Debra Erickson’s April 7 article “Standing by the Working Man” raised the important question of whether the American Academy of Religion will stand up for contingent faculty, who make up a large percentage of instructors in American higher education.

The AAR has stood up for graduate students seeking teaching positions, faculty members caught in the clutches of the current economic malaise, and contingent faculty members. The AAR has taken surveys, formed Task Forces, exhorted “best practices,” designed Annual Meeting programming, and advocated at the national level around these issues for years.

1. The AAR runs the largest Employment Center for prospective scholars and teachers of religion, and for departmental search committees, in the North America. With the advent of concurrent meetings with the Society of Biblical Literature in 2011, our job-related offerings will only become stronger. After each Annual Meeting we survey job candidates and job providers and publish the results in Religious Studies News (RSN), which can be found on the AAR’s Web site (www.aarweb.org). Part of standing up is telling the truth: letting graduate students and search committees know what the supply and demand realities are.

2. Two AAR Task Forces have been formed to address the problems of the job market. Our Job Placement Task Force was charged to recommend improvements in the Job Center and other aspects of the process, to create guidelines for best practices regarding public disclosure of placement records, to make recommendations for how graduate programs in religion can realign their curricula to respond to job placement realities, and to assist persons being trained in religious studies to prepare for and find jobs outside of religion and theology departments, seminaries, and divinity schools.

One of the most impressive accomplishments of the Job Placement Task Force was the publication of a number “best practices.” More important, the Task Force urged departments to post graduate and placement records openly on their websites. The Task Force also developed a regular column in RSN called “Beyond Academe” that was designed to highlight job/vocational opportunities beyond traditional faculty positions.

The AAR’s Status of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, and Queer Persons in the Profession Task Force, along with the Committee on the Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession, and the Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession helped draft a vigorous non-discrimination policy that was unanimously accepted by our Board of Directors. Part of standing up is seeking justice: changing policies to more adequately protect our constituents.

3. These efforts have led to several Annual Meeting programs designed to educate and encourage AAR members in these difficult times. At the 2009 Annual Meeting in Montreal we held a Special Topics Forum entitled “The Big Lie: The Mismatch of Job Expectations and Placement Reality” that sought to address the loss of tenure track positions and the challenges facing graduate programs that continue to prepare students to teach in subfields for which openings are scarce.

Similarly, at the 2010 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, we held a Special Topics Forum entitled “The Job Market for Academic Positions in Religious Studies: Recession, Depression, or Paradigm Shift?” The session was led by AAR President Ann Taves, who had made the shifting academic job market one of the signature issues of her presidency. Part of standing up has to do education: providing open forums for discussion of multiple viewpoints.

4. Our Presidents and Board of Directors have repeatedly gone on record urging the protection of academic departments and individual faculty members. As far back as 1998, President Judith Plaskow addressed the job market in her presidential address. Other Presidents have also been deeply concerned about job prospects for graduate students and working condition of contingent faculty. Last year, several past and present AAR Presidents sent letters to two universities, which had thought of eliminating or cutting the faculty of the department of religion because of budget constraints. In both cases, the decisions of the universities were reverted. Part of standing up has to do with committed leadership.

5. Finally, the AAR has been active in advocacy for the humanities at the national level for decades. We are founding members of the Coalition on the Academic Workforce, which Erickson mentioned in her article. Indeed, we encouraged our members to take the recent CAW survey. Some 1200 faculty members in Religion and Philosophy completed it and we are awaiting the analysis of their responses. When we have that data in hand, we will likely address the contingent faculty problem more aggressively. The AAR also regularly participates in the National Humanities Alliance (and its National Advocacy Day in Washington, D.C.) and the American Council of Learned Societies, both of which have been actively working on issues of sustainability in the humanities workforce. Part of standing up has to do with political advocacy.

The AAR has been standing up for our members—students, job seekers, faculty members, and persons often forced to the margins of our guild—for some time. We intend to continue our advocacy efforts in the future.

References

Debra Erickson, "Standing By the Working Man," Sightings, April 7, 2011.

Jack Fitzmier is the Executive Director of the American Academy of Religion.