Death of the University

“It’s broadly recognized, certainly by contingent faculty themselves, that they really don’t possess academic freedom,” Cary Nelson says, at least not “in the way that the American academy has assumed for basically half a century that everyone who teaches does.”

In the first segment of the interview on Bousquet's site in the Chronicle of Higher Education online, Nelson who is the current  president of the American Association of University Professors, suggests that the shift to a majority contingent faculty is not simply an economic phenomenon where university administrators are trying to save money by hiring professors who are more poorly paid than their tenured and tenure track fellows. 

More is going on here because this stifles dissent, let alone thought.

Nelson says that this change is not simply an economic and cultural change of the ideal of a university.  It’s an "intellectual sea change" as well — for the entire faculty and for students — this change is dramatic because it reshapes the nature of what it means to go to a college or university.

Instead of intellectual freedom, many of the majority contingent faculty can be fired for contradicting the administration, can’t choose course texts or create syllabi, and are afraid to challenge students to think and learn, or raise controversial issues.

Consider the repercussions... generation after generation of youth whose education is limited to the approved subjects, topics, and discussions.  Can we think of a more conservative agenda for the university?