Thread by @LaurieAdkin

@ryanjespersen asked me today why workers in the post-secondary sector don’t get much sympathy from some Albertans when Conservative governments gut PSE funding. #abpse #abpoli @UAGradStudents @The_Gateway @cafaab @TheAASUA

I’m a slow thinker (like slow food), so it took a while for my answer to percolate. Warning: This is a long answer to Ryan’s question! I’ll start with a story. 2/n
@uabpols @NoUofA42morrow @ParklandInst

I grew up in Saskatchewan. After I was hired at @UAlberta in 1991, I went to visit my parents in Saskatoon, by bus. I like to sit at the front, so I can see the road ahead, and the span of the landscape. 3/n

I was having a great old chat with the bus driver about many things, such as the state of the crops, when he asked me what I did for a living. The moment I said I was a university professor, he became so hostile that I thought I might be ejected from the bus at the next stop! 4/n

His daughter, he said, wasn’t going to go to any university. I don’t know whether he meant “because the family can’t afford it,” or, “because that isn’t a place for women,” or perhaps “she has more sense than that.” 5/n

Nor do I know if his animosity was about the “wrongness” of a woman being a professor, or if it was directed against professors in general, or maybe both. (I faced the same hostility from many of the men in my department when I was hired.) 6/n

I do know that that was the end of our conversation. He stopped speaking to me for the rest of the journey. 7/n

I was unprepared for such a reaction. Since then, there has been much more of that kind of reaction, although I believe that most Albertans appreciate education and the roles of their universities. 8/n

From historical research we know that Alberta has long had a thick vein of anti-intellectualism, going back to the American populists who immigrated here in the early 20th century, and that such sentiments have been promoted by right-wing politicians ever since. 9/n

We also know that the resource-extraction-based economy has for decades lured young men out of high school and into high-paid jobs, contributing to AB's comparatively low enrolment rates in post-secondary education. A lot of oil sands workers earned more than many professors.10/n

I don’t begrudge oil and gas workers their salaries. It’s hard, dirty, dangerous, and often lonely work, and they need to save up while they’re young and strong enough to do those jobs. And life is expensive in Fort Mac. 11/n

Do some people who don’t have a university education resent those who do? And, if so, why? Stereotypes about academics? 12/n

Do academics constitute an elite? Not in a political or economic sense. They spend 10 or more years in university to get a Ph.D. in their areas of specialization, which is a qualification for an academic job. 13/n

That means they’re usually in their thirties when they get their first full-time job and start repaying student debts. 14/n

Both my parents worked and neither had university degrees. I put myself through university by working and getting scholarships. I graduated from my doctoral program with a student loan debt that took me seven years to pay off. 15/n

Income-wise, most academics have a lot of catching up to do. If they’re lucky enough to get a tenure-track job, they will have secure salaries, benefits, and pensions, like other public sector workers. Should we resent them for that? 16/n

Speaking of stereotypes, some Albertans may not know that “academia” is not what it used to be in the expansion years of the 1960s and 1970s. In the wake of decades of underfunding of PSE, very few highly qualified academics can find tenured positions. 17/n

Roughly speaking, half of the academic workforce has only precarious employment. These are the people most hurt by the UCP cutbacks to PSE, as their contracts are not being renewed and their working conditions are worsening. 18/n

The key factor, I think, in explaining resentment of academics, is that Conservative politicians in Alberta have for decades mobilized electoral support by turning private sector workers against public sector workers. 19/n

They create stereotypes of the two groups. The first are all “hard-working Albertans” and the second are . . . I’m sure you know the script, but here’s a selection of terms: fat cats, parasites on the public purse, pigs at the public trough. (I’ve heard it all, and worse.) 20/n

Conservative politicians are skilled at stirring up resentment and contempt toward public sector workers. 21/n

They never say: “Everyone should have a secure income, good benefits, and a pension.” Nope. Instead, they say: “Look at those guys over there who have something you don’t. Let’s take it away from them.” 22/n

They never say: “All workers should have sick days and pensions and we’re going to make it happen.” Nope. They say: “Private sector workers should resent unionized workers in the public sector because they have pensions, and you don’t. If you have to suffer, so should they.” 23/n

(By the way, nobody has to suffer, but they don’t put that option on the table.) 24/n

Conservatives make public sector workers the scapegoats for all the fiscal problems brought on by these govts’ own elite-serving economic policies. This works well for them, and for the real elite—the corporate executives & owners making the really big bucks. 25/n

But hey, those CEOs and owners are the “entrepreneurs,” “job providers,” & “business leaders,” eh? Conservatives aren’t going to tell private sector workers to resent the big salaries, assets, and access to govt of the guys in the corporate towers, are they? 26/n

Nah, much better for private sector workers to be turned against workers in the public sector. Much better to target the so-called “ivory” towers. 27/n

Notably, conservatives are selective about which academics they single out for denigration. Their fire isn’t trained upon academics who develop better heart valves, pipelines, or detection methods for oil and gas reservoirs. 28/n

The most pejorative terms are reserved for those in the arts disciplines, although there, too, there is a hierarchy of worthiness. 29/n

Conservatives are oddly blind to the salaries of the academics who serve as their policy advisors and apologists. Heaven help you, however, if you are a feminist philosopher. 30/n

If, at this point, you are thinking that, after all, what does a feminist philosopher (or any other scholar in social sciences, humanities, or fine arts) actually *do,* perhaps you should ask one. 31/n

But I’ll tell you that the arts and sciences are the core of a university and integral to the knowledge needed to be an informed, engaged citizen. Higher education gives us a fuller, richer experience of being human. 32/n

And that is worth fighting for. For every single person who wants to take that path and is willing to do the work. To say otherwise is elitist. 33/33

That one was for you, sleepy. @Sleepisthenews1

@ClarkBanack is an expert on Alberta's history. He should be a tenured professor at #UAlberta.
ualberta.ca/augustana/rese…