Academic Freedom: Will Adjuncts Ever Have Any?

by John Peter Daly

For several weeks last summer, students, professors, and staff at Warren County Community College, where I was teaching as an adjunct, participated in “Freedom Week” activities. The main event was to be a pro-war rally. Imagine walking into the lobby at work and coming face-to-face with the glorification of the genocidal assault on the Iraqi people. The campus was plastered with posters of Ronald Reagan and Oliver North. Maps of Iraq–seen through the barrel of a gun–blanketed walls and bulletin boards. I felt compelled to speak out against the group organizing “Freedom Week.”

I sent an email from my personal email account to the personal email account of one of the event organizers—in response to an unsolicited invitation to a pro-war event. I didn’t know that the email was from a WCCC student, nor had I ever met this student. My email was turned over to the college administration. At the same time that the administration was asking me not to have further contact with the pro-war group, I believe they were encouraging group members to campaign to have me fired.

In my opinion, the administration launched a no-holds-barred campaign to vilify me. My students were interrogated, violating academic expression (although my comments had not taken place on campus), as well as the first amendment rights of the students and myself. Needless to say, I resigned.
I am active in the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), the national organization that held an anti-war march of over 300,000 in Washington, D.C. on September 29th last year, and thanks to their assistance I received a separation package. I will continue to be an outspoken opponent of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and the crisis that adjunct professors are facing in higher education today.

Academic Freedom & Adjuncts

In this academic environment, where more and more instructors are part-time and temporary, the long-held principle of academic freedom on college campuses is beinging chipped away. Simply said, adjuncts do not have academic freedom. Academic freedom is under attack even for tenured professors.
The campaign spearheaded by arch-conservative David Horowitz’s misnamed “Academic Bill of Rights” is a right-wing challenge to the premise of academic freedom. Between 2004 and 2005, 14 state legislatures considered proposals challenging the fundamental concept of academic freedom in higher education. Fortunately, none approved the so-called “Academic Bill of Rights,” which would involve state and/or federal government oversight of curriculum development, instruction, hiring and promotion in both public and private institutions of higher learning.

Typically, adjuncts sign short-term contracts. Increasingly, these contracts force adjuncts to agree to the institution’s obtaining of a “Consumer Report,” or to sign agreements that include “morals clauses.”

One California college now obligates adjuncts to sign contracts that require them to “conduct self in public at all times with due regard to public conventions and morals.” The contract language goes further to include any behavior that “bring(s) into public hatred, contempt, or ridicule or that would tend to shock or offend the College (sic) community.”

“This language is at war with the principles of academic freedom,” says Jonathan Knight of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

Broward County Community College, in Florida, requires adjuncts to authorize so-called consumer reports. These reports can include private information, such as “personal characteristics” and “mode of living.”

The AAUP has set up a subcommittee to develop a policy concerning the chronic arbitrary dismissal of adjunct faculty. Although the need for such a policy has been debated for some time, the impetus was the 2002 case of Mohamed Yousry, an adjunct lecturer at the City University of New York. Yousry was barred from teaching after being arrested for “aiding terrorism.” He worked as an interpreter for Lynne Stewart, the attorney who represented Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman.

“Part-timers are at the mercy of the chair or of the department. They can easily get rid of you,” says Marcia Newfield, vice president for part-time faculty of the Professional Staff Congress, the union that represents part-time and full-time faculty and staff.

Besides the Yousry case, Newfield cited other adjuncts who were “severely talked to” or not reappointed for such requests as wanting to use a different textbook.

Other cases abound. In early 2005, adjunct Susan Rosenberg was forced to leave Hamilton College in New York state due to her previous support of and involvement in the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation movement.

Despite these other recent cases, Newfield did not sense any immediate concern with increased attacks against adjunct faculty, but did state that administrations seem more and more “emboldened to do whatever they want.”

Academic Freedom: Tied to Other Struggles

The fight to win the right to tenure—in reality the right to academic freedom and job security—came out of the struggles of faculty at colleges such as City College of New York (CUNY) decades ago. These campaigns to win unions, tenure, better wages and promotion procedures were often linked to anti-fascist organizing.

In 1932, more than a 1000 students rallied in support of English Professor Oakley Johnson after his dismissal for his “communist sympathies.” Police beat and arrested four students.
After organizing one the first AFT chapters in higher education, Philip Keeney and his wife, Mary Jane Keeney, were fired from their jobs and charged with espionage in 1937. In 1937, Dr. Max Yergan, the first African American ever appointed in a New York City public college, was not reappointed after informers revealed that his course on “Negro History and Culture” was “progressive.”

In 1940, New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia withdrew funding for philosopher Bertrand Russell, as Russell’s views might “corrupt the sexual morality” of the City College of New York student body.

An incident that helped rally many college faculty to unionize was the Rapp-Coudert witch-hunt—a precursor to McCarthyism. Demonstrations took place in opposition to the Rapp-Coudert hearings, at which hundreds of New York faculty were questioned. The 1940 AAUP policy statement on Academic Freedom was developed during this period.

Fighting for Change

The right wing has no qualms in attacking both academic freedom and the rights of full- and part-time professors as workers. Part-time professors’ concerns are full-time professors’ concerns. Why would college administrations dole out tenured positions when they have a huge pool of hungry part-timers to point to?

University of Vermont adjuncts organized activities to bring out the plight of part-timers during Campus Equity Week this past fall. Building solidarity is the task at hand not only to secure safe learning environments, but also to win decent jobs in education. Part-timers took advantage of Campus Equity Week events last year to reach out to others on the issues of adjunct professors.

Some adjuncts have won lawsuits and settlements when their rights have been violated. In colleges where adjuncts are organized, the issue of academic freedom is coming up during contract negotiations.

However, these attacks on academic freedom—in particular the attacks against adjuncts—are attacks on everyone—students, part-time, full-time and tenured faculty. The lesson we must learn from those professors of the 1930s and 40s is to organize and fight back. Only then can academic freedom be tied to its natural counterpart—workers’ rights.

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