From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Sat Aug 25 2007 - 19:43:35 EDT
(Prof. -- in the USA sense! -- David Laibman) (At CUNY, even non-teaching librarians are called "Professor" It is title inflation, like all the Doctors in Vonnegut's *Slaughterhouse Five*.) Hi David: For the benefit of those on the list who are not familar with this distinction, in the US the term "professor" can have two distinct meanings: 1) as a *rank*: thus, a "Professor" would have a higher rank than a Lecturer, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, etc. In this sense, colleges are not unlike armies and navies! They - like the military - certainly tend to be hierarchical and bureaucratic. 2) it can mean simply "faculty" (or even, as you point out, non-teaching professional staff). In this *generic* and *nominal* sense, there are many more professors than are paid according to the rank of professor. Thus, when I receive correspondence from the administration of Pratt Institute, the letters are addressed to "Professor Levy", even though I am not a professor in the previous sense which I described. As trade unionists and Marxists, I think we should be in favor of only the 2nd sense since distinctions of rank - along with their corresponding differences in salary, benefits, job security, etc - are used to weaken academic workers and their organizations. The second sense of the term is the one most consistent with the principles of solidarity and equality. In solidarity, Jerry
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