Academic freedom and tenure is a highly complex, interactive issue. Tenure has been strongly debated, with especially strong negative polemics in recent years. Tenure is considered by many to be an ‘unnecessary burden on higher education’. The role of academic tenure primarily guarantees the right to academic freedom by protecting all those involved in producing and teaching knowledge (i.e. researchers and professors); enabling them to go against prevailing orthodoxy of thinking, to openly disagree with any authorities, and to spend time on less fashionable issues.

In a Theme Section on global university rankings, published in 2013/2014 in ESEP, several articles discuss the marketization of higher education. This phenomenon seems to be in parallel with a decrease in tenured positions and the presence of strong voices in favor of cheaper, more flexible and insecure work contracts. The employment shift from predominantly full-time, permanent or contract positions to higher numbers of casual, precarious positions is strongly impinging on academic freedom and the foundations of the modern university as we know it.

This Theme Section aims to cast light on hot, diverse issues related to academic freedom and tenure through the views and thoughts of stakeholders (i.e. scientists from different countries and disciplines, including young scientists, and university administrators). These issues encompass theoretical aspects of tenure, economics of tenure, behavior/performance/productivity of tenured faculty, tenure-track and non-tenured faculty, and the effect of marketization of education on tenure policies.

Contributions were originally published online as unpaginated articles and were assigned page numbers upon completion of the Theme Section.