Removing Faculty: Patterns and Processes of Retrenchment and Restructuring

Abstract

This article uses 30 years of investigatory and special reports by the American Association of University Professors’ Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure to understand how retrenchment and restructuring practices have been enacted on ways detrimental to both individual and the corporate faculty. Informed by changes in the logics in higher education and broader understandings of retrenchment, we identified larger patterns of where retrenchment and restructuring in violation of academic norms took place. We further identified three main themes in the reports: Declaring Exigency and / or Launching Restructuring, Faculty Roles and Rights during Retrenchment/Restructuring, and Criteria Used in Removing Faculty. Together, they demonstrate how faculty were excluded from decisions to declare financial exigency or undertake restructuring, denied meaningful roles in enacting changes once exigency or restructuring had been announced, were targeted for removal in violation of tenure rights, and were denied academic due process.