Faculty at Metropolitan State University have started organizing around issues of tenure. They are confronting an activist board of trustees that has rewritten the faculty handbook without input or involvement from faculty. The revised handbook includes new regulations on tenure, collegiality and faculty governance and responsibilities. Faculty fear that the revised handbook could serve as a way for trustees to manipulate and eventually abolish tenure at the university.

Beyond the campus gates, faculty are working in a state where even more sinister assaults to academic freedom and institutional autonomy are occurring. In the state Legislature, Republicans recently put forth a plan to create an "Academic Bill of Rights" that would encourage--if not require--state colleges and universities to hire faculty with more conservative viewpoints. In the view of Republicans, its intent is to balance a higher education system that they view as left-leaning and intolerant of alternative viewpoints.

The Colorado Commission on Higher Education, State Senate President John Andrews and David Horowitz, the conservative leader of Students for Academic Freedom, are supporting the plan. Gov. Bill Owens has yet to take a position. The proposal is still in the planning stages and it remains unclear whether the Academic Bill of Rights will become a legislative bill.  [Lindsay Albert]

[Sept. 24, 2003]