>Dennis, Yoshie, or others involved in the grad student union mv't got any
>reactions to this article? Steve
>
>----
>A glance at the summer issue of "Social Policy":
>Leftist professors who oppose unions for teaching assistants
>
>Robert D. Johnston wants to know where all the "tenured
>radicals" have gone.
I recall that, at Yale, Michael Denning & Hazel Carby also stood firm in support of the GESO. besides the excellent David Montgomery whom Robert Johnson mentions in his article. At prestigious institutions like Yale, it is extraordinarily difficult to receive tenure, so by the time Yale professors get tenured, they must have their youthful radicalism whittled away, by the administration, senior faculty, student evaluation, and their own self-censorship, I believe. Cary Nelson blasted strike-breaking Yale professors in his _Manifesto of a Tenured Radical_, and such "progressive" scholars as postcolonial critic Sara Suleri, women's history scholar Nancy Cott, and slavery historian David Brion Davis got deservedly infamous for their devotion to management.
At the Ohio State University (which is a public institution that has perhaps one hundredth of Yale prestige), there are some professors who hail from the New Left background, like Keith Kilty (Social Work), Ike Newsum (African Studies), & Tony Libby (English), and they have reliably supported campus activist causes that we have asked them to support, including grad organizing. (And before Justin left Columbus, he was at nearly every protest in Columbus that I can think of.) Also, Claudio Fogu (a little younger than the New Left generation) who taught history (before he left the OSU for University of Southern California after the end of the spring quarter) was perhaps the brightest spot of radicalism in recent years. All in all, I like & trust most of the left-wing professors at OSU. So, unlike at Yale, the problem here is less by-now-deradicalized left-wing "tenured radicals" than explicit & implicit pressures put upon all of us by President, Provost, & Deans (and sometimes Chairs & Vice Chairs too) to be politically quiet & focus on our "profession" and "service" to the university (when you don't obey, you sometimes get the fate of Justin, Cathy Schuman, John Norman, and other folks I liked), and more importantly, the plain fact that most faculty & grad students are _not_ left-wingers (much less left-wing activists) to begin with.
Yoshie