How to Be a Tenured Ally

by VanessaVaile

companion piece to http://badcoverversion.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/how-not-to-be-a-tenured-ally/ … PS whenever possible, follow adjunct bloggers on their own space rather than under the umbrella of a bigger name. I appreciate the Academe blog’s #CEW2013 series but feel even more strongly about supporting our own spaces

Bad Cover Version

I’m an adjunct at two different private universities.* In those positions, I’ve encountered numerous tenured and tenure-track faculty who were allies to adjuncts, and numerous faculty who were not.  After Monday’s post critiquing ineffective tenured allies, I want to be a bit more productive than deconstructive. One of the things that I’ve learned from my long years studying feminist activism is that critique has its place, but positive actions should emerge from it.

Here are some handy tips, if you have tenure (or are close to getting it), and you’d like to be an ally:

1.Recognize that your job is dependent on adjuncts. In many departments, adjuncts teach the high-enrollment, introductory courses that (in part) give the administration its numbers for determining how many tenured and tenure-track faculty lines will exist. Now, this is a not-nuanced version of how administrators decide these things, but, big picture: adjuncts make it…

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