I recently read a short editorial by Richard Wilk, an anthropologist at Indiana University whom I esteem most highly, entitled ‘Why I have stopped doing free academic work.’ In it, Wilk rightly points out that his free labor on such things as book reviews, peer review, invited contributions to handbooks and so on, benefits others, such as publishing companies and universities, rather than himself. Given, he argues, the meager remuneration offered to professors by universities, he no longer feels any obligation to undertake such work, especially not at the expense of his own projects.
I am sympathetic to this view. I myself have been inundated with requests for essays, lectures and peer review of all manner of things (including, inexplicably, an article on Louis XIV). In my naiveté I typically acquiesce, because I am easily flattered and because I regard these invitations as challenges to do something interesting and different. But the difference between me and Richard Wilk is that he is an emeritus professor and I am an adjunct currently teaching at three different universities simultaneously. When I spend my time doing anything other than teaching, I am forgoing pay. He, on the other hand, has been paid by IU to do the work of a professor, which in my view anyway includes such things as book reviews, peer review and contributing to handbooks. That’s the job he was paid to do; I’m the one who’s actually doing it for free.
Wilk remarks “Do I feel like I owe a debt of loyalty to my university and my discipline? No. I had to get outside offers and take administrative jobs to get the paltry raises and promotions the university granted.” Fair enough, but at least he had a predictable salary! Wilks may not owe his university anything, but I think he owes it to the rest of us to recognize just how privileged he is and to quit his bellyaching.