To the editor:

One can only hope that Kansas University administrators read carefully the current edition of “Academe,” the official publication of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). It is devoted to the topic of “contingent” faculty, the long-suffering, overworked, overlooked and underpaid lecturers who are doing more and more of the undergraduate teaching at American universities.

This is the lead-in of the first article, which is titled “The Centrality of Contingent Faculty to Academe’s Future”: “The future of the academic profession is connected to the working conditions of contingent faculty. So is the academy’s future.”

The thrust of this article is the need to safeguard the academic freedom of these faculty, many of whom are part-time. Other articles in this edition take up other issues affecting this important constituency of our teaching force. There is much to be learned here, much to be implemented.

Elizabeth C. Banks,
Lawrence