Why research professors? Part 1

I'm in a bit of a reactive mood. Over on my more public-oriented blog, I recently posted about one of the big reason we should be suspicious about US allegations against Syria. Here, though, I want to react to an article from Inside Higher Ed, that suggested adjuncts teach better than tenure-line faculty. (The article was passed on by my collaborator, Nicholas Rowland, through the organizational theory blog he is part of, and the original can be found here.) Alright, enough of a lead-in...

Some adjuncts certainly teach better than most tenure-line faculty members, but any research into who is better overall needs to be viewed with suspicion due to two potentially big sources of confusion. The first source of confusion is caused by the way adjuncting has shifted from a part-time job that is a totally legitimate, but tiny, part of most colleges' teaching rosters, to a full-time job that is a possibly illegitimate, and large, part of many colleges' teaching rosters. That is an issue for later discussion. The second source of confusion is that few people seem to understand why we might want to have researchers in teaching roles. This is the confusion I want to talk about, though it is too big to tackle in a single post, so I will only talk about it in the context of the recent article.

Why Academic Freedom? Why Tenure? - E. C. Tolman

In recent years there has been a concerted attack, in the US at least, on academic freedom and tenure. From an administrative point of view, the target seems primarily to be tenure (as many administrators see it as an impediment to their power); while from a political point of view, the target seems primarily to be academic freedom (as many seek to censure discourse in all areas of society, and find it particularly difficult to do so in the academe). In my opinion, the academe is so vulnerable to these attacks because we have, as a group, failed to articulate the social importance of these mechanisms. Given that one might presume we were educators of some sort, and that we had a role in educating virtually all administrators and members of the government, this is a striking failure. I have my own thoughts on how best to articulate the importance of these ideas, but will save them for another time. At the moment I want to note a brilliant defense of  academic freedom and tenure delivered by Edward Chase Tolman.