The ‘Right Not to Work’ – Inside Higher Ed
Faculty members concerned about health and safety want a say in the conditions under which they’ll be working if they are expected to teach in person next fall.
As colleges and universities agonize over whether students will return in the fall, either to campus or online, they’re making a big assumption: that faculty members will show up to teach.
The expectation isn’t ill founded. Faculty jobs, especially the good ones, were hard to come by even before hundreds of institutions announced pandemic-related hiring freezes. No one wants to be out of a job right now. But no one wants to get sick, either.
Teaching online for another semester is so far outside many professors’ original job descriptions that it is nearly as unpalatable, to some, as being shut in a room with students. Even so, many professors say they’d prefer a remote term, or even a delayed academic year, to teaching face-to-face again too soon.
“So far, no one has really talked about protecting the faculty,” said Alan Czyzewski, a professor of accounting at Indiana State University who is over 60 and statistically at a greater risk of falling ill with COVID-19 than many of his students and some of his colleagues.