Interview: Michael Dubson

by
Jennifer Berkshire

Michael Dubson has never thought of himself as an activist.
An adjunct professor of English at several Boston-area colleges,
Dubson feels more at home in front of a classroom than on
a picket line. But thanks to a newly published book in which
he gives voice to the trials and troubles of adjunct faculty
across the nation, Dubson has suddenly found himself on the
frontlines of the fight for adjunct rights. The book, Ghosts
in the Classroom, has almost sold out its first printing
and has been featured in Publishers Weekly and The
Chronicle of Higher Education. The Adjunct Advocate
recently caught up with Dubson and had a chance to ask him
about the book, the state of adjunct organizing, and his vision
of a university system that works for everyone.

TAA: What prompted you to do this book, Ghosts in the
Classroom?

Dubson: The book really came out of my own frustrations as
an adjunct faculty member. I’d been teaching at a college
outside of Boston, what you might call a “greasy spoon city
college.” In 1996, the school brought in a new president who
announced that more full-timers would be hired. I’d been told
basically since I started teaching there that they wanted
to hire me full-time, so naively I assumed that the president’s
announcement was good news. Well, first we were told that
a nationwide search was necessary in order to bring in qualified
minority candidates, then they basically hired five white
people from the area. The message from the school was essentially
“we don’t hire adjuncts.” I felt really betrayed and that
was when I first got the idea for doing the book.

TAA: You didn’t go the traditional route as far as publishing
the book. You actually put out Ghosts in the Classroom
yourself, correct? How does that work?

Dubson: I started working on the book as a class project
at Emerson in Boston, where I was getting a Publishing Certificate.
I approached a number of agents, but couldn’t find anyone
who was interested in the topic. That’s when I decided to
do it myself, sort of like Barbara Streisand: she acts, produces,
directs, sings the love songs. I used a desktop publishing
program to layout the text, then I hired someone to design
the cover, found a printer, and I ended up with a book. Amazon.com
carries it, and I’m in the process of arranging a book tour
with Barnes and Noble. I was recently invited to speak about
Ghosts and the topic of self-publishing at the Barnes
and Noble bookstore at Boston University. I called the talk
“Big Ed meets Big Pub.”

TAA: Despite the “ghosts” in the title, the testimony from
the adjuncts in the book is incredibly vivid–not ghostlike
at all. How did you find these people? Did their stories surprise
you?

Dubson: I ran an advertisement in Poets and Writers magazine
looking for horror stories from adjuncts. The response I got
was pretty astounding. The writers in the book have taught
in the two-year and four-year colleges, in the public and
the private systems, and in urban and rural schools. They
come from every major geographical area of the U.S. Some have
left teaching, while others are still slugging away in the
adjunct track. If you read the book, you’ll notice that there
is an over-representation of English teachers. This could
have something to do with the fact that English teachers are
more likely to be writers and as a result, more likely to
respond to a call for manuscripts. But English is also a labor-intensive
subject, and it’s there as well as the introductory and developmental
courses that you find adjuncts.

I was a little surprised by just how horrible some of the
stories were. For example, the adjunct in Texas who had to
hold office hours in her car. I mean, it’s Texas-it must have
been hot! Or the woman who was told by a full-time colleague,
“you’re just an adjunct!” What you find out over and over
again is that the system is rigged against them.

TAA: Is the goal of Ghosts to expose the horror of
being an adjunct?

Dubson: I had several goals. First of all, I wanted to really
piss off the adjuncts out there. I wanted to make them mad.
That was goal number one. The second was to give them a sense
of the big picture. When you’re an adjunct, it’s so easy to
get completely caught up in the demands of the job. You’re
teaching at different schools, driving all over the place
to do your job. The whirlwind can be overwhelming. Plus, it’s
too easy to blame yourself. By bringing together the stories
of lots of adjuncts, I think the book gives a sense of the
big picture.

But the real message that I was trying to get across to adjuncts
is a simple one: either collectively start to fight or leave.
Approximately 50 percent of all college courses are now taught
by adjunct faculty. Do you realize how much power that gives
us? If we all walked off the job, the higher education system
in this country would be shut down. I think a lot of adjuncts
are starting to understand that. There’s a tremendous surge
of activism in the Northeast, in California. I really believe
we’re on the verge of a national uprising.

TAA: There is a real tension that runs through the book between
adjuncts, their full-time counterparts, and administrators.
It seems to be present in one form or another in almost every
one of the testimonies in the book. Can you talk a little
about that?

Dubson: An enormous amount of what could be creative teaching
energy is wasted in the resentment and contempt between part-time
and full-time faculty. As the adjunct situation has gotten
more and more out of hand–one out of two college and university
teachers in this country is an adjunct–it starts to seem
more and more unfair. Ask an adjunct and they’ll tell you
that a lot of the full-timers have [bad] attitudes: “adjuncts
don’t care,” or “adjuncts are hacks.”

The reality is that part-time and full-time faculty can’t
do the same job. It doesn’t matter how much you love teaching.
If you’re working out of a box in the back of your car, at
some point you’re going to run out of energy. How many adjunct
teachers are going into America’s college classrooms angry,
bitter, depressed, afraid, paranoid, burdened with major financial
worries, perhaps seriously ill and uninsured, or just extremely
overworked and scattered? What kind of teaching can such a
person do?

The result is not just a double standard–two sets of people
who are supposed to do the same work under completely unequal
circumstances–but a real hypocrisy. The adjunct system makes
every administrator out there a hypocrite. How can they stand
up there on graduation day, wearing their caps and gowns and
telling the students: “work hard and do you your best and
you can do anything?” They know it’s a lie. When your college
catalogue arrives in the mail, you see the bright shiny future
they’re promising, but you don’t see the adjuncts.

TAA: When we started talking, you mentioned that you “aren’t
really an activist.” But listening to you, it’s hard not to
see you as a sort of Poster Boy for adjunct America. What
do you think?

Dubson: I never intended to be an activist. After I got out
of high school, I spent a couple of years working at “Mc jobs”:
I worked at a Taco Bell, managed a McDonalds. When I couldn’t
stand it anymore, I went to Parkland Community College in
Champaign, IL. It was cheap, easy to get to, and I loved it.
I came out to Boston and did a master’s degree at UMass. When
I got offers to teach, I was like “Wow! This is great!” I
had no idea how the system really worked. The system made
an activist out of me.

I don’t know if I’m a Poster Child, but I’ve definitely been
elevated to an odd position of prominence as a result of writing
the book. Now I get recognized in the halls. It’s taken a
little bit of getting used to, but I’m starting to get the
hang of it. Not long ago, I was out in Denver at a rally on
behalf of some adjuncts at a college there and I stood up
in front of the crowd and led them in a song. It was a song
from Evita, but with the words changed; instead of “a new
Argentina” we sang “a new academia.” People loved it.

TAA: Do you see yourself giving up teaching in order to help
organize adjuncts?

Dubson: My goal is still to get a full-time job. If that
doesn’t happen, I’ll probably move into publishing full-time.
I definitely see Ghosts in the Classroom as playing
an organizing role, though. On the one hand, I hope that the
book forces schools to change on their own by revealing the
dirty little secret that higher education depends on. On the
other hand, it’s important for adjuncts to have success stories
to look towards. In some cases, our success stories are encouraging
administrators to act on their own to improve conditions.
For example, in the Boston area where adjuncts have had some
significant victories, you can already see this happening.
Adjuncts at Bunker Hill Community College now have one big
office where they can meet with students, share computers,
everyone has a phone extension. You still have way too many
people sharing a space, but it’s a start.

TAA: How can our readers get their hands on Ghosts in
the Classroom?

Dubson: They can order it from Amazon.com for $12.95, or
they can get it directly from my Web site, at www.camelsbackbooks.com.