Excellent article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed about how the rise of adjunct faculty (70 percent of college classes are taught by non-tenure track teachers) correlates with the decline of academic freedom. Academic freedom is no longer the guiding principle of academic employment, but the privilege of the increasingly select, tenured few. The article trots out a number of recent cases in which adjuncts were summarily fired for saying things in class that offended students -- or, looked at another way, for, in effect, doing what a teacher is supposed to do. In the cases given, the adjuncts were not crossing any lines, but were, rather, challenging students to see difficult topics--homosexuality, religion, the Arab-Israeli conflict--in new ways. It's often hard, and threatening, to reorient your thinking around emotionally charged subjects. And in each case offered in the article, the teachers appeared to be well within the bounds of professionalism when they committed their fire-able offenses. One of them--the case of Terri Ginsberg--you will have read about here. I'm glad to see her case, and those of others in similar plights, getting some attention.

The AAUP, to its credit, is getting involved (though if you read the fine print in their statements on adjuncts, the AAUP tends to skew the definition of academic freedom, downplaying the responsibility side of it and playing up the rights side). And so are FIRE and the Alliance Defense Fund. And, slowly but surely, some of these wronged faculty members are getting some legal traction -- two of them have taken legal action, and one recently managed to win a $20,000 settlement.

Of course, you can't sue for having your academic freedom violated. But you can sue if your contract was violated, and you were wrongfully terminated--say, without due process. And, if you work at a public school, you can sue if your First Amendment rights were violated. And, as overused as litigation is these days, it's also the case that schools are so incredibly entitled when it comes to adjuncts that they are not likely to begin treating them more fairly unless they are taught to fear legal consequences for misbehavior. It's good to see some adjuncts pioneering this route, and it's good to see organizations such as FIRE and ADF helping them pave the way.