Show Your Support for Adjunct Faculty Members

Modern Language Association Action for Allies Dear Colleagues, I hope by now you’ve heard about National Adjunct Walkout Day (NAWD). This event, scheduled for 25 February, [was] organized by adjuncts on a campus-by-campus basis. The MLA Executive Council and the Committee on Contingent Labor in the Profession are conducting an MLA Action for Allies event in conjunction with NAWD.*  We call on all faculty members and administrators to participate in the MLA action by doing the following four things:  Sign up as an ally. • Complete the series of questions the MLA has created as a tool for evaluating the use of contingent faculty members in your department. • Gather the members of your department—full-time and part-time; tenure-track and adjunct—for a meeting at which you might discuss the answers you gave to the evaluative questions and review the MLA’s resources on the academic workforce.  • Report what you learned about the situation on your campus and tell the MLA how it can help departments make progress on action issues on our campuses and in the MLA. Visit the MLA Action for Allies site. Members of the Executive Council and the Committee on Contingent Labor in the Profession, past presidents, and department chairs have already begun signing up. We hope that you will join them in showing your support. Cordially, Rosemary G. Feal, Executive Director * The MLA supports the aims of efforts such as National Adjunct Walkout Day and National Adjunct Action Week with the proviso that the MLA does not support, encourage, or condone violating state laws, such as New York State’s Taylor Law (the Public Employees Fair Employment Act).