[KS] news re: the korean program at uc berkeley

Duncan, John duncan at humnet.ucla.edu
Wed May 14 11:44:37 EDT 2008


Dear Henry, Christine, and all:
 
First let me second Henry's kudos for Christine.  
 
Second, let me note that Michael Pettid's remarks about ethnicity and
cultural interpretation are right on .  But we should not lose sight of
Christine's point about how most tenured faculty--even now, 40+ years
after Martin Luther  King, Jr.--are white males.    That, I think, will
change in our field over the next decade or so as increasing numbers of
Asian American scholars are getting tenure track jobs, but that does not
alter the structural inequities we have now.   
 
Third, let me also say that Christine has a very good point about
lecturers,  certainly at the UC system and, from my limited observation,
at most other universities as well.  The vast majority of our lecturers
in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA are women,
many with Ph.Ds.  They are treated as second-class citizens by the UC,
with heavy teaching loads, low salaries, and virtually no hope of
advancing to tenure-track positions.  The  situation  is even more grim
for the huge numbers of temporary/adjunct faculty on whom so many
universities and colleges rely to cover increasingly large percentages
of their classes --not just language classes, but classes across the
full range of undergraduate instruction.  I am not aware of any studies
that analyze the gender and ethnic compos i tion of temporary/adjunct
faculty, but my personal observations indicate that they are mostly
women.  They are paid poorly, have no job security, rarely get benefits,
and are often limited in their opportunities for tenure track positions
because of the burdens they shoulder as wives and mothers.  Simply put,
from the perspective of one who works at a (partially) state-funded
university, it appears that American institutions of higher learning
have chosen to balance their instructional budgets on the backs of
temporary/adjunct faculty,a high proportion of whom -- in the case of
Asian language programs--are women of color.  
 
UCLA has a number of programs designed to ensure that female and
"minority" tenure track faculty and even administrative staff,  are
treated fairly, but it turns a blind eye to the situation of lecturers
and temporary/adjunct faculty.  I suspect the same is true elsewhere.
This is not only a matter of gross inequity, but also ultimately has--as
we see  in  the case at UC Berkeley--negative ramifciations for
undergraduate and graduate programs that are heavily dependent on l
lecturers for language instruction  and on adjunct/temporary faculty to
fill in for tenure track faculty on leave and/or to cover significant
gaps in instructional coverage. 
 
It seems to me that those of us who are tenured faculty should put
pressure on our institutions to do two things.  One is to upgrade
language teaching positions to tenure track appointments.  The other is
to stop acting like the Walmarts of the world and expand the number of
tenure track positions in our departments so we no longer have to
exploit the weakest and most vulnerable among our colleagues.
 
John Duncan


________________________________

From: koreanstudies-bounces at koreaweb.ws
[mailto:koreanstudies-bounces at koreaweb.ws] On Behalf Of Henry Em
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 6:09 PM
To: koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
Cc: Christine Hong
Subject: [KS] news re: the korean program at uc berkeley


Dear Christine,
 
Both as an expression of thanks and as a self-critique (not having done
anything about the treatment of language instructors) I want to say how
much I admire the way you and your colleagues are approaching this issue
-- raising *under-discussed issues of inequity* and building an
impressive student-based coalition.   It's smart, principled, and
inspiring.   
 
Henry Em  
Associate Professor
Department of Korean History 
Korea University 
Anam-dong, Seongbuk-gu, 
Seoul 136-701, Korea

 
-------------------------------  
Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 10:40:19 -0700
From: Christine Hong <cjhong at berkeley.edu>
Subject: [KS] news re: the korean program at uc berkeley
To: <
Message-ID: <BAY111-W35C162D79F4F23E353EEDB8CC0 at phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

hello everyone,
in the wake of the surprisingly dismissive response (at least from some)
generated by my alert three weeks ago concerning the plight of the
korean program at berkeley, i debated whether or not to follow up with a
response, if only to clarify some larger misconceptions out there which
conflated berkeley's department of east asian languages and cultures and
its center for korean studies.
i'm writing, now, less to attempt to correct circulating misconceptions
than to present you with heartening news concerning a movement that has
blossomed here on the berkeley campus--a movement spearheaded by the ad
hoc, student-based committee to save east asian languages and korean
studies at berkeley.  in the past two weeks, students have mobilized en
masse, in no small part because their interests, like those of the
language lecturers, have been left out of the top-down administrative
discussions that dealt disproportionately high budgetary damage to
berkeley's ealc department.  although our advocacy was initially
motivated by our desire to ensure the full protection of the existing
korean program within ealc and to raise awareness of the lack of
institutional will that has characterized the development of the korean
program at berkeley, we have come to realize that the dire fate of
korean as well as other many other asian languages at cal (including
chinese, japanese, thai, tagalog, hindi, and tamil) enables us to raise
a spectrum of under-discussed issues of inequity particular to this
campus and arguably elsewhere.  for one, we--and many institutional
actors behind the scenes--have been advocating for a robust asian
languages curriculum that speaks to
berkeley's 45% ethnic asian student demographics and to its identity as
a california public institution and a pacific rim university.  without
question, central to the advocacy and recent actions (including a press
conference and a student rally) of our student-based coalition has been
our aim to bring into view the ghettoization of korean within berkeley's
ealc department and to assert the non-negotiability of a strong korean
program within a vibrant east asian languages curriculum.
we've also had an opportunity to highlight the retrograde language
lecturer/literature professor labor hierarchy within this and other
language and culture departments that, by default, prioritizes
literature professors over language lecturers.  this, of course, is the
flipside of the non-heritage question discussed in recent
postings--i.e., the necessity of non-heritage interest in korean studies
to the viability of the field otherwise prone to what one writer deemed
its balkanization.  when budget crises loom, it bears noting, the
institutional casualties quite frankly are less those (often)
non-heritage interpreters of korean culture than the language lecturers
who, by virtue of their non-permanent funding status, can claim little
job security--this despite the fact that language instruction is
typically the primary service offered by such departments to larger
campus communities.  yet, just as few would dare suggest that literature
professors are easily
replaceable, so too do we argue that berkeley's asian language
lecturers are not easily replaceable.  i want to add, here, that the
korean language program at berkeley is absolutely top-notch, and the
korean language lecturers are truly amongst the very best that i've
encountered in my own language learning experience--at ucla, sogang
university, and elsewhere.  i cannot speak highly enough of the berkeley
sunsaengnims and the student testimonials that our student coalition
gathered speak volumes about how deeply berkeley students value their
chinese and japanese teachers, as well.
for both updated information (including calls to action, downloadable
files, press coverage, etc.) on our movement and to add your voice to
ours, please go to our blogspot: savekoreanstudies.blogspot.com
<http://savekoreanstudies.blogspot.com/> .  to sign an online petition
regarding the ealc budget cuts, please go to petition.berkeley.edu
<http://petition.berkeley.edu/> .  we greatly appreciate your support
and your goodwill.
many thanks,
christine

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