Adjunct Revolt/ Tenure Denial due to Maternity & Family Leave

Just trying to keep up with relevant (to me!) higher education online news this week.

First, the extremely personal issue of adjunct faculty and how some adjuncts, dubbed 'poor professors' in the title of this Atlantic article, are trying to fight back. Sigh... It's always very disheartening to read about "my life" in these essays. I like what one commenter said -- that articles discussing adjuncts don't point out a serious problem: the fact that the majority of contingent labor is composed of women, many of them mothers. And that's a good "bridge" into today's article.

This morning a friend linked to the case of the female Professor who is suing UPenn (where my husband did two postdocs) for denying her tenure based on her family-related leaves in Inside Higher-Ed's "Of Motherhood and Tenure." Although my experience is different because I don't have a tenure-track position, I can relate to the essay. I almost faced troubles as a graduate student when I first got pregnant, but thankfully I was still allowed to teach. I shared the whole story in my personal essay "Of Babies and Academic Milestones" which did not become part of the collection Mama Ph.D.