BY ROTUA LUMBANTOBING

Ahead of tonight’s presidential debate, Inside Higher Ed put together a piece on what “higher ed leaders, thinkers, reformers, and skeptics what they’d ask Biden, Trump, or both candidates if CNN magically handed them the microphone.” Read that here. 

As the newly elected vice president of the AAUP, I contributed some questions to the piece. I also had some additional questions that didn’t make it in—here they are!

University campuses should be sites of debate, but recently they have become sites of repressive crackdowns on student protests. This goes against the very core of a university’s mission, which is to advance knowledge and promote civic participation. What would you do to protect free speech and academic freedom on our campuses?

Why I’d ask this question: To defend these rights on college campuses is to defend the building blocks of US democracy. Open and free exchange of ideas is stifled when free speech is censored and academic freedom is curtailed through political interference at both state and federal levels. Attempts to control higher education by mandating or prohibiting classroom content and curriculum, demonizing critical race theory, defunding or prohibiting DEI efforts, and attacking protections for academic freedom have been rampant at the state level for several years. Now we see political interference in higher ed at the federal level as well, particularly with the recent congressional hearings. Using antisemitism as a pretext, these are being used as a vehicle to attack and discredit higher education and are part of a wider extremist effort to stifle and curtail freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of expression in US society. This has to stop. 

In the past four decades US institutions have eroded tenure. Most institutions now rely heavily on poorly paid faculty members on short contracts. Fewer students view doctoral degrees as leading to attractive careers. How can the federal government work to ensure that the professoriate continues to attract great teachers and researchers and that professors have the support they need to deliver high-quality research and teaching? Would you support a requirement tying institutions’ eligibility to receive federal aid to concrete mechanisms for increasing tenure-track positions?

Why I’d ask this question: Untenured faculty earn lower wages, have less job security, and often bounce from position to position. Non-tenure-track-faculty work hard for their students, but they do not have the professional development resources or infrastructure of their tenure-track colleagues. Research has shown that students suffer as a result. In addition, in the long run low wages cannot attract strong candidates to the professoriate. The existence of a bi- or trifurcated faculty made of tenured/tenure-track faculty, and full- and part-time non-tenure-track faculty also erodes morale on university campuses.

What questions would you ask?

Rotua Lumbantobing is vice president of the AAUP and a professor at Western Connecticut State University.