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Eastern Michigan University (EMU) in Ypsilanti, Michigan issued layoff notices to ten of its eleven full-time non-tenured faculty in the College of Education. Some have been with the university for decades. The layoffs are effective for the fall semester of 2014. No part-time faculty were laid off, reflecting the administration's alignment with a national trend toward less experienced, lower-salaried faculty. Those faculty who did not receive the layoff notice reported seeing the writing on the wall in terms of increased class sizes, increased work loads, and worsening conditions. .... Last month Equality for Contingent Faculty: Overcoming the two-tier system by Keith Hoeller was published. In it Hoeller, longtime adjunct professor of philosophy at Green River Community College in Washington, states, "one million professors now teach off the tenure track and make up 75 percent of all college professors. "Throughout the country, college administrators, often with the collaboration of academic unions, have gone to great lengths to keep their increasing numbers of adjunct faculty secret from students, parents, legislators, accreditors, foundations, and the public." Hoeller chronicles a "new academic labor system under which the explosion of graduate students and the abuse and overuse of adjunct and non-tenure-track faculty is the most prominent characteristic of a new employment strategy sometimes referred to as the two- or multi-tiered labor system.

"Do professors at George Washington University have a bullying problem? The new chair of its Board of Trustees might think so, and he's expressed concern that non-tenure-track faculty members are on the receiving end of that bullying. To address the issue, the chair has said he's taking steps to extend academic freedom and greater access to shared governance to those without tenure. While some faculty applaud the new focus on non-tenure-track faculty concerns, others have questioned the validity of the chair's findings and the board's involvement in faculty-faculty relations. Others have called out the university for criticizing a problem -- adjunct inequality -- its leaders helped create" .... "Keith Hoeller, a non-tenure-track faculty advocate and founder of the Washington Part-Time Faculty Association, said the issue of bullying adjuncts is real, and it isn't specific to George Washington. The "two-tier" system of faculty -- those with tenure and those without - inevitably results in such abuses, he said. "When you have a two-track system and the tenured faculty serve as de facto supervisors of the contingent faculty, then you have a situation that's rife for bullying." Guest comment:  In my experience, bullying is pervasive in academe, so this does not surprise me at all. I have one friend who was bullied out of a job as a full professor -- they made her life so miserable she left -- and another who wishes she could leave, but needs the income. I have also been bullied out of administrative jobs, but I have the experience to go elsewhere. In academe, bullies bully for multiple reasons: because they feel righteous ("I'm defending the academic integrity of the college") or threatened by an outsider with new ideas (faculty in many smaller institutions never have to deal with someone coming in from the outside who isn't a new assistant professor) or jealous (what's so special about her? MY work is more important!) or any one of a host of other re

from The New York Times Editorial Board. It would be great if folks would write letters to the editor. Many people are sure to write in favor of the editorial's point of view. The email for letters is letters@nytimes.com. You need to include your snail mail address and phone number (though they won't print them of course). Here is the letter I just sent: While I am delighted that the NewYork Times has at long last noticed that higher education has been making use of three-quarters of a million part-time faculty, I am chagrined at the position you have taken, claiming that "the community colleges have to do a better job of screening the part-time instructors they hire, and developing their skills, which means providing mentors...." You relied on a study conducted by the Center for the Study of Community College Engagement and funded by an insurance company (Metlife). The Center's Advisory Board is dominated by community college administrators, including at least six presidents. No adjuncts appear to have been involved in the design of the study. Not surprisingly, the Center has deflected blame on to state legislators and the adjuncts themselves. But college presidents and trustees have not been lobbying their states for more money for adjunct faculty, just the opposite. In Colorado presidents recently led the charge to defeat a bill that would have provided equal pay for all of the part-timers in the community colleges. The study was not scientific. Indeed, it relied on self-report surveys and drew from "from 32 focus groups conducted with part-time faculty, full-time faculty, administrators, and staff at community colleges across the country." While the study produced some correlations, it did not control for all of the variables and the center was left to speculate as to the causes. In other words, the results of the study were more likely simply the perceptions the various players had about part-time faculty. Many of us have

Letters published in response to article http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/the-part-time-faculty.html