AAUP
American Association of University Professors
Oregon State University Chapter
The
OSU-2007 Reorganization Process: Effects on Academic Freedom
The AAUP was founded in a time, much like we face today, when business
and political interests were attempting to gain inroads into American
universities. The founders of the AAUP believed that these external pressures
would undermine the development of disciplinary knowledge, which they
viewed as existing "for the common good". In order to protect
the development of knowledge, the AAUP has emphasized two general principles,
academic freedom and shared governance. Academic freedom refers to the
faculty member's freedom to investigate and dessiminate knowledge, without
constraints from external administrative, business, or poliitical interests.
The primary means of protecting such freedom is the institution of tenure,
which enables the faculty member to freely pursue and communicate their
knowledge without fear of losing their job. Academic freedom and tenure
are very tightly intertwined.
Although academic freedom is highly valued in most universities, its protection
was not a high priority in formulating the OSU-2007 proposals. The local
AAUP Board sent multiple letters pointing out the various threats to academic
freedom, but we saw few improvements across the successive documents.
Therefore, we repeat these concerns once again in the paragraphs below.
1. One consequence of the Strategic Plan, though not explicitly addressed in any of the OSU-2007 documents, involves the likely increase in non-tenure track positions. This may not occur in all units, but we can only expect that many units will see a decreased number of tenure-track positions along with an increase in non-tenure track positions. Such a trend has already been evident at OSU over the last 10 years, and moreover, is likely to increase given financial requirements of the reorganization; i.e., it is almost impossible to imagine how this reorganization can be accomplished without a substantially increased reliance on part-time, less expensive and expendable, faculty. We asked the administration to address this issue in the OSU-2007 proposals, but this was never done.
The effect on academic freedom will be insidious and two-fold: First, freedom will be severely limited for the increasing numbers of part time faculty, simply because their lack of job security will naturally motivate them to comply with external interests. Second, the academic freedom of tenure-track faculty will also be weakened, due to the increasing dilution of freedom on campus. Although there may still be a subset of faculty who are academically free, their shrinking numbers will make it more difficult for them to join together to protect academic freedom. This scenario is occuring on many campuses across the country, where it is progressively eroding academic freedom. Note that it also has serious effects on faculty governance.
2. More direct effects on academic freedom will arise from events within the various units. Particularly troublesome will be the need for increased external funding needed to fund many of these proposals (and to offset the decreased state support). Hopefully, much of this funding will be acquired through government agencies, which in most cases employ a peer-review process that preserves academic freedom and protects the academic disciplines. However, the OSU-2007 proposals make it quite clear that corporate funding will also be sought. Thus, many individuals will find it necessary to seek funding from agencies concerned with funding a particular type of research or instruction (i.e., that which benefits a corporation). In these cases, academic freedom can be very easily compromised. In order to survive in highly competitive departments, faculty may feel compelled to perform research that they may believe is beneficial to an external funding source (e.g., a corporation) but not to their discipline. In the worst case scenario, many faculty may be coerced into becoming corporate researchers based on campus, completely abrogating their academic freedom and loyalty to their discipline. The same may occur in the area of instruction, where faculty simply train students to perform the skills desired by a particular company or economic interest. The university would come to function as the research and training wings of major corporations.
3. In addition to such external biases, related constraints on academic freedom will arise from the various themes and initiatives promoted within the university. As noted in the accompanying article on shared governance, these initiatives will be administratively driven. Earlier OSU-2007 documents suggested that the evaluation of faculty performance and the distribution of internal research grants will depend upon the match between the individual's performance/proposals and the university's themes and initiatives. Problems are not likely to arise at the general level, because the themes are incredibly broad and most faculty should be able to fit in. However, the future initiatives will be narrower in scope, and there is every reason to believe that the initiatives will be focused even more specifically within various campus units. The problem here is that in contemplating research and instruction, faculty will naturally feel pressure to align their scholarship with current administrative goals. The necessity of obtaining good evaluations and internal funding will discourage research projects that deviate from these goals. This pressure may be extremely powerful for young non-tenured faculty during their probationary period. Even tenured faculty may feel compelled to conform to their unit's interests given their desire for promotion and the general decrease in academic freedom (see above). Academic freedom can be greatly constrained in these ways.
4. Further constraints on academic freedom may arise from the various program reductions and mergers inherent in the reorganization. Real academic freedom requires immersion in the knowledge and priorities related to one's discipline, If a faculty member's discipline is weakened, through program reductions or mergers, then the diverse ideas that fuel academic freedom will become diluted. In addition, such mergers will undoubtedly create new pressures on faculty, especially for those who find themselves in new programs with different missions and goals. To insure survival or promotion within their new home, such faculty will be forced to relinquish their freedom and to compromise their research and teaching to fit the goals of the new program. Without the protective environment created by a group that shares disciplinary values and ideas, the pressure to conform with external pressures will become even stronger.
Finally, the deterioration of academic freedom will not occur in isolation.
Instead, it will interact with the other outcomes of the OSU-2007 plan,
such as the weakening of faculty governance and academic disciplines discussed
in our accompanying articles. The academic freedom of an individual depends
very much on the status of their discipline, as well as on the degree
of shared governance within a university. As each of these links is weakened,
more stress will be placed on the others, such that the intellectual integrity
of the university as a whole will be greatly weakened. We hope that the
university will not end up as a research and training center exploited
by corporate interests. We hope that universities will remain one of the
few free social institutions left in this country. But it will be up to
the faculty, working with the administration, to preserve this freedom.
Our reading of the OSU-2007 proposals suggests that this will not be easy.
