Part-time Faculty Association at Columbia College Chicago

Section V of the contract states that part-time faculty are entitled to the same academic freedom as fulltime faculty. The College’s definition of academic freedom rights is in the Faculty Handbook (LINK).

Academic freedom is not always easy to define or agree upon, as anyone who reads higher education publications will soon discover (check Inside Higher Ed, for example).  For part-time and other contingent faculty without tenure, there are even more complicated considerations.  The ease of firing someone with a semester-to-semester or year-to year contract, for instance, arguably creates a strong deterrent to a faculty member's speaking out on controversial issues or feeling free to take scholarly and teaching risks.