March 18, 2013

The New Faculty Minority

Tenured professors fight to retain control as their numbers shrink

The New Faculty Minority: Tenured Professors Fight to Retain Control as Their Numbers Shrink 1

Mark Abramson for The Chronicle

Christine Harrington and James Uleman, two tenured faculty leaders at NYU, say non-tenure-track professors' limited purview justifies keeping them out of governance roles.

By Robin Wilson

New York

The first order of business when arts-and-science professors at New York University gather each year is to decide whether their full-time colleagues who work off the tenure track should be granted voting privileges in faculty meetings. This academic year, for the first time, the professors decided no.

Extending the vote to full-time contingent faculty members was deemed too "dangerous." As on most campuses, professors at NYU who have tenure or are on the tenure track are a dwindling