The Weaponization of Student Evaluations of Teaching: Bullying and the Undermining of Academic Freedom

Abstract:

Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) can be weaponized to justify undermining academic freedom and subjecting untenured and contingent faculty to surveillance and bullying. I use an autobiographical case study of my experience of the tenure process at a small liberal arts college to illustrate how SETs can enable these processes. SETs have the power they do, in part, because of an increasingly precarious academic job market and because SETs can be deployed to make forms of bullying appear to be based on data. Moreover, SETs are a particularly adaptable weapon because the data can be interpreted to justify a range of positions. As such, SETs can be wielded to exacerbate the asymmetrical character of the relations of power that untenured and contingent faculty experience and to counter diversification, interdisciplinarity, and other important transformations taking place in higher education.

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