Reflections on Part-time History
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Lately, fierce public discussion has raged over the academic freedom rights of contingent part-time instructors, who now constitute nearly half of all college and university faculty nationwide—about 37 percent in history (1). Most critics focus on adjunct instructors’ seemingly constant vulnerability to losing their jobs for exercising basic classroom freedoms, but historians might consider the broader ramifications of contingent employment for their craft. Among historians, the growing ranks of part-time instructors threaten to create a permanent stratum of “educational service workers” who lack rights traditionally enjoyed by history professors (2). According to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), college teachers are entitled to freedom to publish in their academic specialties, freedom to discuss their subject matter in the classroom, and freedom to write or speak as citizens outside of their institutions (3). All such freedoms, the AAUP contends, are vital to academic enterprise, and they need—for contingent and full-time faculty alike—to receive institutional support, especially tenure for full-time faculty and assurances of reappointment for part-time faculty (4). In a formal sense, part-timers receive more of these liberties than public discussion recognizes. Universities have promulgated “rights and privileges” for part-timers, while union contracts and court decisions have upheld adjuncts’ classroom freedoms, just as they would for full-timers (5). Yet, critics convey the impression that academic freedom for adjuncts “is a myth.” Observers alternately complain that part-timers publish much less research than full-timers, that temporary faculty need “to be cautious about what they say and write,” that insecure employment causes adjuncts to evade controversial subjects in the classroom, and most ominously, that “chronic arbitrary dismissal” of adjuncts “abounds.” These impressions certainly seem true, given the way in which part-timers are hired and rehired, typically at the discretion of administrators or department chairs in course-by-course contracts, often arranged on short notice without guidance from faculty search committees (6). There is rampant speculation, but still only fragmentary documentation, that such employment practices chill part-timers’ classroom freedoms. Reports indicate that contingent faculty have varying levels of control over books and syllabuses (7). Anecdotes proliferate that part-timers easily lose jobs due to classroom pedagogy. As one respondent told an AHA-OAH survey, “Any complaint and you’re never fired. You are simply never rehired” (8). The result, according to another observer, is “silent self-censorship,” wherein thousands of temporary faculty dodge job-threatening student complaints by avoiding controversial topics, tough assignments, and rigorous grades (9). There have been improvements, however. The AAUP has advocated long-term contracts, faculty hearings in cases of nonrenewal, and possibly “part-time tenure” (10). The joint AHA-OAH committee on part-time and adjunct employment has recommended appropriate evaluation procedures and “seniority for hiring and pay raises” (11). Faculty unions have negotiated agreements mandating periodic evaluation, seniority privileges, employment pools, grievance procedures, and occasionally, multisemester contracts. History departments have adopted procedures to evaluate, rehire and assign courses to adjuncts, with real respect for adjunct contributions. How widely such improvements extend across institutions of higher learning, especially in nonunionized schools, is unclear. Some information indicates, for instance, that seniority requirements effectively limit chairpersons’ discretion not to renew part-timers, even in cases of apparent incompetence, but other accounts suggest that chairs flout seniority stipulations. Indeed, persistent claims that adjuncts “now teach without any job security whatsoever” suggest that seniority rules and other protections mean little. Nobody knows for sure (12). Research is needed. On top of job insecurity, other less appreciated threats to part-timers’ academic freedom exist: the cumulative impact of low wages, minuscule health benefits, long hours, cumbersome commutes to multiple jobs, lack of access to libraries and digital resources, and exclusion from research support. Such burdens, according to one former adjunct, stymie the “fundamental forms” of academic freedom, including proper course preparation and ongoing student contact (13). Especially, contingent employment’s total demands impede part-timers’ intellectual development, denying them time to engage the discourses of their disciplines, disrupting their participation in professional networks, and neither supporting nor rewarding their scholarly efforts. Certainly faculty unions, educational institutions, and professional groups have ameliorated adjuncts’ employment situations. Yet reformers’ focus on job security has largely conceded contingent faculty’s exclusion from research and scholarship. While, for example, a key 1997 conference endorsed grant programs, sabbatical opportunities, and travel support, joint AHA-OAH standards only recommend “grants to attend conferences and workshops” (14). Similarly, faculty unions and educational institutions typically define part-timers’ “professional development” just in terms of teaching. Changing times require a broader view. Reports indicate that 46 percent of college faculty today are part-timers, most in the thirty-five to sixty-four year age range, and a quarter hold a Ph.D (15). Admittedly, adjuncts come from many ranks, but as one recent survey demonstrated, a growing minority (29 percent) is devoted to part-time teaching as a career (16). To this group, especially those with Ph.D.s, denial of research support becomes a professional glass ceiling. Granting agencies aggravate this problem by targeting full-timers. Excluded, part-timers face year-round employment in multiple jobs with little time or resources left for scholarly development. Schools, unions and professional organizations like the AHA and the OAH, therefore, could broaden efforts to defend adjuncts’ academic freedom. To deal with part-timers’ lack of job security, these groups might—as some have done—urge long-term employment contracts, regular peer review, and better grievance procedures, maybe ombudsmen (17). To create realistic opportunities for meritorious contingent faculty to mature as scholars, these groups might also encourage special fellowships, paid sabbaticals, and travel grants. School administrators and full-time faculty may balk at diverting scarce resources to this apparently transient pool of faculty. Yet they ought to consider part-timers’ own long-term commitments to their institutions, adjuncts’ growing presence among college and university faculty, and most importantly, part-timers’ vital role in promoting a scholarly academic environment. Denying adjuncts opportunities for intellectual growth will diminish higher education as a whole. Sadly, debate about activist David Horowitz’s “Academic Bill of Rights” has obscured part-timers’ problems by defining academic freedom in terms of whether biased liberal instructors hamper classroom “diversity.” No doubt, this proposal demands a response. Nonetheless, as witnesses told Pennsylvania legislative hearings last year, student complaints about liberal bias are rare, and the real threat to academic freedom today is the contingent employment system that impairs part-time teachers’ fundamental educational functions (18). Indeed, adjunct rights implicate academic freedom’s future. As institutional trends continue to expand part-timer use, the proportion of college and university faculty protected by tenure will erode. To preserve academic freedom as a basic condition of academic life, hence, the contingent faculty’s lack of job security and professional development opportunities both need to be addressed. Accommodating a two-tier system of complete academic freedom for a shrinking full-time professoriate and truncated academic rights for the burgeoning ranks of part-timers will endanger academic freedom for us all. Speaking for himself, the author is adjunct instructor of history at Central Connecticut State University and a member of the Joint AHA-OAH Committee on Part-time and Adjunct Employment. He thanks former committee chair Amy Kinsel and the Central Connecticut State University-AAUP committee on part-time faculty for their suggestions. Endnotes
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