ABSTRACT
Abstract This article explores why tenured faculty, particularly at major public and
private research universities, often have failed to engage in collective resistance to the rise
of the neoliberal university and the exploitation of “casualized” academic labor. Thirty
years of steady federal and state cuts in the funding of higher education have led to the
quasi-privatization of public higher education, with both public and private universities
viewing themselves as corporate entities that must maximize student tuition and corporate
and philanthropic revenues while minimizing costs. This has led to a massive increase in
the number of exploited contingent faculty whose precarious working conditions are akin
to those of low-wage, temporary workers in the rest of the economy. This article explores
various reasons behind the failure of most tenured faculty-particularly the eighty percent
not in faculty unions-to engage in overt, sustained protest at the radical expansion in
casualized faculty labor. The article also examines the rise of professional administrators as
the new governing class of neoliberal universities which compete for “student customers”
on the basis of amenities and “student life” rather than on the basis of educational quality.
These administrators’ drive for “measurable metrics” has contributed to an increase in
self-interested behavior on the part of a tenured faculty who are increasingly rewarded on
the basis of “research productivity.” While in the short run such a retreat from public life
by tenured faculty may be rational, in the long run such behavior threatens the future
existence of tenure, except in the most prestigious and well-endowed of private and public
institutions. Thus those remaining tenured faculty committed to higher education
providing a quality intellectual experience for all students must work politically to ensure
that all faculty have humane and secure working conditions and manageable teaching
loads. In short, tenured faculty committed to a future for democratic public education must
take up the challenge of building solidarity across faculty rank and status.
