Here's another take on the academic freedom - freedom of speech issue.
 Pat Cihon

>http://counterpunch.org/lindorff02102005.html
>
>February 10, 2005
>
>Most Speak at Their Own Risk
>What Academic Freedom?
>By DAVE LINDORFF
>
>
>Amid all the controversy over the observations of University of
Colorado
>professor and leftist Indian political activist Ward Churchill
concerning
>the military justifiability of the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade
Center,
>it's easy to overlook the fact that freedom of academic expression on
>American university campuses is already virtually dead.
>
>Churchill, who holds a tenured position at his university, is actually

in an
>unusually strong position. With his tenure, the only way that the
lynch
mob
>out to fire him can get rid of him without facing a huge damage suit
in
>court for breach of contract would be to prove a case of moral
turpitude or
>dereliction of teaching duties or something equally heinous.
>
>But for many teachers on American campuses--indeed for most teachers
on
some
>campuses and all at some--tenure is a thing of the past.
Increasingly,
>universities large and small, famous and unknown, are turning to
contract
>hires to do the teaching. These virtual professors are only offered
"folding
>chairs" that carry a contract--one year, two years, three years, or
maybe
>five years. At that point, they have to be renewed. They cannot be
>considered for tenure. Many other teachers are simply adjuncts, hired

on a
>year-to-year or semester-to-semester basis to teach one or two
classes.
They
>have no contract at all to protect them.
>
>Clearly, a person who has no job security has no freedom of
expression.
Such
>professors and adjuncts are no better off than the worker in a
Wal-Mart
or a
>General Electric factory--which means they have no more freedom of
speech
>than a 12th century serf. They speak out at their own risk. If any
adjunct
>or contract-hire teachers spoke out politically the way Churchill did

and
>roused the wrath of the unwashed masses and the loofahed and lathered

Bill
>O'Reilly, they'd be gone in a flash--if not the next day, then
certainly at
>the end of the term.
>
>At Temple University, a unionized urban institution here in
Philadelphia,
>for instance (where teachers have been working almost a year without
a
>contract because of management intransigence and demands for givebacks

in
>the area of faculty governance), increasing numbers of professors are
>working on a contract basis. At Alfred University, where I taught
journalism
>for a year, tenure is a bad joke. Although awarded after a typically
>exacting process of peer review, it has to be renewed every five
years
>following a new peer review, thus providing as much academic freedom
>protection as a felt body-armor vest.
>
>There is no question that the lack of tenure makes for less
outspokenness,
>iconoclasm and strength of conviction. I remember when I was working
as
an
>adjunct journalism instructor at Cornell University back in 1989,
going
to
>an assistant professor colleague who was on the tenure track, looking

for
>support for a proposal I wanted to make regarding the department's
minority
>students, whom I had found were having trouble with my and other
teachers'
>coursework and were then being asked to leave the school, instead of
being
>offered remedial or preparatory assistance. He said, "Oh, that's a
>controversy I can't get involved in until I get my tenure."
>
>With the bloodhounds of the right getting into full McCarthy lynching

mode
>these days, including organized groups of student yahoos who monitor
their
>teachers' lectures and backed by a phalanx of right-wing media mouths

ready
>to amplify any complaint about non-mainstream viewpoints expressed by
>teachers in or outside the classroom, the fight for academic freedom
has
>become more than academic. Yet instead of working to strengthen this
>important and historic tradition not just of tenure but of the very
culture
>of free expression on campus, administrators are caving in to
political
>pressure and undermining both.
>
>Ward Churchill is a fighter, and will go down slugging. Most
academics,
I'm
>afraid, will just shut up and become conventional thinkers.
>
>Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the

Death
>Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch columns
titled
>"This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press.
Information
>about both books and other work by Lindorff can be found at
>www.thiscantbehappening.net.
>
>He can be reached at: [log in to unmask]
>