Academic tenure in the United States and Canada is a contractual right that grants a teacher or professor a permanent position of employment at an academic institution such as a university or school. Tenure is intended to protect teachers from dismissal without just cause, and to allow development of thoughts or ideas considered unpopular or controversial among the community. In North America, tenure is granted only to educators whose work is considered to be exceptionally productive and beneficial in their careers.
Academic freedom is the right of a teacher to instruct and the right of a student to learn in an academic setting unhampered by outside interference. It may also include the right of academics to engage in social and political criticism.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is an organization of professors and other academics in the United States. AAUP membership includes over 500 local campus chapters and 39 state organizations.
John Robert Silber was an American academician and candidate for public office. From 1971 to 1996, he was President of Boston University (BU) and, from 1996 to 2002, Chancellor. From 2002 to 2003, he again served as President ; and, from 2003 until his death, he held the title of President Emeritus.
Tenure is a type of academic appointment that protects its holder from being fired or laid off except for cause, or under extraordinary circumstances such as financial exigency or program discontinuation. Academic tenure originated in the United States in the early 20th century, and several other countries have since adopted it. Tenure is a means of defending the principle of academic freedom, which holds that it benefits society in the long run if academics are free to hold and espouse a variety of views, even if the views are unpopular or controversial.
Michael Bérubé is an Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature at Pennsylvania State University, where he teaches American literature, disability studies, and cultural studies. He is the author of several books on cultural studies, disability rights, liberal and conservative politics, and debates in higher education. From 2010 to 2017, he was the director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Penn State; from 1997 to 2001 he was the founding director of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities. He was the 2012 president of the Modern Language Association, and served as vice president from 2010 to 2011. He served two terms on the National Council of the American Association of University Professors from 2005 to 2011, and three terms on the AAUP's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure from 2009 to 2018. He was a member of the International Advisory Board of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes for two terms, 2011–2017. Bérubé was named a University Scholar for research at the University of Illinois in 1995 and was awarded the Faculty Scholar medal for research from Penn State in 2012.
Cary Nelson, is an American professor emeritus of English and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was president of the American Association of University Professors between 2006 and 2012.
Academic freedom at Brigham Young University (BYU) has been the subject of several controversies, mostly focusing on its religious nature. In 1992, BYU issued a statement limiting academic freedom in certain areas, including language that attacked the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and language that violates the university's honor code.
Joseph Thomas Kingsbury was Acting President of the University of Deseret, now known as the University of Utah, from 1892 to 1894. In 1894 he was replaced by James E. Talmage, and then in 1897, was appointed President of the university. He held that position until he resigned because of a campus controversy in 1916. In spite of his resignation, Kingsbury's combined service as president of the university was longer than any other since.
John W. Schwada was an American educator. He served as the chancellor of the University of Missouri in the 1960s and as the president of Arizona State University in the 1970s.
Martha Smeltzer West an American attorney and legal scholar who served as general counsel for the American Association of University Professors and Professor Emerita at the UC Davis School of Law. In 1998, she won California's first federal grant under the Violence Against Women Act, using the money to found the Family Protection and Legal Assistance Clinic at UC Davis Law School. West was the lead author of the 2005 white paper "Unprecedented Urgency: Gender Discrimination in Faculty Hiring at the University of California" and of the 2006 AAUP report "Organizing around Gender Equity."
Nicholas C. Burbules is a Gutgsell Endowed Professor of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership and an affiliate of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretative Theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the director of the Ubiquitous Learning Institute and has served as Editor of the journal Educational Theory since 1991.
Steven Salaita is an American scholar, author and public speaker. He became the center of a controversy when the University of Illinois did not hire him as a professor of American Indian Studies following objections to a series of tweets critical of Israel's bombardment of Gaza in 2014. He also experienced similar controversy during the hiring process at the American University of Beirut in 2016.
Joseph Peterson was an American psychologist and a past president of the American Psychological Association (APA).
The political views of American academics began to receive attention in the 1930s, and investigation into faculty political views expanded rapidly after the rise of McCarthyism. Demographic surveys of faculty that began in the 1950s and continue to the present have found higher percentages of liberals than of conservatives, particularly among those who work in the humanities and social sciences. Researchers and pundits disagree about survey methodology and about the interpretations of the findings.
An adjunct professor is a type of academic appointment in higher education who does not work at the establishment full-time. The terms of this appointment and the job security of the tenure vary in different parts of the world, but the term is generally agreed to mean a bona-fide part-time faculty member in an adjunct position at an institution of higher education.
The Steven Salaita hiring controversy was a 2010s controversy about an American professor who was un-hired by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign following a campaign by pro-Israel students, faculty and donors who contended that his tweets protesting Israel's bombardment of Gaza were antisemitic. The un-hiring sparked a debate about academic freedom in relation to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, social media, and the influence of pro-Israel lobby groups on American universities. The professor who was denied the job successfully litigated against the university and was awarded a settlement of $875,000, while the university's Chancellor Phyllis Wise resigned.
Professor Watchlist is a website, run by conservative advocacy organization Turning Point USA, that lists academic staff which Turning Point believes "discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom." It was launched in 2016 and had listed about 200 professors by December of that year. The website erroneously claimed that Hunter Biden would "assist in lecturing a course" at Tulane University in the fall semester of 2021.
Guido Hugo Marx was an American mechanical engineer who was active in progressive politics, the technocracy movement, and civil liberties. He contributed to helping feed and house hundreds of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake survivors and led the Stanford Academic Council through changes in academic freedom, culminating in founding both the American Association of University Professors and the California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The 1979 Boston University strike was a labor strike involving employees at Boston University, a private university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The strike was participated by faculty members, clerical workers, and librarians, which began on April 5 up to April 23.
