Cluster Hires Will Not Save You
By dagwood crabtree
Note: This is an offering, something for you to encounter and consider. If you find it helpful, put it in your pocket. If you do not find it helpful, please, put it down.
Pick up. Hold. Put down.
My argument: Cluster hires are an individualist approach to addressing white supremacy in academia, rendering scholars of color as sacrificial lambs to the apathetic/hostile/terrorizing maw of predominantly white institutions (PWIs). We should not wholly do away with cluster hiring as a tactic to create the community we want; instead, we should provide prospective hires with informed consent about the history and tendencies of the institution they are entering, and imagine alternative tools toward realizing the aim of liberatory pedagogy in and beyond institutions of higher education.
Frankly, I love school. I wish I could be in school forever. Graduate school, though difficult and tumultuous, was a dream. I literally got to attend classes, read, and write for a living for two whole years. Yet, my love for learning is tangled, in constant conflict with the white supremacist institutions of higher education, as most academic disciplines were forged in service of colonial projects and continue to serve neo-imperial aims today. I resent this fact deeply—my genuine love of learning is bastardized into a mechanistic process that seeks to malform me into the most commodifiable unit of labor possible in order to participate in an unjust world order.
Literally, fuck you!
I hate the ways academia incentivizes us to capitulate to the rat race, and I grow depressed thinking about how I witnessed these pressures work upon my own undergraduates during my time as a teaching assistant. As they worked through my class, many were characterized by plain fear, from the 3AM emails to the haggling over points to the frantic look in their eyes when a concept was not apparent to them immediately. Though I worked to ameliorate these fears and develop a space conducive to actually learning in my classrooms, I cannot deny the origin of my students’ fears: the struggle for survival in the 21st century. They “need” the As to get the grade, to get the transcript, to get the recommendation, to get the scholarship, to get the program, to get the job, to get the security needed to build a life. I get it, I sympathize, I do. I get it so much, I feel beholden to making the inhospitable place of academia more habitable. The people I have met here, the glimpses of liberation and alternative communities I have been lucky enough to witness have made me invested—from encountering mentors who have poured time and care into me and wondrously mind-melting seminars to watching my students’ minds get blown when they learn that nations are “imagined communities” and witnessing the creation of new friendships under my stewardship as a TA. I want to create a home out of the inhospitable university.
As previously mentioned, universities are white supremacist institutions. This fact has not led to a complete divestment from higher education by activists but an effort to reform what already exists. I suppose activists before me have also found their love for learning entangled in the university. In the mid-20th century, this tangle took the form of a bitter, hard-won effort towards the creation of ethnic studies’ programs. Their militant fight to have their histories and cultures valued, celebrated, studied, and shared remains unfinished and legally challenged. Today, diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies (DEI) represents the liberal, watered down afterimage of what these radical student activists once demanded, and yet, even in its diminished capacity, is a contested arena for white supremacist visions. Consequently, the effort to institutionalize the recognition, celebration, and study of marginalized groups remains a demand of student activists in order to make this place more hospitable to life today.
One contemporary tactic in the fight for ethnic studies programs is cluster hiring, in which multiple professors around a certain subject or field are hired as a cohort, usually as part of DEI efforts by university administrators. This hiring process will be the focus of the remainder of this essay. More specifically, I am writing around the embarrassing and shameful repeated failures of my alma mater to successfully establish an Asian American Studies program despite decades-long efforts by student activists.
Institutions of higher education often face demands for cluster hires because, in order for a degree program or certificate to exist, there must be enough classes in the given course of study for students to receive a minimum number of credits. In order for enough classes to be offered in a given subject, universities must hire enough professors to regularly teach those classes. For example, if folks were to want an Asian American Studies major or minor at their university, they would need to advocate either for the teaching of more courses (more frequently) on Asian American Studies by existing faculty or, if their school lacked appropriate faculty, to advocate for the hiring of more professors teaching Asian American Studies.
Importantly, the expectations and aspirations for cluster hires, particularly and especially for ethnic studies, go beyond just fulfilling course requirements or granting certifications. For ethnic studies programs, there is additionally the desire/dream/hope/yearning by activists for new hires to contribute to the creation of a community around their work and to position themselves as administrative advocates for this community on campus.
There are numerous impediments widening the gap between what is yearned for and what actually happens when it comes to cluster hires. Foremost, when hiring faculty of color into a PWI, you are asking them to make a bargain: in exchange for precarious employment at an institution that may be anywhere from apathetic to hostile towards them and their work, they will no longer be unemployed. This bargain is shit. However, this is academia today.
Foremost…this bargain is shit.
But cluster hires are expected to do more than fulfill their base job requirements; there are also the aspirations to account for. Unfortunately for student activists, a new hire, or even a few new hires, can not build what the students desire—cannot build that radical community—as there remains the other crucial element of time. The work student activists are embarking upon is the planting of a tree they will never experience the sweet, sweet shade of. The vision of student activists will take decades, potentially a generation, to come to fruition. Importantly: I say this not to deter activists’ efforts but to temper expectations and incite curiosity towards answering the query: what then can we, must we do, in the meantime? as we do not live in the grand scheme of things but a series of meantimes. What then do we do with them?
In this meantime, I have some thoughts in response to the horror stories I have heard about the interview, hiring, and working experience of cluster hires at my alma mater.
First, there is a responsibility for advocates of these ethnic studies programs to be honest about their experiences working and learning at the institutions they are asking prospective hires to join them at. Prospective hires must have informed consent. There is no point hiding how racist, sexist, and vile your institution or department is—upon being hired, they will find out themselves (and may even gain glimpses from the interview stage alone). And they may stay, but they also may leave after becoming aware of the deception. Would you not rather have someone who knows and is prepared to stay? Also, do you not see the unethical fact of that deception?
Which leads me to my second point: activists should measure the “success” of a cluster hire in terms of (at least) five years. Yes, you procured the funding. Maybe you even got a few hires. But did the professors stay? Are they happy? If we want to create a radical, liberatory community, we cannot view people as stepping stones or as commodifiable units of labor. It is crucial, both to tactical and strategic goals, in addition to the broader political project of a radical community in the university, to be invested in the hires as people. Therefore, student activists must assume a short-term and long-term view of their efforts. There is no program if the hires quit the institution or leave academia entirely (which is what has happened at my alma mater as a result of the vicious racism scholars of color experienced after being hired).
My third and last point is half-formed, as my imagination struggles to conceive of alternative futures to what now exists. Regardless, it is crucial to ask: what do we want beyond institutionalization? I opened this essay discussing my tangled love for these white supremacist institutions, these colonial disciplines, these departments who refuse to acknowledge the value inherent to my people’s history, art, and existence.
I fear the fact that this institution cannot love me back.
What then? What then are we to do? I suppose we can return to foundational questions: What do we want? An Asian American Studies program. Why? Specifically, what do we hope to build?
I am not expecting us to throw our hands up and cease from demanding cluster hires—we live in the meantime, remember? And also, even with informed consent of the racist assholes roving our institutions, scholars of colors still need fucking jobs, and we should not desist from demanding their presence in these halls. Instead, I hope to encourage reflection and pause, and in that pause, maybe allowing for a shimmer of something else.
