Reflections on AAUP’s 1915 declaration of principles

 Society, the academy, and the role of Adjunct Faculty have seen significant changes since the AAUP’s 1915 declaration of principles.  Many factors have contributed to these changes.  These factors include the consequence of important world events, expanded education programs, increased use of technology, a more digitally integrated world economy, equity studies, court decisions, and an evolving knowledge economy based on affordances from the creation, exchange, management, and use of knowledge in digital societies.  In a digital community, the roles and importance of the Adjunct Faculty have changed.  This study will improve our understanding of the 21^st-century Adjunct Faculty.

 The literature review suggests Adjunct Faculty are diverse community engagement and Research to Practice (RPP) practitioners across education, economics, workforce, and quality of life development.  While the full-time faculty functions to the rhythm and pleasure of one academic institution, the adjunct faculty has a range of direct RPP engagements with community groups, businesses, and civic organizations.  This RPP engagement suggests adjunct faculty functions as full partners in life-long learning and rapid retooling of the nation’s workforce   The term “Adjunct” belies the range of their roles, independence, and importance across academic, workforce, and quality of life development sectors.   

 This Adjunct Faculty Study Project will enable us to explore opportunities for updating the AAUP’s declaration of principles.  A declaration update will help frame our collective minds: full-time faculty, part-time faculty, and the general public, about AAUP’s relevance in assisting people in managing rapid changes in their worlds.

I agree with Ellen Schrecker’s (2012) and other similar voices about AAUP’s opportunities for building on its unique position to speak for the entire creation, exchange, management, and use of knowledge pipeline.  However, I think leveraging these opportunities will require more than exclusive reliance on traditional, and one-dimension, collective bargaining:

This [partnership] could be the AAUP’s new mission.  For there is no other organization representing the interests of every member of the academic profession, no other organization that can articulate the crucial relationship between the autonomy and free expression of the faculty and the quality of higher education. To do this, however, the AAUP must grow. It must enter the public arena with a strong, collective message about … [academic equity, academic freedom, and sustainability]. It must overcome the stratification and internal divisions that have made it so hard for the professoriate to speak with a single voice. Those of us with tenure must treat our less secure colleagues in part-time and temporary full-time positions with respect, acknowledging that it is the market, and not any inadequacies on their part, that forces them to endure abysmal working conditions and inadequate pay.  At the same time, we need to recognize that in a political climate that has become increasingly hostile to organized labor, competition with other unions is equally unproductive (One Historian’s Perspective on Academic Freedom and the AAUP | AAUP).

This study hopes to confirm that collective bargaining is still necessary for our rapidly transforming global village but not, and was never, enough to be sustainable and impactful.   It is important to note that John Dewey wrote the declaration of AAUP Principles, on behalf of every member of the academic profession, after building on a pragmatic working relationship with leaders in local communities to solve problems they find themselves.   For example, he and Jane Adams and others from the academy were very involved with both sides in finding a solution to the Pullman strike.

Dewey’s experimental school was also a significant public relations success.   So, by the time he wrote the AAUP declaration in 1915, the organization earned a special publicly respected status and was viewed as relevant by faculty, politicians, and business leaders.  This study will confirm if the AAUP today does command the same relevance as it did in 1915 and could be one source of our current challenges.

The responsibility of the university teacher is primarily to the public itself, and to the judgment of his own profession; … in the essentials of his professional activity his duty is to the wider public to which the institution itself is morally amenable… A university is a great and indispensable organ of the higher life of a civilized community, in the work of which the trustees hold an essential and highly honorable place, but in which the faculties hold an independent place, with quite equal responsibilities -and in relation to purely scientific and educational questions, the primary responsibility. 

 The study is also a significant first step to determine the effectiveness of independent AAUP regional adjunct faculty think tanks.  The presumption is they would help frame partnerships with the public, business, universities, and political leaders to frame long-term strategic policies on life-long education, career, workforce, and quality-of-life development.  The idea of regional AAUP adjunct faculty think tanks would provide collaborative space for its diverse membership to do research, workforce policy development, and social agency that would mitigate current challenges and regain the special status and relevance.