Faculty members and academic support professionals began striking Monday, the first of what may be several new walkouts at multiple universities in the coming days.
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I owe a debt of thanks to George T. Karnezis, who made a sage observation in response to my review of Derek Bok’s
Higher Expectations: if colleges and universities are serious about lower-division instruction, why do they relegate the responsibility for fostering the qualities and capacities Bok insists demand attention largely to instructors outside the tenure system to adjunct, part-time and contingent faculty, as well as lecturers, professors of the practice, visiting scholars, postdocs and graduate students?
These are the very individuals who have been most affected by adjunctification and who have the lowest academic status. In too many instances, nontenured faculty experience a laundry list of indignities: low pay, little job security, limited time for research and a lack of protections against “just-in-time” hiring and at-will nonreappointment.