ABSTRACT
In the fall of 2001 a multiyear effort by Professor Michael Bennett of Long Island University began to bear fruit. The Modern Language Association’s Executive Council had before it for the first time two very different proposals. The most dramatic was a resolution to censor the Executive Council for failing to act on an earlier motion, which Bennett had written and which the Delegate Assembly had passed, to begin penalizing departments that were teaching too many of their courses with contingent labor, namely part-time faculty typically paid slave wages and denied basic job security and benefits. The second proposal came from an ad hoc committee, of which Bennett was a member, offering some practical suggestions for beginning to deal with the overreliance on contingent labor in many English and foreign-language departments.
