Category: Uncategorized
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Got academic freedom in the classroom?
Are you a lecturer or visiting professor at Miami, or do you have a friend who is? As you may know from reading other recent posts (or if you’ve read Miami’s policy manual), you know NTT faculty at Miami—including not only visiting and per-credit-hour faculty but also lecturers and clinical faculty—don’t have due-process protections should they face…
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Who needs tenure any more?
Overheard at Miami: “Tenure? I think it should go away. It’s an unfair system. Some people get a golden ticket to lifetime employment and some of us who are just as qualified have to work for low pay and no benefits and have no protections.” — Part-time faculty member X. We salute Part-Timer X and…
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What’s academic freedom and why is it important?
Overheard at Miami: “Academic freedom? Sometimes I think that’s just a way of protecting incompetent teachers.” — Professor X. Most of us at Miami agree with you on wanting to keep classroom standards high at Miami, Professor X! But when we say we value academic freedom, are we really somehow getting into the business of…
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Why should contingency matter to tenure-line faculty?
First, what’s contingency? As defined by the GAO* and AAUP, “contingent faculty” is an umbrella term encompassing all non-tenure-system faculty — that is, faculty who, to different degrees, experience precarity. Contingent faculty teach about 60% of the credit hours taught at Miami. Contingency matters a LOT to tenure-line faculty. Why? Reduction in TT numbers leads to increased service…
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Do NTT faculty at Miami have academic freedom?
Do NTT faculty at Miami have academic freedom? What about due process in case of non-renewal?* Fact: The answer to both questions is no. While Miami asserts both the value and existence of academic freedom at Miami, it provides due process protections only for tenured faculty — not for non-tenure-track faculty, now the majority of faculty, whose…
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How contingency affects all of us
For our first fall meeting, the chapter hosted a panel of Miami contingent faculty. They contributed valuably to our discussion of contingency, an issue we hope to make a focus this year. Whether you are a tenured or tenure-line faculty member, a student, a visiting assistant professor or instructor, an adjunct, or just a citizen,…
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AAUP denounces DACA decision
Today’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA) will cause massive insecurity, difficulty, disruption and harm for hundreds of thousands of innocent, hardworking people—many of them our students. (The majority of people with DACA status are university students). Miami AAUP urges faculty and students to call their legislators to express support for…
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Miami AAUP’s Statement on Diversity: A Call to the Miami Community
At a galvanizing and moving chapter meeting on February 15, the leader of Graduate Students from All Nations, Ancilleno Lewis, urged all of us present to ask our departments and programs to make statements in strong support of students from other nations. Lewis and others reported disturbing details about hate-related activity happening on campus. Some…
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Rudy Fichtenbaum on RCM at Miami
Our chapter meeting tomorrow night features a talk on RCM by National AAUP President Rudy Fichtenbaum, who is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Wright State University. RCM, or Responsibility Centered Management, is a budgeting model that’s swept higher education, a decentralized management model that rewards revenue generation and cost efficiency in academia. Do the risks…