The alarming stories from adjunct faculty, who now comprise a majority of higher-education teachers nationally, share troubling commonalities. The frustrations are financial, personal, and professional. In decades past, most adjunct faculty worked full-time outside of academe and taught an occasional course based on a particular expertise or practical experience; today, however, with a sharp decline in the number of tenure-track positions, an increasing number of adjuncts seek to earn a living through teaching. Joining the growing ranks of adjuncts are other contingent teachers, including one-year or multi-term faculty and post-docs. According to the American Association of University Professors, "non-tenure track positions now account for 68 percent of all faculty appointments in American higher education," a figure that does not take into account the teaching done by graduate students. While reliance on non-tenure-track faculty is highest at community colleges, this shift toward contingency is also seen at public and private four-year colleges, research universities, and liberal arts colleges. In this article, the author talks about the politics of contingent academic labor. (Contains 9 endnotes.)