Hidden (and Not-So-Hidden) New Threats to Faculty Governance

Academic Freedom

2..7.10 - Jan H. Blits - Faculty governance has been under serious attack across the country in recent years. Some of the threats are obvious; others are not.

Hidden (and Not-So-Hidden) New Threats to Faculty Governance

By Jan H. Blits

AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom
Volume One, 2010

Faculty governance has been under serious attack across the country in recent years. Some of the threats are obvious; others are not. Some are directly connected to one another; others are linked only by their ultimate effects. In Parts 1 and 2, I describe an outrageous Residence Life program at my institution. While this so-called “educational” program was a flagrant violation of students’ rights, its appropriation of faculty prerogatives and responsibilities was no less important. In Parts 3 and 4, I discuss several other current threats to faculty governance. Although separate from questions of political indoctrination and the violation of student rights, some of them are pointed up by the Residence Life program, such as the disappearing distinction between academic and administrative powers. Others concern dangers to faculty independence stemming from recent rulings in federal courts. The common thread running through all the new threats, hidden and obvious, is the growing attempt on the part of administrators and others to corporatize higher education in America.

I see the introduction of such nonfaculty “education” programs as being of a piece with the national tendency of replacing tenure-track with non-tenure-track faculty, who are more beholden to administrators. Both steps, I think, are part of the broad effort to replace faculty governance (limited as it is) with top-down corporate management. From what I can tell, the aim of the effort is, most generally, to corporatize higher education in America. Rather than be scholars and teachers, professors are to become mere employees. The faculty is to minister to the administration.

The general erosion of tenure is a serious threat to faculty governance. So are the recent Federal Court rulings following the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court’s Garcetti v. Ceballos decision.