by Chris Cumo

THE CRISIS OF underemployment for adjuncts stems from the collapse of the humanities. Ernie Benjamin of the American Association for University Professors notes that in the fall of 1998, 53 percent of English faculty were adjuncts compared to 32 percent in physics and chemistry. But numbers are only part of the story. The chemist who picks up an extra class at the local college often has a full-time job in industry, whereas the literature part-timer, according to Benjamin, has nowhere but the academy to turn for work.

The adjuncts I know are all historians, philosophers and literati, and their plight will not improve until they become scientists. That is, the humanities must sprout branches on the tree of science. People who have traditionally thought of themselves as part of the humanities now need to see the humanities, in turn, as part of science. This process is already underway in history, which in some camps is little more than biological determinism. If the past has grand laws, they are embedded in the growth and migration of populations, the domestication and spread of crops and livestock, and the surge of epidemics.

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