Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition… Freedom and economic security, hence, tenure, are indispensable to the success of an institution in fulfilling its obligations to its students and to society.
-American Association of University Professors 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure
Recent struggles over university education have taken place on the terrain of austerity. A new corporate model of higher education has called for the reduction of labor costs through such means as the elimination of tenure and the replacement of full-time academics with adjuncts. The idea of the university as a public good has, it seems, had its day.
The excluded idea of the university as a public good is accompanied by other exclusions. The struggle to desegregate American faculties, for example, had its origin in the idea of university education as a public good. Tenure, like racial inclusion, has everything to do with academic freedom, and academic freedom has everything to do with the idea that university education and university-based knowledge production are public goods.
The logic of the new corporate university fits seamlessly with a global neoliberalism that questions the very idea of the public, let alone the public good. The struggle over austerity in tertiary education is about much more than nickels and dimes or even millions of dollars to be saved. The struggle is over the future of free thought.
To bring this home, few people really want to hear about racism. When we describe racism, as we do, as a problem of our legal system, we do not do so to make friends. To paraphrase Steven Biko, we write what we like. Doing so is a public good. And that is what freedom is for. And that is the purpose of this panel on Austerity, Academic Freedom and Tenure.