il mio sostegno a AAUP che denuncia gli arbitri della classe dirigente accademica in USA

Ricevuto da AAUP - Association of American University Professors - che denuncia gli arbitri e l'estrema insicurezza in cui lavora il personale delle università americane, in quanto i capi possono licenziare anche senza validi motivi.
Ne so qualcosa anch'io. Posso confermare che in USA si lavora benissimo da un lato - perchè strutture, biblioteche, computer ... tutto è molto efficiente e porta ad un lavoro molto intenso e entusiasmante - ma dall'altro in un clima di tensione e preoccupazione enormi perchè i capi possono sbatterti fuori con estrema arbitrarietà. Un piccolo errore può costarti il posto. Risultato? Io ho lavorato con grande entusiasmo con gli studenti; mi piaceva moltissimo insegnare e frequentare i corsi, ma mi sono allontanata sempre di più dal mio istituto, con cui alla fine non comunicavo neanche più, e dai capi che sono temuti come pericolosi tiranni.



BLUE BANNER
The AAUP Online
News for the Higher Education Community

This message celebrates an anniversary: a year ago the AAUP adopted its most detailed and specific set of recommended institutional regulations governing part-time faculty positions. That action followed upon an extensive series of AAUP reports about the changing state of faculty appointments. The reports themselves, the first appearing in 1980, were written in response to thirty years of gradually increasing use of contingent faculty throughout American higher education.

In 1975, tenured and tenure-track faculty together constituted 57 percent of faculty nationwide. By 2005, the latest year for which figures are available, that combined group had been whittled down to merely 32 percent. Contingent faculty had meanwhile grown from 43 percent to 68 percent of the professoriate. You can help us raise awareness of these dramatic changes by printing out a bar graph recording them (http://www.aaup.org/NR/rdonlyres/9218E731-A68E-4E98-A378-12251FFD3802/0/Facstatustrend7505.pdf) and putting it on your office door.

The term “contingent faculty” itself reflects our awareness that several groups of teachers—including part-timers, full-timers off the tenure-track, and graduate employees who teach well beyond the needs of their own training—endure overlapping forms of exploitation and present comparable risks to higher education. We have warned repeatedly that the excessive employment of faculty without job security would eventually undermine both academic freedom and shared governance. That time has arrived. When most faculty are at risk of summary dismissal, the freedom for faculty to speak forthrightly is diminished. And faculty control over the curriculum is also undercut.

Some faculties have organized in response and won enforceable limits to the use of contingent faculty. Others need our help.

The rules we adopted last year, section 13 of our Recommended Institutional Regulations (http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/policydocs/contents/RIR.htm), for the first time lay out very specific procedures for part-time faculty appointments. They are constructed as a series of steps that come into play at various stages of employment, including advance notice of reappointment, due process for dismissal, comprehensive review of performance, and eventually expectation of continued employment.

Meanwhile, our Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure is giving increasing attention to all contingent faculty appointments and defending faculty who are mistreated. This year, in response to information received about possible violations of academic freedom involving full- and part-time contingent faculty, the committee staff has counseled dozens of faculty members, written letters to administrations, and launched one full investigation. In one recent instance, a faculty member in her first year of full-time teaching at a community college in the Midwest—an institution where no faculty have tenure—asked for our assistance when she was told her contract would not be renewed. She had been slated to head an academic program, but encountered criticism from the administration when she organized a benefit concert to establish a health care fund for part-time faculty. Since she was given no formal reason for her nonrenewal, its timing suggested a relation to the administration’s displeasure at the implication that part-timers there were poorly treated. Her only appeal was to a grievance committee appointed by the administration. Our staff wrote a strong letter suggesting that her academic freedom had been violated, after which the administration entered into discussions with the faculty member, and a settlement was reached. “I would have been completely lost without the AAUP,” she told us.

Cary Nelson
AAUP President

The AAUP Online is an electronic newsletter of the American Association of University Professors. For more information about the AAUP, visit http://lyris.eresources.com:81/t/1212757/1942950/470/0/

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