Death to Tenure

Townhall.com ^ | October 29, 2011 | Mike Adams

[Theodore R.]

The students dont’ have to take this professor. Tenure can protect conservatives too, but we just see flagrant cases on the left like this one.

[jospehm20]

I can see your point at a private university or college but the bottom line is this guy is a state employee who used his state owned computer and email account to post to terrorist websites and send offensive emails to people. Any other state employee who acted in such a manner would be fired without question, as this guy should be. I don’t see anything wrong with holding a professor on the public payroll to the same standards of acceptable behavior as a DMV clerk or janitor on the public payroll.

[The_Reader_David]

It is up to the several states to decide whether it is in the public interest to establish and support universities in part funded by tax dollars. All of them have, and in doing so, they established real universities, complete with academic freedom and tenure, not fake universities where faculty can be dismissed for unpopular political or scholarly positions, regardless of scholarly attainment or seniority (which I note are both requisite for tenure, not merely seniority as in the union-created corruption of tenure in the K-12 schools).

Abolishing tenure in hope that leftist radicals could be removed, would, in fact, complete the destruction of the university as a distinctive institution undertaken by the radical left, with its democratization of the university (student evaluations of instruction, student representation on governance committees and boards, and the like were all inventions of the ‘60s “New Left” whose heirs now run the Federal executive branch), corruption of academic disciplines and discourse, restructuring of student orientation as political indoctrination, introduction (aided and abetted by leftist judges) of affirmative action in admissions and hiring. . . Either it would cede control of universities to the left completely, or it would remake them in the image of commerce with a bottom line measured in dollars rather than knowledge or culture (a bad trend that is already occurring, cf. my critiques on other threads at FR of Perry’s “higher education reforms” in Texas).

[jospehm20]

“Abolishing tenure in hope that leftist radicals could be removed” is not what I meant. I meant that since he misused government property he should face the same penalty as any other government employee would. This has nothing to do with academic freedom. How do you figure that punishing his misuse of government computers and email accounts to harass his personal (taxpaying) enemies and support the global jihad would curtail his academic freedom? What this guy did would get any other government employee fired and maybe prosecuted. He is supposedly educated and should know better. Why should teachers get a pass on misusing government property and not clerks or janitors? Does academic freedom include swiping government pens and other office supplies in your view? Tenure should not be a free pass to commit crimes.