosses, etc. It's like work is not fun and workers are in a precarious position and must be on their toes. Also, one must keep in perspective how uncommon this is. There are over 200k people employed in higher ed in the US in depending if you count full vs. part time, adjust vs. tenured, etc. --it's a lot.

But on the other hand, the notion of academic freedom is considered to be inviolable, which I guess is why these stories get so much attention despite being so rare. It also has a chilling effect, so it's not entirely isolated even though it's uncommon. I think only tenured profs are protected.

It's like work is not fun and workers are in a precarious position and must be on their toes.

I'm not speaking on this particular incident because I don't know enough details, but a lot of these people who get shoved out ceremoniously are in a precarious position for a reason totally unrelated to the incident--workplace feuds, poor performance, being a weirdo in a general undefined sense, etc. Then management or HR will take some arbitrary unsubstantiated claim and kick them out. This is pretty common in the mid and higher ranges of bureaucracies and probably makes up a lot of woke firings IMO.

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