Friend of the department Walter Benn Michaels profiled
Introduction
Walter Benn Michaels: A Biography
On the morning of February 18, 2014, faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago walked out of their classrooms for the first strike in the school’s history. A reporter from WBEZ found Walter Benn Michaels (b. 1948) on the picket line. Michaels took a break from marching and looked up at University Hall, the 28-story brutalist tower that dominates the campus east of the Dan Ryan Expressway. He gave the reporter a lesson in the building’s sociology. The top floors belong to senior administration. “You got people up there making a lot of money,” he said. The English department, which Michaels then chaired, sits on the 20th floor, where some tenured professors, himself included, earn good salaries. One floor down, on the 19th, sit the non-tenure-track English instructors, most with doctorates, most teaching full loads, many earning around $30,000 a year.
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Modified on July 11, 2026