We are writing to express concern about recent practices regarding the treatment of “temporary” lecturers as well as hiring practices designed to replace “temporary” lines with permanent ones. Existing processes are harmful both to current UW faculty and to potential new hires. We wish to address the following issues:

• Multiple competitive searches have been canceled this year on the grounds that the applicant pools were insufficient to ensure diversity among applicants. At UW Tacoma, a search for a lecturer in technical communication receiving approximately 30 applications was canceled for this reason. The criteria for canceling searches on these grounds, however, are opaque and apparently inconsistent: another search at UW Tacoma was allowed to proceed to completion despite receiving approximately 30 applications and despite the search committee’s reservations concerning the diversity of the pool.

• The administration’s inconsistent, ad-hoc handling of these searches is a disservice both to creating real diversity and equity in UW’s faculty hiring and retention practices and to improving conditions for existing contingent faculty. Moreover, it creates a false dichotomy between advancing equity and creating job security for lecturers, leading to unnecessary division among faculty who are interested in addressing both issues.

• UW’s lack of clear guidelines on what constitutes diversity puts an unnecessary burden on search committees and leads to late search cancellations. It also can pit search committees against administrators and—in some cases—allow administrators to go against committee decisions that would have advanced diversity and equity, at the expense of the most qualified candidates from underrepresented communities. If consistent guidelines existed, UW would be better at hiring and retaining these faculty.

• Canceling searches also means that “temporary” lecturers in their third full-time year at the UW lose the opportunity to apply competitively for longer-term positions as internal candidates, despite their track record of contributing to the university’s mission through their teaching and service. Moreover, units that are counting on competitive hires to cover future teaching loads must resort to less-secure, worse-compensated part-time positions to fill curricular gaps. In some cases, experienced and respected “temporary” lecturers have been converted to part-time lecturers teaching the same courses for less payment and with less job security.

Therefore, we, the undersigned faculty from multiple UW campuses, write to demand that the university take the following actions:

• Develop clear, explicit guidelines for diversity expectations in searches and the conditions under which a search should be canceled due to concerns about diversity. These guidelines should be developed in concert with faculty of all ranks, they should be made available to faculty and administrators in all units, and they should be applied consistently and transparently. These guidelines should include criteria for measuring pool diversity and an early-period audit that could potentially lead to a more diverse pool if the current one does not meet the criteria. While it is essential that the UW implement hiring practices to diversify our faculty, those practices must be principled and consistent, not ad hoc judgments by administrators.

• Revisit and reform the three-year policy for “temporary” lecturers. Reforms should include A) a clear mandate, not subject to administrators’ discretion, to replace expiring “temporary” lines with permanent ones through competitive searches, B) a commitment to see those searches through to completion whenever possible, consistently with the criteria called for by point 1, above, and C) a one-year extension to the three-year limit in the event that a search to replace an expiring “temporary” line does not occur in the third year.

• Develop clear, explicit guidelines for evaluating internal candidates. These guidelines should be fair to not only external but also internal candidates, and they should encourage search committees to prioritize experience “on the ground” at the UW. This does not need to be at the expense of diversity or equity measurements.

• Replace the “temporary” label for lecturers with the job title visiting lecturer and pay visiting lecturers a salary commensurate with their permanent counterparts. “Temporary” is a stone’s throw from “disposable” or “replaceable,” and the language faculty use to refer to their colleagues matters. Moreover, visiting assistant professors are compensated comparably to their permanent counterparts; there is no reason for the UW not to do the same for its lecturers.

The University of Washington simply could not function without lecturers. Faculty and students know this; it is time for administrators to acknowledge this truth and treat lecturers with the respect they have earned.

Sincerely,