Been watching this unfold in my inbox on WPA-L all day and as one such adjunct, I have no words. Just a lot of anger. I’ve taught 4-5 classes a semester every semester and classes during the summer, plus tutoring, in New York and New Jersey, and I barely make my rent and regularly go into debt over health care. There were a couple of years that I lived on leftovers supplied by friends or diners, or made a pancake last all day.

So yes, cue anger at how people who are actually entitled, or lucky enough to be secure, or secure enough to not have to recognize that sometimes there are no other options, are always going to exist, say shit like this, and completely ignore the fact that if all adjuncts had other (emotionally, physically, etc.) viable options? The machine of higher education, sans cogs, would stop working.

Whether it should is a separate discussion that I think few academics actually want to have.