In this article, the authors provide a description of the academic climate in New Mexico. Like many other places in the world today, New Mexico is trying to find an identity in an environment that the authors label "increasingly privatized, corporatized, and militarized." New Mexico's higher education salaries are lower than those in…

Asserts that academic freedom concerns much more than tenure; for adjuncts and other contingent faculty labor conditions significantly restrict academic freedom in its deepest and most practical sense: the freedom to provide and facilitate the best possible education for students. (EV)

Over the past few decades, the increase in contingent appointments--part- and full-time positions off the tenure track--has been dramatic. As of 2001, the most recent year for which U.S. Department of Education data are available, 44.5 percent of faculty appointments were part time. According to "Assessing the Silent Revolution: How Changing…

The American Association of University Professors statement concerns policies and practices that open senior academic appointments to persons with reduced workloads and salaries without loss of status. (MSE)

Suggests that although the assault on tenure championed by the American Association for Higher Education's New Pathways Project has failed, there are more serious threats to tenure in the development of systems of "post-tenure review," and in the increased the use of "contingent," or part-time and non-tenure-track full-time,…

When a large group of nontenured part-time English department faculty were summarily dismissed, a significant segment of the English curriculum was left largely unattended, and other problems arose throughout the institution. (MSE)

The trend toward extending nontenured faculty members' probationary periods beyond the traditional 6 years, is discussed, along with problems faced by faculty at the time of nonrenewal, implications for academic careers, and the issue of multiple standards for faculty evaluation within an institution. (MSE)

New Mexico State University addressed the trend toward employing non-tenure-track faculty (NTTs) by capping the proportion of NTTs; acceptance of a two-tiered faculty with differentiated responsibilities; extension of professional rights to NTTs; full and regular NTT evaluation, participation in merit pay, and promotion opportunities; and…