Academic workers have increasingly faced threats to our livelihoods at UW-Whitewater and nationwide. The job security that faculty have traditionally enjoyed has eroded due to program closures, fiscal challenges, academic personnel reductions (e.g., layoffs, furloughs, and forced retirements), attempts to chip away at benefits like tenure, and curtailments of academic freedom (e.g, attacks on academic property rights and the administration of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility programs and services).

The long-standing traditions of tenure and academic freedom were designed to protect free society and prevent government overreach into academic scholarship. Advancements in knowledge and technology depend on the ability to engage in inquiry without the risk of political retribution when research and scholarship leads to inconvenient conclusions.

To address this need to protect Faculty jobs, the Faculty Layoff Policy Committee and the Full Faculty Senate approved the UWW Faculty Personnel Rules Chapter 5: Procedures Relating to Financial Emergency or Program Discontinuance Requiring Faculty Layoff and Termination. The purpose of this policy is to provide the specific procedures and timelines to be followed if a Financial Emergency or Program Discontinuance is declared that could potentially result in the layoff of tenured and/or tenure-track faculty. It provides a timeline that confines any actions to the 9-month academic year to ensure that faculty are on contract and able to engage in the process. It includes the formation of a Faculty Consultative Committee to collaborate and partner (not simply to advise) with the Chancellor in identifying strategies for dealing with financial/budgetary and programmatic/curricular needs while also seeking collaborative solutions to reduce the need for faculty layoffs. It includes a specific and comprehensive timeline to ensure transparency, active collaboration, and ongoing consultations between the faculty and the Chancellor to seek solutions to avoid the need for layoffs. Finally, it includes procedures to retrain faculty to enable them to continue to make key contributions to the campus community, along with a severance package for affected faculty if layoffs are unavoidable.

Chancellor King has not yet accepted the policy. In February 2025, Chancellor King sent a document that removes more than fifty-five of the most important procedures within the policy. Agreeing to these suggested changes would result in a watered-down version of the policy that removes transparency between the Chancellor and faculty, eliminates numerous faculty job protections, relegates the faculty to a minimal advisory role instead of a collaborative partnership role, withdraws the responsibility of the Chancellor to identify alternatives to potential layoffs, and enables declarations of Financial Emergency and Program Discontinuance to occur in the summer months when faculty are off contract, are much more vulnerable, and are less available to take action collaboratively. We cannot afford to lose the procedures and protections this layoff policy provides. The hard work of numerous faculty and the Faculty Senate to protect academic employment is important and needs to be honored by the Chancellor and administration.

If you’re not afraid, then you’re not paying attention. The threats to higher education are real. We need to stand together and fight for our colleagues and, in so doing, fight for ourselves. Our union (UW-Whitewater United) is our means to resist. We were able to fight off an attempt in 2020-2021 to close 25-50% of programs on campus through collective action, standing as one, and fighting for our friends and colleagues. Petitioning the Chancellor to accept the Faculty Senate-approved layoff policy communicates our values and our collective strength in defending our way of academic life. Find more information about our union and how to join UW-W United.