“Their needs,” “your livelihood”

Abdulkader Sinno, professor of political science at Indiana University Bloomington, wrote a letter to graduate students explaining his decision to resign as his department’s job-placement director. An excerpt:

I am resigning because I don’t want to be complicit in keeping you in a PhD program that doesn’t help your advancement. The department needs graduate students to cheaply teach or assist in teaching its undergraduate students, and for faculty to keep claiming that we have a serious PhD program. I just don’t believe that you should pay for their needs with your livelihood.

The faculty are perpetuating the myth that a PhD from a modest department like ours can be a reliable route to a middle class life. It is not anymore.

Inside Higher Ed has the story, complete with vague reassurances and evasions from the department’s director of graduate studies: “It would be good if this dies down soon for sake of our students’ mental health.” You can read the letter, across two screenshots, here.

Before I started in a doctoral program, the director said, “Of course, you know there are no jobs.” And of course, I wasn’t prepared to believe it. My path to a tenure-track position is one that still amazes me. I wrote it out in this post: Fluke life.