[Marxism] 'Tenured radical' tries to revive professors group

[Matt Wappett]

Absolutely Mark!  Having come from a long family heritage working in the 
coal mines and railroad factories in Durham County, I too feel 
tremendously privileged at the opportunity to take that heritage and 
bring it into the university classroom to put a human face on the 
oppression and economic injustices that have formed modern 
post-industrial social relations and my identity as a scholar in the 
Marxist tradition.  If I weren't employed by a university, then I 
wouldn't have the ability or support to do the research on social 
justice issues that I'm currently engaged in.  Similarly, if I wasn't 
employed by a university I probably wouldn't be in a position to help 
students recognize and remove the technocratic and neo-conservative 
fetters that they are unknowingly being saddled with in U.S. public 
schools.  I'd like to think that, at least in my classrooms, I'm giving 
students a safe forum to think and, hopefully, develop into the future 
vanguard...of course this creates tension, but if there isn't tension 
and debate then I'm not doing my job.

<MW>

Mark Lause wrote:
> Of course, I have the advantage of offering the answer of someone with
> blue-collar parents who didn't get past the eighth grade and of having
> spent years as factory fodder myself.
>
> More seriously, a professor's job beyond the bare minimum required can
> be as time-consuming and as involved as you want to make it.  I've
> never worked harder or put in longer hours.  I've written five books
> in the last ten years and I'd like to think that each of them has
> enriched our understanding of the development of our movement.
>
> And I've got more in the works.  I've spent about seven hours today so
> far (it's summer) editing a manuscript on revolutionary secret
> societies in the mid-nineteenth century US.
>
> If you are not independently wealthy or something, there is ABSOLUTELY
> NO WAY that anyone could do this sort of thing without being a
> professor.  In my mind, that's sufficient reason to want to be a
> professor.
>
> But it's like everything else, it's not for everybody.
>
> ML
>
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