No group of comparable teachers is so large, and their potential role in any campus-wide unionization effort is enormous. Mr. Summers, who is writing a biography of the social theorist C. Wright Mills, reviews the history of freshman composition in American universities, concluding that the amount of time required to teach writing has ended up scaring off most literature scholars. Composition instructors may seek to professionalize their field, give it scholarly heft, hold national conferences, and appeal to their colleagues in literature. But such efforts are doomed to fail, Mr. Summers writes. Only the labor movement offers hope, Mr. Summers concludes.
Nothing motivates university autocrats more effectively than the murmurings of organized dissent.
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