The Economic Inequality in Academia
学术界的经济不平等
In focusing on the wealthy as the singular source of economic inequality, progressive politics obscures the machineries of privilege which function at all levels of society. Individuals are trapped within these mechanisms; their lives lessened in ways that are far more damaging than the actions of the “one per cent.”
进步派政治活动聚焦于有钱人，将之作为经济不平等的唯一源头，从而未能看到在社会各个层面均在发挥作用的特权机制。个体受困于这类机制；他们的生活被削弱，其作用方式远比“1%们”【译注：指占人口总数1%的顶层富人】的行为更为有害。
Economic hierarchies are maintained not by brute force, but by strategies which rationalize the privilege of a few and the struggle of many. Within a multitude of economic contexts, structures of inequality are arduously perpetuated, even by those who consistently profess a belief in economic justice. Progressives need to analyze these contradictions and to expose the strategies which are utilized to justify hierarchy.
经济等级制的维系，并不依靠赤裸暴力，它依靠的是将少数人的特权和多数人的挣扎加以合理化的策略。在众多经济情境中，人们，哪怕是那些一贯声称自己信奉经济正义的人，都在竭力维持不平等的结构。进步派人士需要分析这类矛盾现象，并将那些用于为等级制辩护的策略公之于众。
Academia provides an excellent laboratory for this kind of analysis. Within academia, the contradictions between words and practices are particularly stark. Publicly, Professors often denounce the structures of privilege constructed by the top one per cent in this country. Privately, the small, tenured professorial class perpetuates a system through which it acquires disproportionate resources while condemning the majority of university faculty – non tenure-track adjuncts – to often live in near poverty.
学术界为进行这种分析提供了一个绝佳的实验室。言行不一在学术界特别突出。在公开场合，教授们经常谴责由我国顶层1%们构建的特权结构。但在私下里，人数很少的终身教授阶层维持着一个体系，并利用这一体系更多地获取资源，同时迫使大多数的大学教员——非终身教职轨道的受雇教员——经常处于近乎贫困的状态。【译注：美国大学的教师职位晋升分两条轨道，一条通往终身教授，俗称终身规（tenure-track），另一条是受雇教员，处于普通雇员地位，合同期较短，收入也较低。】
While there are clear economic incentives for university administrators to pay the majority of adjuncts severely depressed wages,the financial disparity between tenured/tenure-track Professors and non tenure-track adjuncts (often denoted as Instructors or Lecturers) is not solely an effect of administrative policies. Administrators and the professorial class are complicit in the maintenance of this economic hierarchy and each provides a certain degree of cover for the other.
对于大多数受雇教员，学校管理方出于明显的经济动机，只会支付极低的工资。但是，终身或终身轨教授与非终身轨的受雇教员（常被称为教员或讲师）之间所存在的财务差距，不仅仅是校方管理政策的结果。在维系这种经济等级制方面，校方和教授阶层狼狈为奸，彼此都为对方提供一些掩护。
When pressed on the disparity between their words and their practices, tenured faculty can point to university administrators as the real culprits of adjunct impoverishment. In return, administrators’ harsh financial calculations are softened and obscured by professorial rationalizations which interpret structural hierarchy as merit-based.
当终身教授的言行不一致遭到追问时，他们会将学校管理方指认为受雇教员遭遇贫困的真正祸首。而作为回报，教授们会对结构性的等级差异进行合理化，将之解释为基于品质的差异，于是管理方苛刻的财务算计便得到了柔化和遮掩。
The reinforcement of professorial class privilege begins with the hiring process for the few available tenure-track jobs. Excellence in teaching, without academic publications, will rarely qualify an applicant for a university level tenure-track position. Publishing without any evidence of teaching ability is far more acceptable. However, the current proliferation of graduate students with Ph.Ds., many with publications in top journals, has transformed the work of faculty hiring committees into something of a lottery.
教授阶层特权的强化, 始于数量不多的终身轨空缺岗位的招聘过程。对于一个大学终身轨职位，即使申请者教学特别出色，但只要没有学术出版物，那就不太可能合格。有出版物，但丝毫看不出能够教书的，相较而言明显更受欢迎。不过，由于现下拥有博士学位的毕业生数量激增，而且其中许多在顶尖期刊上发表过文章，教员招聘委员会的工作已经变成了一种抽奖。
Most Lecturers understand that “one’s position in the academic academy hierarchy is largely an accident of birth” and even some tenured faculty admit that their tenured colleagues “got lucky.” The result of this “luck of the draw” is financial security for the chosen few, and financial desperation for the non-tenure track adjuncts – a class that comprises almost seventy per cent of college and university faculties.
多数讲师明白，“一个人在学术研究机构的等级体系中的地位，很大程度上是一种因缘造化”，甚至连一些终身教员也承认他们的终身职同事“运气好”。这种“抽签撞运”的结果，就是被选中的少数人得到了财务保障，而非终身轨的受雇教员则财务窘迫，而后者几乎要占学院及大学教职员工的70%。
The primacy of publishing does not originate solely with the professorial class, but in its hands it has been re-purposed into a tool of class formation and preservation. Members of the faculty hiring committees evaluate new hires with the same criteria by which they were awarded their positions and which constitute their continued financial accumulation. This self-replication is then denoted as “merit;” a designation that separates new hires into two distinct groups while reassuring tenured faculty of their own superior worth.
发表（论文）至上，这并非全然源自教授阶层，但在他们手中，它已然改头换面成为了一种塑造和维护阶层的工具。教员招聘委员会的成员们，拿着他们过去曾据之以获得职位的、让他们得以持续积累财富的同一标准来评价新雇员。然后又把这种自我复制称为“品质”，用这种称呼把新雇员分成两个不同群体，并确保终身教员自己拥有高贵身价。
Even though the hiring process is, at best, a conjecture, once the separation between tenure-track Professor and Lecturer has taken place, the newly hired are fully constructed to align with their new class status. Lecturers are often considered to be hourly employees and their salaries are contingent on the number of courses taught. This compels them to teach as many courses as possible, though the vast majority are limited by course availability to being part-time. Financial survival often remains elusive, and many adjuncts are forced to go on public assistance and food stamps.
尽管招聘过程只能靠猜，可一旦终身轨教授和讲师的分野出现，新雇员就完全被框定了，只能去跟自己的新阶层身份对齐。讲师经常被视为钟点工，薪水因授课门数而异。这就迫使他们尽量多开几门课，然而绝大部分人还是因为可开课程门数受限而只能非全日工作。他们在财务上常陷于窘境，难以自保，许多受雇教员被迫寻求公共救济和食品券。
Tenure-track Professors, however, are often given as minimal teaching loads as possible and are eligible for paid time off from teaching in order to further their research. This disproportionate allocation of resources is designed to move tenure-track Assistant Professors smoothly along the path to tenured Associate and Full Professor. Each new title brings with it an increase in financial reward. A tenured Professor who is teaching far fewer courses and has far fewer students than a Lecturer might still earn five times the salary.
另一方面，学校却尽可能少地将教学任务压给终身轨教授。他们还有资格获得带薪休假，方便他们开展研究。设计这种不成比例的资源分配，是为了顺利推动终身轨助理教授沿着轨道转变为终身副教授和正教授。每一个新的头衔都附带着财务报酬的增加。一个终身教授，即使授课门数和所带学生都远远少于讲师，其薪水却仍是后者的五倍。
There is no significant financial path upwards for Lecturers. According to a recent survey report by the Coalition on the Academic Workforce (CAW) part-time faculty “experienced little in the way of a career ladder” measured as “higher wages after several years of work.” At the university level, continued excellence in teaching virtually never qualifies a Lecturer for a tenure-track position. But heavy teaching loads limit the ability of Lecturers to engage in the continued research and writing required for such positions. If a Lecturer takes time off for research, they receive no pay for that semester. The CAW notes that the professional commitment and support for part-time faculty is “dismal.”
讲师没有什么明显的的财务上升路径。根据学术劳动力联盟（CAW）近日的一份调查报告，“以工作几年以后工资上升”来衡量，非全日教员“极少经历过职业晋升阶梯”。在大学里，教学上长期出色对一名讲师有资格获得终身教职几乎毫无助益。沉重的教学负担还限制了讲师持续从事研究和写作以满足此类职位要求的能力。假如讲师在某个学期休假去做研究，他们就拿不到该学期的报酬。CAW指出，对非全日教员的职业承诺和职业支持“令人沮丧”。
However, simply increasing resources for Lecturers leaves the fundamental pivot point of the academic hierarchy untouched. The economic stratification within academia is built upon the disproportionate financial rewards given to those who publish articles or books in acceptable academic journals (or with acceptable publishers) over those who teach. Though this structure of incentives and rewards is universal within academia, the strongly disparate financial valuation given to publishing remains unquestioned.
不过，如果只是向讲师们增加资源，那就没有触及学术等级制的根本支点。学术界的经济阶层分化建立于一种不成比例的财务报酬之上，那些在合格的学术期刊（或合格出版社）发表文章或出书的人拿得太多，相比之下教书的人拿得过少。尽管这种激励和报酬结构在学术界极为普遍，但是，发表研究所得到财务估值高的极不相称，这一点无人质疑。
In many of the more theoretical fields of academia, such as political theory, publications are highly self-referential. Observations and arguments are not derived from, nor are they intended to mirror, the complex, multi-faceted contemporary political world. Instead publications refer to other publications in debates about the field’s own abstract conceptual structures.
在许多理论性较强的学术领域，比如政治理论，论文是高度自我引用的。其中的观察和论证既不源自于、也不是为了反映复杂多面的当代政治世界。相反，论文之间相互引证来引证去，只不过是就该领域自己的抽象概念框架之内辩论不休。
It is teachers dedicated to a challenging education who engage in the task of reworking and concretizing theories to make them relevant to students. It is in the classroom where the dialogue between theory and politics takes place; and it is the classroom which sends forth generations of students who can perceive, and possibly undermine, the rationalities of power.
正是那些献身于挑战性教育工作的教师，忙于将理论再加工和具体化，使之变得与学生（的现实关切）相干。正是在课堂上，理论与现实政治之间的对话方才得以发生；也正是从课堂里，送出一代又一代的学生，他们能够领会——还可能消解——权力合理性。
Paths to knowledge are often forged through the interplay of publications and teaching. No objective standard of measurement exists to financially quantify, and differentiate, these approaches or their contributions. Yet a vast and enduring economic hierarchy has emerged grounded in the supposed intrinsic hierarchy between the two. This financial hierarchy is not a dispassionate reflection of an objective reality; it is a strategic effect of the mechanisms underlying class formation and preservation.
通往知识的道路通常都由发表研究和课堂教学的相互作用而铺就。不存在什么客观的测量标准，能对这两条途径或它们的贡献做财务上的量化和区分。但是，两者之间的内在等级区分却已被假定，在这上面还生出一个巨大且持久存在的经济等级制。这种财务等级制不是对客观现实的一种公正反映；它是塑造和维护阶层的底层机制的策略效应。
The primacy of publishing, and the attendant allocation of resources, is utilized not merely to perpetuate two different economic classes, but also to create two different kinds of people. This creation allows the hierarchy of privilege to function as though it represents objective value differences both in terms of the work produced and the individuals who produce it.
发表至上及伴随而来的资源分配，不仅被用来维持两种不同的经济阶层，而且被用来创造两种不同的人。这种创造令特权等级制的运转好像是体现了一种客观的价值差异，既包括产品之间的价值差异，也包括制造产品的个体之间的价值差异。
In any economic hierarchy, once those at the bottom are positioned as “lesser,” all sorts of harms become permissible. Since the financial disparities in academia do not mirror any objective universal value differences in work or aptitude, the hierarchy between adjuncts and Professors needs to be maintained and reinforced by persistent invocations of professorial privilege.
在任何经济等级制中，一旦身处底层的人被定位为“次等”，那么各种伤害就都得到了许可。由于学术界的财务不平等并不反映任何工作或天资方面的客观的普世价值差异，因此受雇教员与教授之间的等级制就需要持续动用教授特权来加以维持和强化。
Even some tenured faculty are critical of the constant assertion of “prerogatives,” and the “arrogance, and fear of being lumped together with the Untouchable Other.” Tenured faculty become experts at delineating “who really counts as part of [the] professional community and who doesn’t.”
甚至一些终身教员都对频繁的“特权”主张以及“傲慢，害怕被人把自己与‘不可触碰的他者’归为一类”等持批评态度。终身教员在准确划分“谁真正属于专业共同体的一部分，谁不属于”方面都成了行家里手。
These protections of class difference require, and cultivate, a disdain for the processes of education, and construct teaching as a burden to be endured. The professorial class strategically utilizes this construction as though it represents an underlying reality – an exercise in class maintenance which punishes both adjuncts and students.
这类对阶层差异的保护，依靠并促进了对课堂教学的蔑视，并将教学塑造成了一种不得不忍受的负担。教授阶层有策略地利用了上述塑造，使之仿佛是对基本现实的反映——这是一种维护阶层的做法，它既损害了受雇教员，也损害了学生。
One of the few options currently available to adjuncts to improve their financial situation is a faculty union. But unions comprised of both tenured and adjunct faculty will never question the mechanisms which underlie the academic hierarchy. Instead, they will ask adjuncts to join in fights for general increases in faculty salaries which disproportionately benefit those who already earn the most. The trade-off for adjuncts is an incremental raise in pay in return for a reinforcement of the structures and relations which perpetuate their impoverishment.
受雇教员要改善其财务状况，当前只有不多的几个可用选项，其中之一就是教员工会。但是，由终身教员和兼职教员共同组成的工会永远不会质疑支撑学术等级制的上述机制。他们只会要求受雇教员参与普遍提高教员薪水的斗争，而这对那些已然挣得最多的人更为有利。这里发生的交换是，兼职人员报酬少量增加，但代价是进一步强化了那些延续他们的贫困状态的结构和关系。
The academic hierarchy will not be altered by resorting to arguments about fairness, equality or basic human decency. Unions composed solely of adjuncts must fight for far greater increases in adjunct salaries as part of a larger struggle to dismantle the entire professorial apparatus of privilege. All progressives should join in this effort.
诉诸公平、平等或人类的基本体面等论证，无助于改变学术界的等级制。纯粹由受雇教员组成的工会必须为这些教员薪水的更大幅度增长而斗争，并将之作为拆除整个教授特权体系的大型斗争的一部分。所有的进步派都应加入这一活动。
The gap between professorial words and actions exemplify the kinds of rationalizations which perpetuate exploitation at all economic levels. The power of the most wealthy in this country will not be impeded if their strategies can be simultaneously decried and emulated. Progressive politics must expose and disrupt these processes, wherever they occur. In this sense, the professorial class should be appearing frequently on progressive media. They have a lot to explain.
教授们的言行差异是在各个经济层面上帮助维持剥削的合理化策略的一个例证。如果这个国家的最富者们的策略在被人谴责的同时还会被人效仿，那么他们的权力将无可阻挡。进步派的政治活动必须揭露并破坏这些方法，不管它们发生在哪儿。在此意义上，教授阶层应当经常上上进步派的媒体。他们有很多事需要解释。
翻译：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy）
校对：Who视之
编辑：辉格@whigzhou