The following Letter to the Editor is from a professor in the Intellectual Heritage Department. The content in this letter is not reflective of the opinion of The Temple News.
Letter to the Editor,
My name is Laura Diehl.
I’ve taught in the Intellectual Heritage Department for nearly 15 years and — like all of my adjunct colleagues — was informed on Feb. 17 that I was at risk of losing my job after this semester.
On March 13, the administration began to walk back the mass firing: we IH adjuncts may now hope to teach one class each in the Fall (yet the promise of a class without a contract is meaningless to contingent faculty—we can lose work just days before a semester begins). This cuts my pay in half.
I’m only being “half-fired” it turns out. My pay “only” being cut in half. Regardless, this is exactly TAUP’s point on job security. This is the digestion-destroying anxiety Central Administration metes out to 55 percent of your teachers — year after year. For adjuncts — semester after semester.
Despite the years of labor that we have put into Temple, despite the years of value that WE have created at Temple, this is the Damocles’ sword hovering over our heads under which we are forced to teach and to live. At any moment — the cut.
The threat of total erasure five weeks ago prompted me to write the following letter. It may not be the best piece I’ve ever written, but it is the truest, and I hope reading it now you may feel and be moved by not only my love of books and of teaching, but the cruel and bewildering uncertainty this Administration chooses to inflict on Temple’s most vulnerable and marginalized teachers.
My story is just one of hundreds — we the many, they the few — and all we want to do is teach, it’s all that we’ve ever wanted to do. And we deserve to do it without duress. But with a flick of the wrist, a button pressed, a tricksy-tweak of a number, my life’s work at Temple can be erased.
For years now I — we — have taught under THIS continual degradation:
Feb. 17:
My name Is Laura Diehl. I’ve taught in the Intellectual Heritage Department for nearly 15 years and — like all of my adjunct colleagues — have just been informed that I will almost certainly lose my job after this semester. “IH is to be restructured” is a line they’re going with, “due to falling enrollment” is another.
But don’t be deceived — TUGSA/TAUP argues that Temple is bemoaning the “enrollment crisis” of recent years which is, instead, a retention crisis.1 Once students are here we can’t keep them here.
And why can’t we keep them here? “Cuts to jobs and educational spending” could lead directly to fewer electives, larger class sizes, months-long waits for an advising appointment, unwritten letters of recommendation because contingent professors are gone, etc.
I must warn our administration against leaning into our notoriously inglorious former president Jason Wingard’s Griftopian/Dystopian vision of the future of public education in America — a bleak and unlovely future “no professional educator can take seriously.”2
I am no saint. I thought briefly about fibbing and suggesting that I were one, but I’m not, not like so many people I know — family, colleagues, students I’ve known over the years, people whose natural goodness, dedication to helping others and community and political activism astonishes me to no end. I’m not like them. I wish I could say I were, but I can’t. I think it’s largely down to shyness, for outside of the classroom I am heavily shy. Awkward even.
I am not nearly as politically active as I should be, not like “J” and “M” in my classes this semester, and certainly not like “R” in my class last year when the Temple Graduate Students struck.
“R” played a significant role in mobilizing student support for the strikers — already a fierce justice warrior if there ever was one. But I remember seeing a lot of my students at the rallies. I’m still awestruck by what they and the Graduate Students together accomplished, and against such odds, and such callousness.
I remember listening to that speech a music therapy student gave in support of the Graduate Students — it gave me chills listening to her speak, it gives me chills now remembering it. Who are you? To have spoken so movingly — at length, impromptu — in support of strangers’ well-being?
How astonishing people can be, especially young people. I don’t have it in me, that kind of public passion and fight. Too shy.
I’ve never learned another language, not really (at least 10 different languages are spoken by students in just my two classes this semester. How remarkable; such people amaze me.)
I’ve never learned to play an instrument (unlike my ukulele-playing architecture major, my piano-playing psychology major, and my guitar-playing statistics-data analytics major this semester.) I make certain to learn such details, and I learn them without fail.
Because people fascinate me, they are so interesting — in the details (I had a bee-keeping accounting major last year). They don’t know they fascinate me, I don’t tell them. Too shy.
I’m a terrible creative writer, though I’ve tried (unlike a student in my class now, a business major finishing her second novel. Where does such talent come from, and so young? You amaze me.)
But I am good at one thing and — I think — probably two. I love to read. God I love to read!
Stories, stories, stories—I can’t breathe without them. My first love was literature, but then history, and then art — and now philosophy, science, film. I’ll read anything good, I’ll study — obsessively — anything good, and we read so much good stuff in IH! I can hardly believe it sometimes the books we get to read and teach! Across cultures, across time, across disciplines.
For a passionate generalist like me who loves to read and hates to specialize (one discipline — boring, one period — boring, one author — boring) it is a pure delight, the books we talk about with our students and each other, the books that move us. So I’m a good fit for the IH program. I’m a perfect fit.
But I have to admit, the very first panicked thought I had when I read I was going to lose my job was: “Oh my god, I’m going to lose access to Charles Library. I’m going to lose access to E-Z borrow, what the hell am I going to do?” Cause I E-Z borrow the heck out of those librarians, gods bless ‘em. Nicest people in the world, librarians. Shy too.
Adjuncts can’t afford to buy new books, you see. Used ones, sure, and when they’re just a few coins a decent pile of them too. But the pages tend to be yellowed, and they’re all marked up and some of them even mottled with mold. Painful to see. But new books? Rarely. That’s not a luxury afforded to us. We need libraries.
But then (after, of course, thinking “how am I going to pay the mortgage, how am I going to afford my health insurance premiums” blah blah blah) I did think this: gone will be those conversations I love having with students — “what book did it for you? What book changed you, determined your path? Describe yourself before and after you read this book. How old were you, where were you, what was the weather like outside?” I can answer all these questions for myself, of course, even the weather question. It’s what I’m good at, really — reading. Shy people are good readers.
But while I’m not good outside the classroom, I am good IN the classroom, sometimes I think I’m even great. In fact I know I am. I don’t know what happens, exactly, but I lose the shyness, light up, become something like my ideal self I wish I always could be. All this passion for books, it can’t just stay inside me.
I’ve been told I’m a great teacher by students. Every teacher worth their salt, of course, has been told this. In 15 years of teaching at Temple I’ve been told it exactly nine times — nine times students have told me I’m the best teacher they’ve ever had. But — gone is my humility now — I suspect there were even more that thought this. But they were too shy to tell me. Of course I remember each of them, even going back decades: I know their names, I remember their majors, I remember what semester I taught them, and where, and what books, and what we talked about after class. And I remember how we talked about their futures.
I even got a mug once at the end of the semester, Hollie gave it to me (her name I give you). Former military, Hollie, and book-lover in training. This was my second year teaching in the IH department. “Best. Professor. Ever.” No kidding, it’s what the mug reads, with the full stop periods after each word and everything. It’s my go-to mug when clean. I can show it to you — our Restructurers — if you like.
And I can always remember the moment that I get them — that I’ve hooked them, that I’ve opened something up for them, a horizon newly seen that had either been closed to them or that they had never even realized was a horizon.
They look up from their computers (they’re shy too after all, having been forged through the shitshow of recent years) — and they look at you aslant — a little head tilt, a shadow of a grin. It’s usually one of those side-grins, I’m not sure why, but I do love to see it. I’ve seen it at least three times so far this semester. I aim to get more, I will get more.
Teachers never forget these moments — especially contingent teachers—because it is these moments (exquisite, really, unforgettable) that keep us going when we have to confront: misery wages, no health care, no job security. Obviously no job security.
But god I love books. All teachers do, of course, but I even love the physical objects themselves: the heft of them, the way they hold, even their smell. I splurged over winter break and bought myself a brand-spanking new book, Emily Wilson’s Odyssey (paperback of course, no hardbacks for me—I had to E-Z borrow her recent Iliad).
The feel of this book alone delights me: the front and back covers have those structural flaps I love so well, and they don’t feel like your ordinary paperback covers, they feel….silky. And the image on the front cover—the Greek blue ladies dancing outlined in sparkling gold. Bejeweled. Breaking from reading the book I’ve traced the image over with my index finger I don’t know how many times.
If you do get your hands on this book, you must: stand by a window and slightly tilt the cover toward it — the image needs to catch the light — and only then will you see ladies aflame dancing in gold. It’s really worth seeing. But that’s before you open the book itself. What a glory!!!
I don’t have the words to describe the sublimity of this book (I’m not even original, you see, I only have a lavish love of originality). “And Dawn’s fingers blossomed roses.” That’s how she translates the famous line, or something very near it, I’m too tired to check. Can you believe that line? And she translates it in like 20 different ways, each more gorgeous than the last. I could mention a hundred other even more achingly beautiful lines, but that’s the one that got me. To write a line like that? That’s a woman whose soul has become poetry.
When I’m in the classroom, this passion for books, for talking about ideas and how ideas are so big that they change the world, I can’t help but think my students hear the passion and are moved, even if it isn’t their passion, there are so many possible passions, after all.
Two more students. “A” was in my class in the Fall of 2019, just before COVID shut everything down (I taught in person the following year when few others did — clearly understandably — I literally risked my life teaching in person because my department needed me and, because I’m being honest, I needed the money (again: no saint here). “A” was a returning student in his late 20s, a finance major and determined to buy a house later that year, he and his wife had a child on the way. At the end of the semester he spoke with me before splitting.
“You know I had never read a book before? Before this class”? He told me.
It stunned me speechless, for oh goodness was he a great reader — and I mean that in its profoundest, most significant sense. He read the hell out of our books. I think my mouth fell open, I couldn’t comprehend it.
“But I think I love reading now. I think I’ll not stop, and read as much as I can for as long as I can anyway. You taught me that.”
He sent me a holiday picture later that month after our class was well over and his baby boy had been born, and on the back: “Thanks Doc.” I can show it to you — our Misery-Wage-Payers — if you like.
Any teacher worth their salt has similar stories to tell — commonplace, nothing new here, it is what teachers do, it is exactly why we became teachers. But I dare say that for contingent faculty especially it is precisely such moments that keep us going when, again, we confront: the misery wages, the lack of job security, the no health care, etc.
I suspect “J” and I had little in common outside the classroom. I suspect. We never talked about it, because he suspected too. But he also loved reading — couldn’t read enough — that we had in common. He was reluctant, however, to read a book he felt dealt too frankly with sexuality. It didn’t accord easily with his beliefs. But he could see how upset this made me, and I explained how important the book was — I don’t remember how, I’m not feeling articulate anymore — and I convinced him to read it.
“Okay Professor, I’ll read it,” he wrote in an email. “I’ll read it for you.” He really wrote that. Those exact words. I still have the email, of course, I can show it to you — our Due to Falling Enrollment Dismissers, if you like.
But I guess I won’t get those anymore, as I’m about to lose half my income and the job that I’ve had for 15 years.
My name is Laura Diehl. I’m now teaching my 58th class at Temple (my 56th in IH). Temple pays me $19,200 per academic year for my pains, that’s before taxes. No health care. And now no job.
To our Restructurers, our Misery-Wage-Payers, our Due to Falling Enrollment Dismissers: What was the weather like outside?
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So as of early April, after having taught at Temple for a decade and a half, my salary next year (if I get one class per semester) will be $9,600. Yet without a contract—as I am now—my guaranteed salary is $0.
Contrast my pay with multiple high-dollar payments made by the university, according to TUGSA:
Admin’s payout to the Eagles to rent their stadium for seven Temple football games: $4,500,000.
The cost to renovate the President’s Suites in Sullivan Hall (where no classes are taught): $7,230,000.
Admin’s payout to the Ballard-Spahr law firm whose legal services include: “Union avoidance training and counseling, management of union organizing attempts, prevention and control of strikes and picketing, union negotiations, and decertification and withdrawal of union recognition.”3
We are not in the midst of an enrollment crisis but in the midst of a “crisis of priorities.” These facts alone (and TUGSA/TAUP can give you many more) sadly illustrate this Administration’s priorities.
And in just a few months I and hundreds of Temple teachers will again be forced to confront: these Misery-Beyond-Misery-Wages, no health care, no job security, and so on to infinity. My NTT colleague describes having to reapply for his job every year as like being in a continual state of PTSD.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. TAUP’s new contract proposal centers education, prioritizing students and professors. If our demands are taken seriously, maybe I and so many like me won’t have to confront such despairing pay and uncertainty, allowing us to do what we want to do: pour our heart and soul into the classroom, ensuring that Temple can continue to thrive.
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1Read the 20-page TUGSA/TAUP Budget Report which even a numbers-dummy like me can read and understand.
2See Matt Seybold’s “Jason Wingard’s EdTech Griftopia” for a stunning condemnation of the Wingardian Gods of Market Disruption.
3Read the TUGSA/TAUP budget report (p. 18). See also the graph on p. 9: The plummeting student-retention rate exactly mirrors plummeting Educator jobs. See the graph on p. 15 for skyrocketing Admin jobs and nosediving Educator jobs. Take 10 seconds to look at the graphs and you won’t be bamboozled.
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