Tenure is more than simply under threat. It has already been eliminated, in all but name, in more than thirty states. Will faculties who still have tenure wake up to their potential loss, or will they, like faculties elsewhere, remain the docile and compliant wage-laborers their"administrators" want them to be?

Alabama, where I am, still protects tenure, but its days are surely numbered. The surrounding states all got rid of it some years ago, as administrators tried to pander to"elected officials" in the state house and beef up their standards of"accountability." The current chancellor of the Alabama System,"Mack" Portera, presided over the elimination of tenure in Mississippi when he was University President there. The same is true of Mr. Witt, currently president of U of Alabama: he raised no voice of protest when Texas gutted its tenure provisions a few years ago.

But we all know where all the beefing up went, do we not? Into increasing the ranks of the administrators, of course, and into providing them with hefty"executive" salaries.

But faculties remain as they have been for years: timid and anxious to please their masters. Will they ever wake up?

Not until their heads reach the chopping blocks -- but if you ask me, I consider that the optimistic scenario.

Jonathan Dresner - 2/3/2004

OK, I'll bite. I certainly haven't noticed the tenure-elimination wave, and I'm pretty sensitive about these things, so I have to ask what, exactly, you are talking about? I certainly have seen the explosion of administrators, and the deprofessionalization of teaching through "casual" adjuncts, both of which are corrosive in their own way. And I've seen lots of calls for reexamination of tenure, particularly periodic competency reviews to ensure that tenured faculty don't continue to devolve into disconnected and unproductive salary sinks.

But I'm an untenured employee at a state institution, and I'm pretty sure I'd notice if there were any buzz whatsoever about substantial tenure reform enactments. What have I missed?