Feb 3, 2004

HAS TENURE BEEN ELIMINATED?

by Liberty and Power

I just wrote a long post in response to Charles Nuckolls' piece,"Bye-bye to tenure." (I've been remiss, in fact, in not acknowledging Charles' previous posts about academia, along with King Banaian's.)

I can see that I must resist the temptation to type my thoughts into a cgi without backup, for my entire post has vanished into the ozone, and I don't have time to reconstitute it today.

I assume, though, that Charles is not referring to legislative enactments that abolish tenure at state universities. Some of these have been introduced in state legislatures (including South Carolina's), but I know of none that have passed.

So what could Charles be referring to?

(1)"Post-tenure review" procedures? (We have those in South Carolina now... and 30 states sounds about right.)

(2) Arbitrary firings of tenured professors, often done in the teeth of institutional rules? (These happen occasionally.)

(3) The longer-term erosion of the system by hiring more and more Instructors and Lecturers who will never be eligible for tenure?

There's lots to talk about here, but first we need to know what our topic is.