Chalk Lines

“Chalk Lines signal[s] the end of the post-war ‘academic revolution,’ an exceptional moment of growth and development in American higher education that produced the academic ‘profession’ as we now know it. . . . As the public provision dries up everywhere—from colleges and universities, to welfare, to non-profit media, to libraries—the nature of academic identity, work, status, and experience is up for grabs. The apostles of efficiency and ‘wealth creation’ have a head start in the race to remake the University. . . . [T]he contributors to Chalk Lines might help the rest of us get up to speed.” - Larry Hanley , American Book Review

“[Chalk Lines’s] critical orientation, intellectual insights, and interventionist objectives are important and valuable. . . .” - Janice A. Newson , CAUT Bulletin

“A useful primer for anyone wanting to understand—and join—the battle. . . . Chalk Lines raises crucial questions facing the academy 20 years after the Reagan revolution. It offers some of the critical analysis and organizing tips we will need if we are to fight back to preserve and improve not only our own jobs, but the futures of our students.” - Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark , Science & Society

“[C]ogent, incisive, and memorable. If you are concerned about the way higher education is going and the perpetual changes under which we labour, you might be tempted to read [Chalk Lines] from cover to cover. If you teach in undergraduate or professional programmes in business, personnel or public service management, you will find useful case studies. Professional associations and employee-relations groups may gain inspiration from actions which have successfully challenged the managerial model. If you run an educational management programme, you might consider making Chalk Lines compulsory reading.” - Paul Haslam , Journal of Further and Higher Education

“Martin’s contributors, all but two of whom are professors or doctoral candidates, detail theortical connections between academic unions and traditional unionized labor. They also provide numerous accessible and appealingly impassioned economic, historical, and sociological analyses of academic labor.” - Andrew Carpenter , Antioch Review

"Chalk Lines, combined with general institutional history and an understanding of campus faculty/ administration relations, can assist advising professionals in devising successful methods for approaching faculty and implanting academic support programs." - Mike Ramos , National Academic Advising Association Journal

“Chalk Lines is a powerful analysis and indictment of the emerging corporate university. It illuminates the crisis of academic labor by placing it in the context of global economic change. Everyone concerned with higher education should read this book and reflect on it deeply.” - Cary Nelson, coauthor of Academic Keywords: A Devil’s Dictionary for Higher Education