The Faculty With the Least Protection Are Most at Risk

One in seven faculty members reported facing discipline, or the threat of it, for their teaching, research, or off-campus speech, according to a 2024 survey of more than 6,200 faculty at 55 colleges and universities. It’s a chilling figure that now collides with an accelerating wave of layoffs and restructuring across higher education.

Applied nationally, the 14 percent rate from the survey, conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), would translate into tens of thousands of faculty. The same survey found 40 percent worry about damaging their reputations over a misunderstood comment, and 35 percent admit to toning down their written work.

A companion FIRE report, “Sanctioned Scholars,” published in late October 2025, surveyed scholars actually targeted for discipline between 2020 and 2024. About 94 percent described the experience as negative. That survey’s window closed before a fresh round of sanctions tied to the fall 2025 killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk — a reminder the climate has continued to tighten.

The two trends are converging on the same population: contingent faculty, who are simultaneously the least protected from speech scrutiny and the most exposed to the budget axe. Contingent faculty are simultaneously the group least equipped to weather speech scrutiny and the group most likely to be shown the door when budgets tighten, a workforce reshaping around whoever has the least power to object.

Least Protected, First Cut

A non-tenure-track instructor weighing whether to assign a controversial text is not making the same bet a tenured full professor is. One has an appointment that may not be renewed next semester; the other, in most cases, does not.

“The challenge with protecting speech and expression for contingent faculty is that even if institutional policies or collective bargaining agreements say they respect the academic freedom of non-tenure track faculty, contracts typically expire annually and clinical faculty have to be reappointed each year,” says Dr. Frank Fernandez, an associate professor of educational leadership and policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “We don’t really see institutions say they don’t believe contingent faculty deserve academic freedom, but, in practice, they can easily choose not to reappoint a faculty member who says something controversial and not have to justify why.”

Dr. Nolan Cabrera, a professor of educational policy studies and practice at the University of Arizona, frames the vulnerability similarly, adding that tenure no longer offers what it once did.

“Contingent faculty always have been at greater risk for exercising academic freedom as they tend not to have the institutional protection tenure offers,” he says. “That said, even tenured faculty, especially those conducting DEI-related work, are under increased scrutiny and attack, and tenure is not as strong a protection as it once was.”

Dr. Brendan Cantwell, a professor of higher, adult, and lifelong education at Michigan State University, agrees that protections track appointment type, but stressed they are thinning across the board.

“Grievance procedures differ from campus to campus, but in general, tenured and to a lesser extent tenure-track faculty enjoy stronger protections than their non-tenured counterparts,” he says.

“Tenure exists partly to ensure academic freedom, and faculty without tenure protections generally enjoy less freedom because they can be dismissed or otherwise punished more easily for their speech. In many states tenure protections are being weakened and academic freedom is being eroded for all faculty.”

A Shrinking Workforce

One industry tracker counted more than 9,000 positions eliminated across American higher education in 2025 alone, with hundreds more announced monthly into 2026. USC absorbed a $251 million deficit and laid off more than 1,000 employees since mid-2025; the University of Maryland cut 150 positions amid a hiring freeze; Duke University took 599 early retirements and warned of layoffs to follow; the Illinois Institute of Technology eliminated roughly 160 positions after enrollment fell more than 15 percent in a year.

Higher education researcher Bryan Alexander, who has tracked closures through 2025, estimates the layoffs he documented affected more than 1,200 people — not a spreadsheet line, he notes, but colleagues and communities. Contributing causes include enrollment decline, federal research cuts, visa restrictions on international students, and legislative pressure to eliminate DEI offices.

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has warned that institutions under financial strain have historically used crises to bypass shared governance and replace tenured faculty with cheaper contingent labor — a pattern that pre-dates the current downturn. Contingent appointments made up roughly two-thirds of all faculty positions by 2021, up from under half in 1987.

Disproportionate Impact

The workforce most exposed to restructuring is also the one least protected by tenure, and women and faculty of color are disproportionately represented among contingent ranks. AAUP’s Fall 2023 data snapshot, drawn from federal IPEDS figures, found women and underrepresented minorities are consistently less likely to hold tenured or tenure-track appointments, and more likely to hold the contingent positions easiest to eliminate. Just over half of full-time women faculty held tenured or tenure-track positions in 2023, versus 62 percent of men; Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous faculty numbers thin further at every rank, falling to roughly 9 percent of full professors.

Politics as a Driver

Whether politically unpopular departments — ethnic studies, gender studies, Middle East studies —are cut at disproportionate rates is a question that draws less consensus.

“Many states have historically had policies that prevent universities from cutting tenured faculty lines unless their academic departments are in extreme financial exigency. We’re seeing states change those policies to allow them to close departments with softer language that’s something like, ‘if they don’t align with the strategic priorities of the university,’” says Fernandez. “That creates a chilling effect on even tenured faculty in areas that aren’t politically popular right now.”

Cabrera points to Texas as an unambiguous case of states eliminating programs that focus on diversity.

“Of course there is evidence. Texas is a perfect example of this,” he said. “They do not try to hide it. The state legislators want to cut everything regarding DEI they can — including offices, departments, initiatives.”

But Cantwell says observers should be cautious about treating the pattern as proven.

“It is true these departments are often targeted by state and federal government, such as the deal Columbia University struck with the Trump administration,” he says. “State laws that restrict what can be taught in the general education curriculum, and that regulate the instruction of so-called divisive topics, also would seem to put these departments under disproportionate scrutiny. That said, I don’t know of any empirical evidence that demonstrates conclusively that these departments are being closed at rates higher than other fields when taking into account enrollment and other financial measures. It’s an empirical question that, to my knowledge, has not been answered.”

Cases like the University of North Texas deciding to eliminate more than 70 programs — including linguistics, women’s and gender studies, LGBTQ studies, Mexican American studies, Africana studies, Asian studies, dance, geology, and special education — and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s decision to cut its education administration doctoral program, which featured a heavy equity focus and featured several faculty members who were prominent in campus DEI advocacy, were both cited as being cut for budgetary reasons. Fernandez says blaming budget shortfalls is disingenuous.

Targeting the Diversity Office

Asked what happens to DEI-adjacent positions once formal offices are eliminated, Cabrera says the roles rarely survive under another name.

“Generally, when DEI offices are cut, they are cut and not reabsorbed elsewhere,” he says.

Cantwell offers a more mixed picture.

“Some of the people in DEI-coded roles have been fired, others have been moved into new roles, and in some cases titles have been changed but the work remains much the same,” he says. Unions have generally opposed the restructuring, he continues, adding, “The AAUP has been party to several lawsuits challenging Trump administration directives”— but have historically paid less attention to academic-freedom questions involving staff, since “academic freedom standards did not historically include staff jobs.”

Limiting Due Process

On whether self-censorship is measurably suppressing faculty speech, Fernandez acknowledges the data is limited.

“Self-censorship is so hard to measure,” he says, pointing instead to a counterweight — court decisions and settlements requiring universities to reinstate, and in some cases pay, faculty dismissed too hastily after the Kirk killing.

“When dismissed faculty do take legal action because institutions violate their due process and First Amendment rights, those claims are taken very seriously,” he says. Contingent faculty on annual contracts, whose non-renewal requires no stated justification, have far less recourse to that backstop.

Cabrera says he hasn’t seen a pattern of contingent faculty growing more reluctant to file grievances over non-renewal.

“Once a non-renewal occurs, what else do the contingent faculty member have to lose if they file a grievance?” he asks. What he has heard consistently is broader anxiety over self-censorship itself. “There is a tension, because if we self-censor, authoritarianism wins. However, if we speak freely, we put ourselves, our families, and our careers at risk.”

None of this suggests institutions with genuine fiscal shortfalls have easy alternatives. But “who gets cut and who gets hired back” is no longer a budget question alone; it is a test of whether an institution’s stated commitments to academic freedom and workforce diversity survive contact with a balance sheet, and whether the faculty most likely to self-censor are also the faculty most likely to lose their jobs.

This story originally ran in The EDU Ledger's September 3, 2026 edition. Subscribe here for full access.