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Monday, October 16, 2023
In Defense of Tenure
Mitch Daniels – former president of Purdue University, as well as former Indiana governor – has called for an end to the tenure system in higher education. My new column in The Hill explains why he is wrong. Here is the gist:
A shortsighted idea to end faculty tenure puts education last
BY STEVEN LUBET, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 10/16/23
Mitch Daniels waited until he retired as president of Purdue University to suggest that state legislatures ought to consider abolishing faculty tenure systems.
While Daniels is correct that colleges and universities are facing “rising skepticism,” much of it thanks to political attacks from his fellow Republicans, he is wrong to believe that it can be addressed by dismissing the most experienced teachers and researchers.
A stable intellectual infrastructure is precisely what the tenure system provides to higher education, where the mission includes the preservation and transmission of knowledge. Daniels never mentions stability, scholarship, research or even instruction in his survey of university goals. It is all about management and cost control. Those are important objectives, but Daniels ignores the meaningful role that tenure plays in developing and maintaining an academic workforce.
Even more important is the protection that tenure provides for the expression of unpopular or controversial ideas. At Minnesota’s Hamline University, for example, a single student complained when her art history teacher showed a slide of a 14th century Persian painting with an image of the Prophet Mohammed.
Because the instructor was in a non-tenure eligible position, the Hamline administration was able to rescind the contract she had been offered for the following semester, without notice or due process.
A tenured professor would have been entitled to a hearing and appeal, with the burden on the administration to show cause for termination. In fact, the instructor had adhered to all professional standards, which she easily could have established if given the opportunity. As an untenured teacher, however, she had no such rights, and thus no academic freedom.
The piece says much more about the economics of the tenure system, with far less impact on university finances than Daniels claims.
You can read it at The Hill
Comments are open and will be monitored.
Posted by Steve Lubet on October 16, 2023 at 12:13 PM | Permalink
Comments
Could we say that academics have freedom, but so do taxpayers, as represented by elected officials? Perhaps taxpayers could exercise their freedom not to fund profs in some circumstances?
Posted by: AnotherView | Oct 18, 2023 9:46:12 PM
“No reason was ever offered, and no hearing or other proceeding was even held, but I strongly suspect that a major reason was my outspoken objection to being forced to teach in a classroom at a time when people with my risk factors were dying, and my advice to other professors about how to sue if it happened to them.”
One would think, based upon a risk/benefit analysis, that regardless of tenure, if the purpose of the lockdown was to protect the most vulnerable from harm, the most vulnerable would be encouraged to isolate and every effort would have been made to make sure they received adequate care and protection during their time of isolation.
Professor Banzhalf, did you have the opportunity to instruct your class remote?
Posted by: N.D. | Oct 18, 2023 10:32:11 AM
Tenure is not the right to protect a non existent right to teach fallacy.
“The damage to higher education is essentially a domino and democracy itself is at the end of this line of dominoes.”
The damage to higher education essentially becomes a domino when you substitute a fallacy for an element of Truth, for Truth begets True, while error begets error. Truth is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact, and there is nothing redeeming or valuable about an education grounded in fallacy.
Only human persons can have the desire and the ability to govern themselves, because from the moment of conception, regardless of ancestry, every human person is Created in The Image And Likeness Of God, with an Intellect and a Will, equal in Dignity, while being complementary as a beloved son or daughter, Willed by God, worthy of Redemption, Called to live our lives in Loving relationships in communion with The Ordered Communion Of Perfect Love, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity.
Although there may be some who will claim that Academic Freedom is the freedom to deny that God exists despite the overwhelming evidence for the existence of God, Academic Freedom cannot make the claim that it is possible for a human person to conceive a beloved son or daughter who is not, in essence, a human person, regardless if one is living in a Democracy, a Republic, or a tyrannical form of government, because there exists absolutely no evidence for the existence of a beloved son or daughter of a human person who is not wholly, a human person.
From the moment of conception, a unique human person exists, separate from its mother. God Created a mother’s womb to protect, shelter, and nourish us during the most delicate stage of our development.
Academic Freedom is not the freedom to teach nonsense because there is nothing academic about nonsense.
In fact, teaching nonsense is a misrepresentation of fact, and there is nothing redeeming or valuable about fallacy although fallacy can often serve to illuminate that which is true.
“It is now becoming clear that the very notion of being—of what being human really means—is being called into question.
When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defense of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.” – Pope Benedict’s Christmas Address 2012
Our Government was formed to protect and secure The Sanctity Of Human Life, and whenever we have rendered onto Caesar, what belongs to God, we have suffered individually and as a Nation.
If we desire “to return to order, we must return to God”, and thus our Judeo-Christian Principles for anything else is a non sequitur.
First Principles Matter.
Godspeed!
Posted by: N.D. | Oct 17, 2023 1:43:59 PM
Wow, a right winger who hates tenure? That's so out of character! I bet that'll carry a lot of weight with the 5 or 6 people on the planet who care what Mitch Daniels has to say on any given topic. Most people's reactions would be more along the lines of "Who?" or "Mitch Daniels is still alive?"
-kd
Posted by: kotodama | Oct 16, 2023 7:51:12 PM
The unending stream of articles as to why tenure should or should not be abolished misses the reality that once you get beyond the top 50 or so universities, tenure is withering away via attrition. I'm sympathetic to arguments made by conservatives and moderates that college faculties have become increasingly hostile to people even with mainstream liberal views, much less further right (think DEI statements required from potential hires), but killing tenure will not solve this.
Posted by: Paul D | Oct 16, 2023 4:32:01 PM
I seldom see another criticism of dropping tenure which would have negatively impacted on my decision to teach in a law school and would have been meaningful to many I know. I, like a number of law professors who taught in the commercial segment of the curriculum, was well positioned to make many times more money in the practice of law. I was a tax lawyer at Cravath and would never have stepped off the curb to enter teaching had tenure not been available. At the time, I had no illusions that I was going to be made a partner at Cravath, however I was often contacted by headhunters who were looking for a senior tax associate because they had a need at the partnership level that could not be met internally. My situation was not unique for a number of compatriots with skills and experience In demand at big money firms. Still, I and my wife sought a less hectic life style in a college town. We agreed that I would give teaching a 3-5 year trial and if I did not like it, I would get back in touch with headhunters. I chose the 3-5 year trial period because I thought that beyond that my skills would lose appeal to potential employers. Needless to say, absent tenure, I never would have considered teaching as a career.
I think that the same factors that were critical to me would be critical to most who were seeking positions in many fields beyond social science and liberal arts. For example, stem subjects as well as business subjects attract people who diminish their career earning potential by entering teaching. I believe that much of the hysteria about tenure is disingenuous and is triggered by teachers whose liberal views are politically unpalatable to conservatives.
Posted by: Bill Turnier | Oct 16, 2023 4:15:14 PM
However, tenure doesn’t always result in the protection it is supposed to offer from arbitrary adverse action.
I had tenure at George Washington University [GWU] for some 50 years, yet I received notice by email that I would not be teaching the Fall following the outbreak of the pandemic, and that my salary was being cut off.
No reason was ever offered, and no hearing or other proceeding was even held, but I strongly suspect that a major reason was my outspoken objection to being forced to teach in a classroom at a time when people with my risk factors were dying, and my advice to other professors about how to sue if it happened to them. SEE:
GWU Slammed by AAUP For Violating Tenure During Pandemic;
A Senior Tenured Professor Was Suspended Without “Cause” or a Hearing
https://www.valuewalk.com/aaup-slams-gwu-violating-tenure-during-pandemic/
The American Association of University Professors [AAUP] has slammed the George Washington University [GWU] for violating tenure during the pandemic by suspending without pay a tenured law professor without any "cause" (as required by its faculty code), and without any hearing to determine if there was any valid cause.
Public interest law professor John Banzhaf says that he may be a CANARY IN A COAL MINE, and a harbinger of what GWU and other universities might try to do in order to slash costs or to rid themselves of outspoken professors.
The AAUP, along with another major independent higher education organization, has demanded Professor Banzhaf's reinstatement, and the Department of Justice, the Office of Human Rights, the American Bar Association (which regulates law schools), and other bodies are mulling formal complaints against the university.
The AAUP has warned GWU that "A faculty member placed on involuntary unpaid leave has been suspended from his or her primary responsibilities. The AAUP regards a suspension with or without pay as a sanction second in severity only to dismissal" and "requires a university to first demonstrate adequate cause for doing so in an adjudicative proceeding before an elected faculty body. . . we urge that Professor Banzhaf either be reinstated to his teaching responsibilities immediately or afforded a procedure the basic elements of which are consistent with the above-cited standards."
This determination by the AAUP is particularly important because the standards of the two independent bodies which accredit or regulate law schools in the U.S. - the American Bar Association [ABA] and the Association of American Law Schools [AALS] - require adherence to the standards regarding tenure of the AAUP.
In its similar letter of warning to GWU, the influential Foundation for Individual Rights in Education [FIRE] wrote GWU's action amounts to "an end-run around the protections of tenure."
"FIRE echoes the AAUP’s concern about the apparent deficiency in the procedural path taken by the university’s administration . . the Faculty Code mandates that he be afforded substantial procedural protections, including a written complaint and a hearing before a committee. . . Placing a faculty member on an involuntary and unpaid leave of absence, without adequate procedural safeguards to ensure that the university’s action is appropriate, will create an end-run around the protections of tenure. . . FIRE calls on GWU to explain the basis for Banzhaf’s leave of absence and the provision of the Faculty Code authorizing that leave. If his leave of absence is not expressly justified by the Faculty Code, FIRE calls on GWU to rescind Banzhaf’s leave and restore any payments lost as a result of the leave."
END OF ARTICLE
Since that time there have been several other professors with tenure who also found that it did not protect them, so perhaps I was the Canary in the Coal Mine.
I can only hope that any other such canaries are singing as loudly as I am, since the many complaints noted above finally forced GWU to come to its senses.
Posted by: LawProf John Banzhaf | Oct 16, 2023 3:58:49 PM
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