Updated Statement on COVID-19 and Academic Labor
In June 2020, the Executive Council approved the following statement. In January 2021, the council approved an update to the statement that strongly advises institutions not to require campus visits for job candidates.
Whereas in the past scholarly organizations have focused on the economic and social risks to their members, the continuing COVID-19 crisis makes it incumbent on these organizations to consider the physical risks that have become a factor in the academic workplace. We write to update the MLA’s previous statement regarding labor issues and inequities in the profession that the crisis has only heightened in order to additionally address the health risks that faculty members, students, and staff members will face in the fall.
Conditions are constantly changing as the medical community learns more about this novel virus and the possibility for mutations. For this reason, colleges, universities, and research facilities need to remain flexible in their planning. We wish to address the numerous challenges that the academic community faces as the COVID-19 pandemic continues and as colleges and universities contemplate reopening their physical campuses in the fall, when faculty members and students will be asked to return to classrooms where social distancing is impossible.
As higher education institutions decide whether to open in the fall, hazardous work conditions for faculty and staff members must be considered. Faculty members must not be required to return to classrooms where their health is at risk. These hazardous work conditions put everyone at risk, particularly those with preexisting conditions, compromised immunity, or the responsibility of caring for persons at risk of contracting the virus; such conditions also risk the health of students—both those living in dorms and those commuting to campus—who, recent evidence shows, are vulnerable to not only the respiratory form of the coronavirus but also an inflammatory syndrome that has been linked to the virus. These considerations additionally highlight the health inequities faced by BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ faculty and staff members, as well as those faced by under- and uninsured contingent faculty members and graduate students.
These epidemiological conditions also draw attention to the largely gendered inequities in relation to childcare, eldercare, and emotional labor. Until all children can safely return to school or day care, the lack of childcare will continue to perpetuate the disparities in expectations for primary caregivers, who must now balance unreasonable service expectations with homeschooling and caregiving. Institutions must consider this lack of childcare with respect to course assignments, tenure requirements, and course evaluations. We reiterate the need for support emphasized in our initial statement.
At the same time, online learning must not become the new default in higher education, because it often magnifies inequities. Even as we call for continued flexibility to protect the health of faculty members, staff members, students, and their families and communities, and for a consideration of multiple possible scenarios for return, we must also require evidence of a plan to return to the best aspects of traditional instruction when it is safe to do so—that is, when widespread testing is available and a vaccine has been developed. Instructional technology is only one tool for learning; it is not a replacement for the learning, mutual exploration, and creation of knowledge that happen in face-to-face educational settings.
Faculty members do not merely provide students with content; they are mentors in a quest for greater understanding. Too often it is commercial vendors who drive the discussion about structuring virtual classrooms, not educational researchers or those who ultimately use the tools. Furthermore, the shift to remote instruction has already deeply disadvantaged those on the other side of the digital-participation divide.
Moreover, colleges and universities must not use this crisis as an opportunity to make further funding cuts to humanities programs—in particular language and literature programs—or as an excuse to make faculty cuts, cancel contracts, indefinitely pause or freeze ongoing faculty searches, or increase class size. Where austerity measures must be enacted, university administrators should provide faculty members with budget information and financial modeling in order to engage in collaborative decisions about the need for such measures.
We call on scholarly communities to recognize that in times of crisis, literature and the humanities are more vital than ever. Joy, creativity, and the human spirit will help us weather the crisis and rebuild our communities when it has passed. As MLA Executive Director Paula Krebs has stated in her recent article, the training that the humanities provide in representation, communication, ethics, and the reading of culture is essential to recovering from this crisis.
Additional economic considerations relate to the loss of access to research materials and research funds for all faculty members, an issue compounded for those on the tenure track or working on dissertations who may be under pressure to complete work that they are physically unable to do. To this end, we reiterate our request that faculty members be given the option to pause their tenure clocks and graduate students the opportunity to extend their time to completion. There is also a continued need for reimbursement for costs related to course redesign, connectivity, and equipment incurred in the shift to distance learning, particularly for contingent faculty members and graduate instructors. This, of course, necessitates that these faculty members have their contracts renewed.
This crisis foregrounds the socioeconomic inequities that have always existed in scholarly communities. Distance learning is at present a necessity, but that does not mean it should be normalized, as it widens the socioeconomic gap. For many, distance learning is a poor substitute for in-person teaching and does not meet best practices or the needs of many students, especially those who lack access to computers, Wi-Fi, or the space to concentrate on their coursework, or those who need more individualized attention and the structure of classroom instruction.
For public health and personal safety reasons, we strongly advise institutions not to ask candidates to travel for campus visits but instead to employ virtual options for interviews.
These needs and constraints are heightened among marginalized communities, particularly BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ students and faculty members. For many LGBTQIA+ students, humanities classrooms are a safe setting in which to explore challenging issues, away from the prejudices or abuse they might face at home or in their communities. And the socioeconomic inequities that this pandemic has pointed up and amplified are largely faced by BIPOC individuals who are themselves, or who live with, essential workers. Simply put, BIPOC faculty members and students are more at risk in this pandemic.
We reiterate our call to institutions to act with ethical imagination and commitment in response to the individual and shared challenges facing our communities during this unprecedented pandemic and to continue to exhibit the very flexibility and compassion that they are asking their faculty members to demonstrate during this time.