MLA Conference: PL’ers to Spur Class Struggle in Academia

Members and friends of PLP in the Radical Caucus of the Modern Language Association (MLA) will be doing important political work at the annual MLA convention in Austin, TX on January 6-10,2016. Brutal budget cuts, involuntary “furloughs,” rapidly rising tuition, threats to academic freedom, increasing pauperization of non-tenure track faculty: these are the consequences of cutbacks and escalating Middle East wars.
The annual convention of the MLA, the professional organization of teachers of language and literature, brings together over 8,000 professors, graduate students and adjuncts—most seriously affected by the current crisis. Many tenured professors face stagnant incomes or pay cuts and threatened or actual closings of humanities departments.
The non-tenure track teachers who staff most college-level writing, language and literature courses are hurt more by the attacks. Working for as little as $2,500 per semester course, disproportionately female, these super-exploited academic laborers—often excellent and committed teachers—have little or no chance of ever obtaining adequately-compensated or secure work. These attacks on education workers are also attacks on the students they serve. 

For Ph.D. graduate students, the MLA Convention is known as the “meat market.” Many go to great expense to send resumes and travel to the convention to interview for the shrinking number of tenure-track jobs.

The Radical Caucus will protest the current assault on public higher education. Three-quarters of all US academics teach off the tenure track, earning less than a living wage usually with no health care, sick days, unemployment, or retirement benefits.

The context for these drastic cutbacks in Higher Education is the attack on the working class nationally and internationally:

• The US and NATO continue imperialist, murderous wars. The US would like to invade the Middle East but can’t afford to do so right now. Politicians build anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism. Thin turn breeds more racism, making it hard for US rulers to field an army depending largely on Black and Latin soldiers.

• The unprecedented attack on women’s reproductive rights – anti-abortion bills in many states and attacks on Planned Parenthood – shows that the Pentagon's decision to allow women in “combat roles” is not a victory for women’s equality but part of the imperialist strategy.

• The “Trans-Pacific Partnership” (TPP) is a declaration of trade war against China and Russia. Can a shooting war be far behind? A recent headline on Russia’s Sputnik News reads: “You Want War? Russia Is Ready for War.”

The American Dream is a pile of dust for some, a nightmare for many. One in 4 American children are on food stamps; 1 in 7 Americans overall.

But mass opposition is growing: demonstrations across the country against rising tuition and racism on campus, including multiracial protests on campuses and in communities against police brutality. The “Boycott-Divest-Sanction” movement against Israeli and US imperialist killing and oppression of Palestinians is growing in professional organizations. PLP has been in the forefront of the protests against police killings across country, including in Ferguson MO and NYC. PLP is also active at the City University of New York (CUNY), where a strike movement is growing.

The voice and aim of the Radical Caucus is a call to action. The RC is considering emergency resolutions: criticizing the governor of Texas for barring Syrian immigrants; opposing attacks on Muslims; against Supreme Court Justice Scalia’s suggestion that Black students are not qualified to attend university; against the “campus carry” laws permitting concealed guns on college campuses; the consequences of all these hurts education.

Everywhere and always, we must support students, especially in anti-racist struggles, the blocking of tuition increases, and the continued super-exploitation of adjunct faculty. We must point out the threat of imperialist and inter-imperialist was. The capitalist system is built on exploitation and can never be reformed to provide a decent life for working people and intellectuals. We stress the need for communist revolution, based in the international working-class.

The MLA Executive Council has made it much harder to get such resolutions approved in recent years. But the ongoing struggle to get the MLA to oppose the imperialist racism of the U.S. government is crucially important. We will continue to struggle with our friends in the Radical Caucus to set forth these or other issues in a principled, forceful, and comradely way.

PLP members in the MLA will be distributing CHALLENGE and participating in the activities of the Radical Caucus, which has emerged as a home for the many leftist humanities professors and graduate students who attend the convention. As the class struggle on college campuses gets more intense, communist teachers and students have an increasingly vital role to play.