Ei-iE

To fulfil their mission of preserving, sharing, and advancing knowledge, higher education institutions must ensure that academic staff enjoy academic freedom. Academic freedom isn’t a special perk or privilege. Rather, it’s a necessary condition for the job. It is a professional and contractual right ensuring that in their teaching, research, scholarship, publication, participation in the affairs of their institutions, and exercise of their broader rights as citizens, academics are not curtailed or censored by their administration, by colleagues, or by outside interests.

Across North America today, these foundational aspects of academic freedom are being tested. From legislative intrusions into what is taught and researched to the erosion of job security and other procedural protections for professors, the future of academic freedom is in doubt.

Increasing political attacks against academic freedom

The most visible manifestation of this has been the proliferation of legislation curtailing the teaching of certain subjects. In the state of Florida, for instance, the “Stop Woke Act” prohibits the discussion and teaching of so-called “divisive” concepts” such as “critical race theory” and sexual orientation or gender identity. A special report prepared by the American Association of University Professors released in December 2023 ominously concluded: “Academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance in Florida’s public colleges and universities currently face a politically and ideologically driven assault unparalleled in US history, which, if sustained, threatens the very survival of meaningful higher education in the state, with dire implications for the entire country.”

Florida, unfortunately, is not an outlier. More than 30 US states have enacted legislation limiting the teaching and discussion of certain topics. This direct political interference and violation of principles of institutional autonomy have even spilled over the borders into Canada and Mexico.

In the Canadian province of Alberta, the conservative government has passed legislation that will allow it to vet research grants awarded to faculty by the federal research funding agencies. The government says it wants to ensure the projects that are funded are “aligned with provincial interests.” That’s been widely interpreted as coded language for permitting the province to block research the political party in power doesn’t agree with.

Meanwhile, some observers and academics in Mexico have accused the government of ideological attacks on institutions and a power grab over research policy, based on vague and overly zealous anti-corruption clampdowns. This has included disputed criminal procedures against former National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) officials, and the interference in the management of the Centre for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE).

Long-term trends in the academic labour market

While these direct political and legislative assaults have generated much public attention, there has also been a more subtle but equally dangerous erosion of academic freedom across the continent. As in other parts of the world, higher education in North America has been undergoing a profound restructuring since at least the mid-1990s. Sometimes characterized as “corporatisation” or “neoliberalism,” this transformation has been marked by reduced government funding, rising tuition fees, a focus on the commercialisation of university research, and the adoption of other market-driven policies.

In the process, academic labour has been transformed, most notably with the significant increase in precarious employment contracts. In the United States, over 60 per cent of faculty are now employed off the tenure track and, since 2004, there has been a threefold increase in replacing tenured with fixed-term positions among four-year institutions with a tenure system. In Canada, it is estimated that contract academic staff make up about 40 per cent of university teachers.

This has profound implications for academic freedom. Tenure exists to safeguard academic freedom. It provides academics with an indefinite appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances such as financial exigency and program discontinuation. But academics employed on non-continuing contracts have limited ways to freely exercise their academic freedom without fear of reprisal.

As academic freedom has been weakened by political attacks and broader structural transformations, institutional leaders have most often been acquiescent or complicit. This means that academic trade unions need to be at the forefront of defending and promoting academic freedom. We need to marshal resources and tools to campaign, organize, and bargain to ensure the integrity and independence of higher education. This means making sure academics are free from political interference and enjoy the security of employment necessary to exercise their academic freedom.