Contingent faculty, tenure and academic freedom

Don & Suzanne at signing of
landmark CO legislation

…by Don Eron, originally posted to COCAL's contingent faculty email list, popularly known as adj-l, and republished here with Don's permission. His elegant and thoughtful examination of tenure and contingency in current higher education was part of a larger discussion on the COCAL listserv email that included Jack Longmate and Seth Kahn, among others. To access the complete thread, titled, "Contingent faculty, undocumented workers (and tenure)," subscribe online or by sending adj-l@adj-l.org a blank email with "Subscribe" in the subject line.

Dear Colleagues,

Jack [Longmate] suggests that offering tenure as a remedy to the problems that stem from contingency--in other words, to the problems that occur when faculty do not have tenure--is a "hard sell." As somebody who has long advocated that all faculty, at every rank and job description, should be granted tenure after the successful completion of a probationary period, I can agree with Jack that selling tenure as a solution is a "hard sell," not only to tenured faculty but perhaps to Jack and others on this list, although it shouldn't be so.

Names 101: By Any Other Name

Guest post by New Faculty Majority's Anne Wiegard, previously published in Cortland Cause, SUNY Cortland's UUP chapter's April 2011 newsletter. Every year, Cause wins awards in a competition of all the SUNY chapter newsletters.



Students unhesitatingly call us “Professor,” for that is who we are to them. They do not know that almost everyone else we work with is either confused or in conflict about the proper designation for faculty teaching off the tenure track.

Sadly, though contingent academic employees are faculty, they know that communications addressed generally to “Faculty,” are often not actually intended for them, in the same way that women in the 1950s knew that memos addressed generally to employees were usually understood to pertain only to males.  Men were the norm, so a memo only applied to women if specifically qualified, as in “Female Employees” or perhaps given a separate category altogether, as in “The Secretarial Pool.”

Names 101, the catalog description + addenda

Behind and between, as usual. I'll start with a few words about the title. Names 101 is a series or regular feature (depending on its endurance level and mine). Since the series actually started with the guest post, "Administrative Term Adjunct is a Falsehood" by Tom Paine #2, the introduction is something of an afterthought. I also have a guest post by New Faculty Secretary Board Member and Secretary Anne Wiegard (English, SUNY Cortland) in drafts but ready to roll, plus a few more "promised." A series introduction is overdue. With it comes an invitation to comment or contribute a guest post (email to vanessa.vaile@newfacultymajority.info)

Any faculty member, even among the Tenured and Tracked clans, and, one would hope, most other staff and administrators are no doubt aware that what to call NTT faculty (researchers and librarians included) can be a thorny topic calling forth strong reactions. Some find the adjunct designation "highly offensive." Others don't mind as long as you don't call them adjuncts (hinting at hidden tier lines within the NTT tier). Still others could care less and consider the fuss a bit much. As one commented, "like pilots arguing in the cockpit while the airplane is crashing." There is also a contingent, if one can use the term, who feel that calling themselves Adjunct is an act of defiance. If that weren't enough, unions, professional associations, administrators, Department of Labor, faculty handbook job descriptions, keywords and standard online search terms can't agree either. Maybe we need a whole new, baggage free name

Both the Contingent Academics List and the New Faculty Majority  ~ full name ~ Coalition of Adjunct and Contingent Faculty try to cover both bases, give a nod to each. Periodically, the subject will come up on list, although it hasn't for a while. Let's take the initiative: describe, explain and name ourselves.

Names 101: Administrative Term; Adjunct. is a Falsehood

Editor's note (forewords, like afterwords, being traditional and jealously guarded prerogatives): hopefully the perennial but yet to be resolved topic of what to call ourselves and why will draw contributors and commenters out of silent seclusion for lively but respectful dialog and productive discussion. Over the transom contributions in the name of your choice (subject to personal editorial standards) are welcomed and cherished. Confidentiality and troll free zone guaranteed. 

The yet to be named (appreciate the irony?) series opens with a piece from Thomas Paine 2nd.  Naming suggestions invited for this series, the first of many Discussions for Change to follow. A more detailed preliminary post and true foreword will follow in due course. 

Here's to more common sense in the profession. (Aside to TP2 wannabes: don't nick this nic. It's taken).

The Administrative Term, "Adjunct," is a Falsehood 

The dictionary stresses that "adjunct" is an auxiliary role. Yet here I am staring down at a contract with the term "adjunct" next to my name and realizing that I will be as central in my classroom, and as much an authority over my curriculum, as I was as an associate professor. Since 9/11 I have had a gradual, rude awakening that the field I had embarked upon as a chipper graduate student at MIT was dissolving into a "managed education" nightmare where the noble role of a professor, and the profundities of the world presented by such, was being undercut at every turn by a generation of under-educated managers. A majority of these people have no roots in teaching, research or the arts. They just don't "see" what they are destroying.

A shallow business culture has replaced the passions and commitment once embodied by men and women of letters, and this ethic is beginning to permeate the rest of society. Money is earmarked for plush office furniture, dining hall remodeling and administrator salaries. This money is taken wholesale from faculty and staff salaries. Students and their parents are prevented from seeing the shift in priorities, the intellectual pogrom as it were, because the expensive marketers hired by these same administrations insist on calling all teachers "members of the faculty."

Yet we "adjuncts" are under pressure from every quarter to do the same job of a properly paid professor. Students, parents, evaluation rituals, and an endless stream of administration memos ask us to rise to the occasion and do our part to fill in the gap left over by the insincere budgeting. And this compensation begins right at the starting gate. I recall how the department chair who hired me waved my résumé in the air and excitedly showed it to a colleague. He had no hesitation in praising my professional value. I was lead to believe that the administration hired me because they needed an authority on my subject and no one else at that college could handle the material. They boasted that I would receive the "highest pay" for an adjunct, yet this was less than half that of professors who were younger, less experienced and with fewer children to feed. It's a total disgrace.

How can any of this be happening? Who am I actually adjunct to? To whom or what am I a supplement?