"Collective bargaining rights are a bulwark against threats to tenure and academic freedom"

Professor Cathy Wagner is a member of the English Department at Miami University. She delivered this speech at the Board of Trustees public meeting on March 3, 2023. 

Chair Schell, members of the Board, my name is Cathy Wagner and I’ve been a professor of English at Miami for 17 years. I'm serving my third term as a university senator and my second as president of Miami’s AAUP Advocacy Chapter, now organized as a union, the Faculty Alliance of Miami.

I want to congratulate my colleagues receiving tenure and promotion on their hard work. When I was pre-tenure, a single mom writing at the dining room table after putting my son to bed, I thought of tenure as a shiny prize I’d win for being a productive writer and scholar.

Once I achieved tenure, I recognized its real value. Tenure is not a gold star. Tenure exists to protect freedom in research and teaching. Freedom that is essential to the public good higher education provides: the creation and sharing of knowledge.

Now, tenure and academic freedom are under threat across the country. Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Iowa. Ohio. In an uncertain legislative context, collective bargaining rights are a bulwark against threats to tenure and academic freedom.

Miami faculty could have had that protection already. But for months now, Miami administration has been blocking our chance to vote together on forming a collective bargaining unit. 

The FAM supporters here today — faculty and librarians — are from all colleges, categories, and divisions. They stand united here with their students, facing you, the ultimate decision-makers in their workplace. That’s brave! That’s worthy of respect.

Today, you are showing respect for my tenacious and brilliant colleagues by awarding them tenure and promotion.

Will you also respect their determination, as a united supermajority of faculty, to vote together as one?  

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