Although those desirous of lifetime job security, often minus actual teaching, will resist this development, others who have long opposed institutionalized teacher tenure will give this trend a hearty thumbs up.
The daily decries the changes, opining that [Arizona's three state university's] “tenured faculty members are considered the backbone of academic programs, lending continuity to the curriculum and building connections with students.”
The paper neglects to add they are considered the “backbone,” due to the fact, that regardless of the quality of their work, once tenured, they become the privileged recipients of a lifetime employment guarantee.
Witness Ward Churchill. It was only after the University of Colorado professor was accused by three faculty committees of plagiarism, falsification and other misconduct that Churchill was given his walking papers.
At the time of the uproar surrounding his outrageous behavior, Fox News reported that an essay and a follow-up book he authored argued that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were a response to a long history of U.S. abuses. The arrogant and unapologetic Churchill said those killed in the World Trade Center collapse were “a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire” and called them “little Eichmanns,” basically deserving of their fate.
Churchill said Adolph Eichmann (a Nazi who stood trial and was executed in 1962 for savage WWII crimes against humanity) was a bureaucrat who carried out policies like the Holocaust that were planned by others but was still responsible for his own actions.
Celebrated author, Dr. Thomas Sowell, in a piece titled, “Academic Freedom”? wrote: There (were) no real grounds for firing him (Churchill) under current rules and practices-which tells you what is wrong with those rules and practices.
Max Boot has also written a masterful piece on the topic: Improve academia: Abolish tenure.
Excellent post! Tenure has long been one of the thorns in my academic side. The guarantees are splendid but the benefits provided to many deadwood professors rankle any reasonable and decent person–even beneficiaries of the system–who are honest enough to speak out. The brilliant Dr. Sowell is heroic.
Both articles (Sowell and Boot) included in this post are enlightening.
Thanks for shedding some much needed light on this issue. The teachers and their unions want nothing less than the guarantees of lifetime tenure. It is a huge scam on unsuspecting students, desirous of a real education, and their paying parents who have no clue what is going on inside those ivy covered walls.
How many of the parents of students in Churchill’s classes do you suspect had any concept of who was influencing their children and what they were being taught by this despicable bleeding-heart, tenured, madman. Too bad his heart didn’t bleed for Americans!