by Keith Hoeller

For nearly twenty years, I have devoted my life to achieving equality for adjunct faculty throughout the nation. I have published twenty opinion articles in newspapers around the country; I have been quoted in scores of newspaper articles; I have drafted two dozen bills for the Washington state legislature, including one which gave all adjuncts in our community colleges pro-rated sick leave for the very first time; I have initiated two successful class action lawsuits, which resulted in $25 million in payments to thousands of adjuncts and helped thousands more qualify for health and retirement benefits for the very first time; I have organized three different adjunct organizations; I have served on the AAUP’s national Committee on Contingent Faculty and the Profession; and I was the first adjunct to ever win the AAUP’s Georgina M. Smith Award “in recognition of Exceptional Leadership in Improving the Status of Women and in Advancing Academic Collective Bargaining.”

Given my accomplishments, you would think that union leaders–who all claim to share my goals of adjunct equality–would be supportive of my activism, eager to hear my views, and willing to work with me to dismantle our nation’s separate but unequal academic labor system. Unfortunately, the leaders of the American Federation of Teachers Washington, and the Washington Education Association, who represent adjuncts in the community colleges where I teach, long ago declared me to be “Public Enemy No. 1.”

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