An adjunct professor of art at Towson University has been fired after referring to himself as “a nigger on the corporate plantation” in a discussion about the representation of power in art.
The firing occurred summarily, over the telephone, and with no formal hearing. I don’t think the college could have reinforced his point any better if they’d set out to do it.
Speaking as a sometime adjunct, it is truly amazing how much colleges depend on us and yet how little regard we are held in.
I’m sure that in our career path we have all felt the same way in one job or another. Most of us probably did not put it into a racial charged statement like that but the feeling is the same.
I’m just a Guinea WOP on the corporate plantation.
Well, the converse side is that he compared his University to slaveholders in a public setting. There are few people who can do that without getting fired.
I’ll say it. I don’t like it or agree with the meaning, but I’ll say it. If he was black I doubt he would’ve gotten fired. He’s a white professor (either that or there is a different, white guy named Allen Zaruba who is/was a professor of art at Towson University on Facebook) who dropped a charged word. Brian’s statement is correct, as most universities aren’t too fond of being compared to slaveholders, but if he was a black guy I doubt the outcome would be anywhere near the same.
I think he’s ignoring the historical fact that slaves were treated as valuable investments, whereas adjuncts are essentially disposable. He really should have compared himself to an “indentured servant”, the rental car of 17th century forced labor.
@BrianN
I don’t know that a class really counts as a “public setting”. It’s not like he said this while keynoting a conference or something.
Although I can’t imagine a situation where carping about your position at the college to a group of students could possibly be fruitful. Even less so if your students are a pack of thin-skinned tattletales, as his apparently were.
I should probably note that I don’t especially like the phrasing that this fellow used – the article notes that his stepfather was black, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a turn of phrase he picked up from his family.
I do, however, understand and sympathize with the point he was trying to make.
Huh. I didn’t read the article, but just assumed he was black. Dan’s point, then, makes some sense. Wow.
@matt,
I would think a professor, even one at Towson University (Baltimore inside joke) would know when its appropriate to spew a turn of phrase he picked up growing up and when he ought to let decorum rule. ‘Nigger’ isn’t an especially attractive word, regardless of the color of the speaker, and his metaphor, as you point out, isn’t even accurate.
Guess this guy will find out what its like to be on actual welfare, and not just the academic kind.
@Pitt,
Why would we expect his metaphor to be accurate? He was an *art* professor.
@Dan,
At Towson University, no less.
/end snark
I just had a guy from marketing as me how to write “meters per second squared” in shorthand. I had to show him how to use the “^” symbol. It was fairly amusing.