re: that Rebecca Schuman piece

So I don't mean to linger, but I do want to pass along what a little bird told me: despite what you'd think from Rebecca Schuman's piece and from the gleeful comments at Slate, other people from her own cohort at UC-Irvine got tenure track jobs. You can check their recent hires here. Again, that doesn't change the generally bad odds or the general takeaway. There's lots of people without permanent placements in that list. The odds are quite low, for literature, and my general advice is not to go. But most of the comments and Schuman's remarks are so extreme that you'd be forgiven for thinking that literally no one gets hired. Seems relevant. People who entered her program with her got hired, and I know many people who have gotten TT lit jobs in the last several years, and some from schools that are not considered to have top programs. That's not the basis of advice; I'm not suggesting those people should be used to draw attention from the generally terrible numbers. But it is a way to say that there's advice and then there's emotional propaganda.

Of course, as I will persist in saying, both the piece's tone and its place of publication reveal that the point is not to offer practically useful advice, but rather to offer psychic comfort to all the people in our culture who feel shitty about the economy and themselves. It's among the most common and cruel contradictions of our culture: we simultaneously tell people to do what they love and to recognize that their lives are not a dress rehearsal, and at the same time mock anyone who does not make the most mercenary, capitalistic life decisions possible. I'm not sure how all of the commenters at that piece got the idea that people getting literature PhDs are in it for the money. Worse, though, there's the assumption that all of us operate under the same narrow definitions of success, or that all of us are interested in having our life decisions validated and approved by everyone else. I myself am not in literature (I'm actually a quant guy myself), but my life and career choices are similarly mockable to the people passing around that essay. What's interesting is not merely the defensive focus on other people's choices as the assumption that everyone should care about that focus, and not their own values and interests.

And that speaks to why Schuman's piece got published there, and what Slate is for. People always bring up the contrarianism. But contrarianism, for Slate, is a means and not and end. Slate's real business model is the commodification of personal resentment. Think about it: what do they publish that doesn't end up mocking some set of rubes or marks or idiots? It's the most consistent element of Slate. Not defying the conventional wisdom, but rather identifying some people who are stupid. The anti-left wing hippie punching is an artifact of that. Contrarianism is often just a useful means of achieving this judgment. And the commercial value of this focus is plain: in a culture where tons of people spend their days doing something they hate, there will always be an attraction to a publication that can judge others, particularly those who are following a project of passion. For those who hate their jobs and their lives, there is comfort and self-defense in focusing on the failures and petty indignities of other people.

Our economic system, too, benefits from this outward focus. By acting as though individuals are responsible for their bad economic outcomes, blame and attention are shifted away from an economy that has become a thoroughly rigged game. Workers of all stripes and from many demographics are comprehensible fucked in this "new economy." That this general shittiness now encompasses people like Schuman, who come from a particular social and educational cohort, is the reason for a great deal of social panic. That panic might, under the right circumstances, lead to systemic economic change. But when you can slice up the broad groups of fucked people-- that is, people who aren't already rich, people who don't come from familial privilege and wealth, and people who aren't really lucky-- you can ensure that no such broad change occurs. That's part of the purpose of the ever-popular "you're a chump" genre. The truth is that we're fucked because of policy choices, implemented by neoliberal politicians for the particular and intentional purpose of making our economy an instrument for funneling resources from the many to the few. But we're chumps, all of us, because we are busy pointing the finger at each other. That's why we're chumps-- you, me, Rebecca Schuman, the commenters at Slate, all of us.

Update: You want to know how to think about trying to get a tenure track professorship in the humanities? The way you think about becoming an actor, or a musician, or a professional athlete. You've got to understand the odds and the competition in those terms. And you've also got to understand that, while there's the superstars, and the people who just make it to the big leagues, there's another set of options that are less secure, less well-compensated, less respected, and less safe. For many people, finding themselves on that rung is something akin to failure. To some, it's enough. In any event, the odds are bad, and they will always laugh at you if you try. Which means it can only be attempted by those who can think of nothing else. And if you are a friend or family member of someone trying, sometimes it's best for you to tell them to reconsider. But always, do so with love, and recognize that the are only trying to live as the best parts of their culture tell them too: as if they should live their lives like they only have one, as if there is something more than money.

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Sunday morning audio

Too busy to write something about this right now, but I wanted to respond to some consistent complaints I'm getting about my post on demographics, parentage, environment, and ed reform. I apologize for the initial voice scratchiness; it warms up as I go on.

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somewhere far, far away

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Give advice or heap ridicule, but don't call one the other

As will surprise no one, as busy as I am, I can't fail to respond to something.

There has emerged a new genre in online magazine writing, in recent years: the essay that pretends to be offering advice to potential humanities grad students, while actually offering only mockery and scorn. There have, in fact, been dozens of this types written, scattered all over the internet. And they are defined not so much by the constancy of their opinion but by their self-undermining nature: by taking such luxurious pleasure in mocking potential and current grad students, these essays ensures that very few who need to hear them will be willing to listen. Dr. Rebecca Schuman, visiting professor at Ohio State University (and thus employed, unlike many millions of people in this country) has a perfectly typical example of the form. It's notable only for the exceptional purity of its resentment and projection. (Actual URL: there_are_no_academic_jobs_and_getting_a_ph_d_will_make_you_into_a_horrible_person. Yeah, I trust this post to be an honest extension of advice!)

Now, we can make a few conclusions from this piece, but they aren't really about the PhD job market. Dr. Schuman does not really present an argument against getting a PhD in the humanities. An argument would require evidence, which she does not provide. She says that there are 150 applicants for every tenure track job in her field; where she got that figure, who can say? It's funny; I would think that the requirement to show where your facts comes from would be the sort of thing you learn in a graduate program. In any event, I don't doubt the accuracy of that figure. The odds are very low. But even if we take those numbers at face value, the notion that every one of those 150 applicants is equally worthy of being employed is stupid. There are programs out thre that have very high TT employment rates. They're hard to get into. But they exist. And, indeed, that's where Dr. Schuman's anger comes from: because it's not literally true that nobody gets employed in TT jobs (in fact many thousands do), there's anger to be had at the fact that she isn't so employed. Yet.

If I was actually interested in the well-being of PhDs, I would start with this (cited!) information, courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics-- which shows, in fact, that the well-being of PhDs is in fact quite well protected.

Typically, I tell people not to go to grad school. That's the advice I give, generally. And I do rather stridently. But when I do, I make it actual advice, by which I mean, it comes from a place of respect and a sincere desire to help. I don't pretend to offer advice when I'm actually offering contempt and mockery. And I also recognize that the vast majority of PhDs are in fact in far better shape than the national average. They have an absurdly low unemployment rate of 2.5% and weekly earnings twice the national average. As with any statistics, there's plenty of individual variance within there. But the data are unambiguous: the vast majority of PhDs end up fine. Many or most of them won't end up as TT professors, and for many of them, that'll be a disappointment. But in a country with such vast poverty, unemployment, and general economic hopelessness, PhDs are doing fine. My general advice stands: don't go, unless you are merciless in your self-criticism, if you are mercenary in how you pursue particular fields and research interests, and if the program has a very high placement rate. My own program (not department), for instance, has a 100% TT hiring rate in the history of the program, a time-to-degree of 5.4 years, and better than 90% graduation rate for people who finish their preliminary exams. (Could I easily be one of the people left without a job, though? You betcha.)

To assert that you are offering employment advice for PhDs, without considering data like this, is either deeply misguided or deeply dishonest.

There are smart and stupid ways to pursue graduate school. I laid out my version of the smart way here. But I certainly understand that I could end up on the outside looking in. And you know what? I'll figure that out. As someone who has endured actual human hardship, I guess I just don't see that kind of rejection as the pit of despair that Schuman does. My natural response to her talking about the spiritual death of not getting a TT job is to say, first, I think she needs to readjust her definition of suffering. And, second, what a terribly narrow, sad definition of the world, or of success.

If I end up not getting a tenure track job somewhere, I might be a full-time adjunct. Or I might get a job at a community college. Or I might go into industry, as a small but consistent number of the graduates of my program do. Or I might teach high school, which I would love. Or I might do any other set of things. But I will survive. And if I do, I'll cherish these years. Because every single day, I feel challenged and fulfilled. These have been the best days of my adult life. I say that without reservation or hesistation. I've gotten paid to go to school and to teach and to work with brilliant people, every day. I cannot tell you how often I am reminded of how lucky I am. And whatever comes, comes. I've been poor before. I'm not afraid. For some of us, the thought of working a 9-5 office job is far worse than living an economically precarious existence. To choose the latter over the former is an adult choice that an adult can make. Besides: you think that there's gonna be such a thing as a job, for much longer? All the people who squeeze into a cubicle every day are the next downturn away from being worse off than the most overworked funded grad student.

Besides, I knew the odds going in. I studied and researched. Being a grad student, after all, is essentially to say that you want to be a professional researcher. If you don't do the necessary research first, I have limited sympathy for you.

I don't doubt that some people need to hear her message. I  do regret that she voiced it in a way designed to eject as many people from it as possible. But understand, potential graduate students of America: Rebecca Schuman is not writing to help you.  She has nothing but contempt for you. She writes, instead, to mock you and ridicule you. She does this because it is a very easy sell to a website that makes its money through mockery, and because she's angry. Be very skeptical of your urge to go to grad school. Check the numbers. Study up. Be ruthless in your self-evaluation. But Dr. Schuman? Don't take her personally. Her baggage is only that. And more, listen to your gut: whatever else she's doing, she's not offering advice. Advice doesn't come wrapped in this much contempt.

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See you soon

Gonna be busy for awhile. I'll catch you later.

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support and solidarity for the educated, privileged people at Houston

One of the ways that capitalism works is that it convinces poor people that they're middle class and middle class people that they're upper class, or at least, that they will ascend to the next rung of our caste system in short order. That's part of what keeps the peace. Arguments about false consciousness are unpopular among many progressives, as they are perceived as rude, but rude and true can comfortably overlap in a Venn diagram.

This aspirational tendency intersects with liberal privilege hunting in an unhealthy way. Because the understanding of privilege is often crude, and frequently held by those who are interested in it as a defensive posture rather than a critical analytic tool, the tendency is to simply sort people into broad categories of "privileged" and "unprivileged," which misunderstands the scalar quality of human suffering, denies compassion to those who deserve it, and excludes those people from the solidarity that is necessary to provoke political change. I see it happen all the time: the crude way in which privilege is discussed insists on people denying the ways in which they are systematically oppressed, which dulls their support for structural change and contributes to their false consciousness.

So take these University of Houston writing fellows who are agitating for better pay. They are, certainly, people with social capital, and many or most of them are significantly privileged. That's important! Social capital is real. Privilege is real. But they are also people who have not gotten a pay raise in years and are, by any rational measure, poorly paid. That's also real. Social capital can ensure that you eventually live a life of material security where another person of similar ability does not. But it can't pay the garage when your car breaks down. I have written thousands and thousands of words on both the reality of social capital and its limitations. Unfortunately, many academics don't want to recognize those limitations at all, but rather articulate an entirely nuance-free vision of privilege that excludes anyone who has any from either political solidarity or human sympathy. And that's a profound mistake, if only for the way it makes structural political change less likely. I also think that this is the way savvy, educated types accept their own false consciousness. They are simply voicing a more sophisticated version of the delusion that one is not poor, but rather a temporarily illiquid entrepreneur.

You might say that it's easy to navigate these tensions, to both recognize the power of privilege and the persistence of social capital while maintaining both personal sympathy and political solidarity for those who enjoy it. In my experience, though, many people succumb to the temptation to cast everything into the broadest classes possible, to see the world as made up of the subaltern and those whose complaints are inherently white people problems. Not me. I have understood suffering enough to sort one thing from the other, and I will keep my own counsel on who is worthy of human compassion. So: here's to organization, resistance, and victory for the University of Houston's teaching fellows.

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Lee Alexander McQueen

Fashion is a lonely, shallow world - 

He was a beautiful bloke, a really beautiful person with a big heart.... ‘It was very casual. Lee said, “Would you marry me?” I said, “Yeah.” And it turned into, “Will you marry me?” I said, “Yeah” again.

Annabelle said, “I’ll organise it. I’ll be your bridesmaid Lee.” And Kate said, “I’ll be yours George.” 

We just got on really well from the very beginning. He was an East End boy, I’m a North London Jew. We could talk for hours. We courted for four weeks then, about five weeks after we met we went out one Saturday night and I just didn’t go home, ever

‘Where we lived, you could climb up on to the roof and we used to do that at night and lie on benches just looking up at the stars and talking for hours.

I got to know Lee McQueen

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