Native Speakers

[David J. Galloway]

[Posted for K. Krivinkova (kk50 at cornell.edu) (krivink at husc.harvard.edu);
please direct comments to her.]

>>From Katerina Krivinkova:

 Excellent. I have been waiting for someone to bring this up; thanks Matt,
 Paul and others for initiating this discussion.
 When I first saw the Rutgers job announcement, I took the "or equivalent"
 in "must be a native speaker of Russian with an American Ph.D or
 equivalent" to mean _native speaker_ or equivalent. Now that I've re-read
 the ad I think I was being too generous. Perhaps the folks at Rutgers
 will clarify the situation for us?
 Paul Klanderud is, as so many times before, right on the mark when he says
 that it is unwise of our field not to hire its own. Short-term, it may
 hurt the lives of a few hundred individuals, but in the long run it will
 devastate the field.
 The Rutgers announcement was perhaps unusual in that it explicitly called
 for a native speaker. Often, the native speaker requirement is more
 hidden. Take the recent SEELANGS posting that advertised a lectureship in
 Polish at the University of Chicago. If I recall correctly, it mentioned
 something about a visa status. More strikingly, the salary was said to be
 20-22 thousand dollars per year. I don't see how anyone is supposed
 to live on 20 thousand in the first place, much less in a big city
 like Chicago. But consider what it takes to be able to lecture in Polish.
 For an American non-native speaker of Polish, it takes at least an MA,
 including, probably, extended stays in Poland. Quite an investment of time
 and money, in other words. A yearly salary of 20,000 and a job with little
security
 would hardly do justice to such an investment. Indeed, one would
 have to be mad to consider a career in Polish, _knowing_ that this was
 going to be the pay-off.
 For an equally well educated native speaker of Polish, let's say a recent
 arrival, or a resident of Poland, the position would probably seem more
 attractive. I would venture to guess that the Chicago Slavic Department
 will get a large number of applicants from native speakers, and that it
 will hire the best qualified of them. And it will be getting a bargain.
 It will also have gotten a number of applications from recent American
 PhD's, who were not able to get a tenure track-position, and who are
 desperately trying to stay in the field. Who knows? Perhaps the department
 will decide to hire one of them. Either way, it will be getting a great
 bargain. It simply cannot lose.
 Who decides how much a lecturer in Polish is worth? Less than, say, a
 lecturer in math or chemistry? Who sets the rates? Are tenured faculty
 completely impotent against the administration? Or are they just
 indifferent?
 Yes, I know the argument about letting the market forces decide. And
 I know that there is a trend these days to run colleges and universities
 like businesses. But not only does this trend go against what academia
 should be about, it could also explode in our faces. We may be
 getting cheap labor today, but we will not be able to attract the same
 kind of bright, versatile students that this profession has traditionally
 attracted.

 Eliot Borenstein's three points about native speakers, and why Rutger's
 should want to hire one, simply do not hold.
 1)It is not difficult to find a native informant at a college these days.
 I don't see why a Slavic department should need to hire one who holds a
 PhD (or equivalent!).
 2)Ditto regarding someone who can write and proof-read Russian papers.
 3)As a non-native speaker of Russian who teaches native
 speakers, I can testify that one's life does not have to be made a living
 hell, even in a whole classroom full of Russians. (What is this? If we are
 going to be afraid of our students we might as well pack it in right
 now!).
 I don't consider my status as a native speaker of _a_ Slavic language
 my strongest asset, or, for that matter, a basis on which I would want to
 be hired for an academic job. Furthermore, there are plenty of
 Americans and Canadians, whom I consider eminently qualified to
 teach _my_ language. Like me, they are _Slavists_, people trained in the field
 of Slavic languages and literatures. If our profession values and respects the
 education it provides, it must hire the people it educates.

 When Mr. Borenstein says that people aren't getting jobs simply
 because "there are not enough jobs out there", he is neglecting the key
 question: _Why_ aren't there jobs? Well, there are a number of answers.
One answer is that the field has mismanaged its hatchery. If
 graduate departments were as enthusiastic about helping their students
 find jobs, as they were seven or eight years before, when accepting those
 same students into their programs, we might be getting somewhere. But that
 would just be a start. The whole field would have to take responsibility
 for its young in order to keep it healthy. A part of the responsibility
 would be to hire its own, North-American, PhD's (native, or not), instead
 of looking for bargains. Especially in times of crisis.

 All the best,
 Katya Krivinkova
 Cornell University