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Earlier this year, a few non-tenure track full-time teaching faculty in Syracuse University’s School of Architecture were told their contracts will not be renewed next academic year. It was striking evidence of the precarity of many instructional faculty at SU and across the country, where estimates suggest nearly 75% of faculty lack access to tenure.

While labor precarity might seem unrelated to issues that continue to roil our campus and nation regarding academic freedom and free speech and the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, they are intimately related. Faculty who lack the security of tenure are less likely to teach controversial subjects, explore any and all research topics and speak truth to power in spaces of academic governance.

This is why the American Association of University Professors sees tenure as vital to protecting the core value of academic freedom more generally, and advocates that all full-time faculty, even non-research teaching faculty, deserve a path to tenure. Academic freedom does not begin and end with research, but is vital for all roles faculty play on this campus.

Our Syracuse University’s AAUP chapter recently released a statement explaining that:

“Tenure is necessary to ensure that when full-time faculty perform (their)0 duties they do so without fear of censure or penalty. … non-tenure track teaching faculty … face difficulties acting as (departmental and committee) leaders and directing policy without the protections and status of tenure. The protections of tenure are particularly important for non-tenure track faculty who also disproportionately teach, advise and advocate for the most vulnerable students on campus.”

This statement also notes that “according to the latest faculty census (2022) conducted by the Syracuse University Senate, only 50.1% of faculty are tenured or on the tenure track.”

Another way of reporting this data is to simply state that nearly 50% of our faculty lack true academic freedom. Nearly 17% of this group are full-time faculty whose contingent status makes them vulnerable to dismissal like the recent experience in the School of Architecture.

Of course, tenure is not the only path out of labor precarity. Another viable option, following the recent example of our graduate students, is unionization. The power of collective bargaining could allow our non-tenure track full time faculty the possibility of bargaining more job security and protections for academic freedom into a labor contract.

In fact, Adjuncts United – the union that represents part time faculty at SU, but not full time non-tenure track faculty – has exactly this language on ‘academic freedom’ in their own contract: “The university affirms that these standards (of Academic Freedom in the Faculty Manual) also apply to part-time faculty.”

While the standards in the faculty manual ostensibly apply to all faculty (non-tenure track faculty included), without the assurance of tenure or union affiliation, many non-tenure track faculty have good reason to doubt the university’s firm commitment to extending the full protections of this statute should they express unpopular viewpoints on controversial issues, either in the classroom or beyond.

Whether through an institutional path to tenure or unionization, full-time teaching faculty, professors of practice and visiting professors with specialized knowledge are critical to the educational mission of our university. They deserve more than precarity. They deserve the full rights of academic freedom.

Syracuse University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors Executive Committee
Matt Huber – President
Joanna Spitzner – Vice President
Diane Grimes – Treasurer
Matthew Mulvaney – Secretary
Ivy Kleinbart – Non-TT Faculty Representative
Eileen Schell – Member at Large
Crystal Bartolovich – Past President

Published on March 7, 2024 at 1:05 am