Respecting Adjunct Faculty

We have lived lives of being unappreciated part-time faculty members and we support the American Association of University Professors and their want to bring adjunct faculty up to a higher level of respect and standing in universities:

Today, 48 percent of American faculty serve in part-time appointments, and non-tenure-track positions of all types account for 68 percent of faculty appointments. Year after year, the problem gets worse as more and more faculty jobs are part time or non-tenure track. Faculty holding these appointments are often poorly compensated—receiving low wages and few, if any, fringe benefits. Without job security and academic freedom protections, they are subject to administrative whim. Students suffer when the majority of faculty are inadequately supported by their institutions.

At some major universities -- like New York University -- adjunct faculty members teach 70% of the undergraduate courses. That sort of hard working part-timer needs the equal financial support of their university as well as the respect of their full-time and tenured teaching colleagues.

We believe if you know your work you will win your wants -- and that is why we have great confidence that adjunct faculty members will one day reap the full benefits of their dedication and hard work.

Katrina Faculty Firings and Due Process

We were disturbed to learn many faculty members at New Orleans universities were fired without due process:

Many tenured faculty were fired with scant notice, no meaningful due process, no stated reasons, and no appeal save to the very administrators who released them. Faculty were not consulted about these actions or given an opportunity to suggest alternatives. Some found out they had already been taken off payroll and health care. Departments and programs were closed without appropriate review. While a number of institutions had suffered serious damage from the hurricane, we found no justification for this wholesale abandonment of due process and shared governance. Indeed, as the report eloquently declares, this is exactly the kind of challenge that requires wide consultation and full participation by the faculty before drastic actions are taken.

Katrina was a tragedy and a failure like no other in the history of our nation.

We cannot continue to foment pain and irresponsibility by making up rules and flaunting policy in her aftermath.

Freedom of minds and thinking must be preserved at any cost and we make that happen by remaining a nation of laws and not notions.