Can there be academic freedom without tenure? 

YES
Pauline C. Phar
But academic freedom is not risk-gree for anyone 

Tenure protects faculty from the risk of arbitrary sanction or dismissal. But to say that lack of tenure equates to lack of academic freedom is to grossly overstate the case.
Consider Suffolk County Community College, whose faculty is about 30 percent full-time, 70 percent adjunct. From the inception of the Faculty Association in 1970, academic freedom for ALL its members, regardless of status, has been incorporated in its contracts through the AAUP Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom. In addition, the protection of due process for all faculty has been negotiated. Adjunct faculty are placed on a seniority list, from which they may not be dropped without a grievance process. They can be promoted from Adjunct Instructor to Adjunct Professor through peer evaluations. They are included in departmental decisions on curriculum, instructional materials and student performance. They receive financial support for professional development. This union backing has created a climate where adjuncts feel less vulnerable and more valued as professionals.
Last October the FA and the college co-sponsored an Academic Freedom Forum. Here, we addressed the risks nontenured faculty take when they attempt something controversial. Tom Breeden, president of the Guild of Administrative Officers, recommended that nontenured faculty do a risk-benefit analysis to consider the worth of making the challenge. I believe even tenured faculty should do this analysis. Risk is not something that we should necessarily be protected against. Academic integrity demands taking risks when truth requires them. As an adjunct, I am willing to fight through my union to preserve my academic freedom, even without tenure.
One problem is that academic freedom has been conflated with economic security. Some adjuncts have independence because they are retired teachers or moonlighters; others teach for the joy of teaching or for part-time work; still others are on the road to an elusive full-time position. All would like to see equal pay and benefits for equal work, but that is not to say we have no academic freedom. We have worked for it with our tenured colleagues.

Pauline C. Pharr is an adjunct associate professor of ESL at Suffolk County Community College and a member of the executive council of the Faculty Association/AFT.

NO
Kirsten Herold
The adjunct's destiny depends on student opinion

We don't know what a world without tenure would look like. However, we have ample experience with a world where up to 70 percent of student credit hours are taught by instructors not on the tenure track. Most university administrators would avow that "sure, we believe in academic freedom for all." However, the realities of employing faculty on short-term contracts inevitably mean that they have considerably less academic freedom than their counterparts in the tenure-track system.
Here at the Lecturers' Employee Organization at the University of Michigan, we have seen many examples of the harm done to academic freedom due to the reliance on adjunct faculty. Our contract states that "the full rights of academic freedom ... will extend to [nontenure-track faculty] no less than they extend to other instructional faculty at the University," When an adjunct is appointed for one course and one semester at a time, there is little incentive for the institution to be loyal to that person-another freshly minted Ph.D. or recently laid-off auto industry executive is always in the wings, eager to accept employment. Moreover, hiring decisions often are made by one person alone, and the faculty member has no recourse for appeal.
Thus department chairs always take the path of least resistance; as a result, the adjunct's employment is highly dependent on student opinion-apparently, the consumer is always right.
That mindset gives chairs an easy out: At the first sign of trouble, we have seen chairs replace the instructor without bothering to determine whether that trouble is, in fact, real or trumped up. Without the protection of tenure, instructors are vulnerable.
Of course it doesn't have to be that way. Multiple-year, full-time appointments for adjunct faculty can hopefully create a greater sense of obligation on the part of the employer, so that one student complaint does not doom the employee.
Still, although long-term, full-time appointments and a collective bargaining agreement can do much to ease the pressures on academic freedom for contingent faculty, a high reliance on nontenure-track faculty clearly jeopardizes academic freedom.

Kirsten Herold is a lecturer in the English Department and is vice president of the Lecturers' Employee Organization/AFT at the University of Michigan.