My research explores historical and modern issues involving faculty work and academic administration. My current focus is on the development and experience of academic freedom and tenure, emphasizing the formation of the concepts during the interwar period. This was the crucial, yet understudied, period during which modern higher educational structures and patterns were established, including those involving faculty freedoms and protections. This work explores faculty unionization and professionalization, politically motivated dismissals and attacks, and the ability of academic administrators to foster or forestall academic freedom. Importantly, I look beyond the American Association of University Professors, the now-dominant group upon which almost all considerations center, and consider the American Federation of Teachers, the Progressive Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, among others. I argue that it is only through the exploration of the competition between and collaboration among these groups that we can understand the development of modern policies and concepts.

While these large national pieces are crucial, they are only part of the story. Through case studies of historical situations and interviews with current and former faculty members, I am examining how individual educators experience academic freedom and its loss. These studies show how large national issues are not always the ones that are most important on the campus level and demonstrate the issues of identity and self that can become tied to professorial freedoms. In doing so, these pieces inform modern considerations of academic freedom, tenure, and faculty work life.

My broader scholarly interests also include diversity in higher education and college student development.