Killing tenure is academia’s point of no return

AlJazeera ^ | June 5, 2015 | Mark LeVine, professor of history (Middle Eastern Studies) at the UCIrvine an

[Cincinatus' Wife]

It is extremely difficult to underestimate the impact of this move on higher education in the United States. A comparable event would be Ronald Reagan’s breaking of the aircraft controllers’ strike in 1981 by firing 12,000 workers, which completely changed the balance of power between labor on the one hand and government and corporations on the other. The breaking of the strike coincided with the rise of conservative policies as the guiding force of American governance; in the decades since, unions have become increasingly weak, as epitomized by Walker’s demolishing of collective bargaining rights for public employee unions in 2011.

Under Gov. Scott Walker, Wisconsin has become one of the great laboratories of conservative governance, with a record of union-busting, abortion-restricting, voter-ID-enacting policies that are at odds with the state’s tradition of progressivism. Unlike neighboring Minnesota, which has remained far more liberal — and whose economy is doing far better than Wisconsin’s — the Badger State has seen its Republican establishment increasingly entrenched by enacting policies of fear, resentment and suspicion of the sort that were so well described in Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”

Given this record, it’s not surprising that the Republican-controlled legislature should go after universities, especially with the state’s ongoing budget woes necessitating steep cuts to education. And now the state’s Joint Finance Committee has voted 12-4 to eliminate tenure protections from the state statute, add limits to faculty participation in shared governance and make it easier to fire tenured faculty in good standing for ill-defined reasons of “program modification” or “redirection” rather than the previous requirement of financial emergency (which is already being abused to get rid of entire academic units and their professors across the country). Predictably if frighteningly, the response of the University of Wisconsin system president and chancellors of the most important campuses has been weak-kneed and not at all comforting for the rank-and-file faculty who need the support of their senior administrators if the fight to protect tenure is to have a chance.

It is extremely difficult to underestimate the impact of this move on higher education in the United States. A comparable event would be Ronald Reagan’s breaking of the aircraft controllers’ strike in 1981 by firing 12,000 workers, which completely changed the balance of power between labor on the one hand and government and corporations on the other. The breaking of the strike coincided with the rise of conservative policies as the guiding force of American governance; in the decades since, unions have become increasingly weak, as epitomized by Walker’s demolishing of collective bargaining rights for public employee unions in 2011.

One of the defining characteristics of this era is precisely the weakening of solidarity among unionized workers and between them and the greater public. The participation of workers in unions dropped from 28.3 percent in 1954 to about 11.3 percent in 2013 — a 100-year low. In just the last two years, the percentage of unionized public employees dropped 2 points, just as union leaders feared and conservatives hoped.

A similar process is already playing out nationally in academia. The share of the more than 1.5 million faculty (teachers at accredited two- and four-year colleges and universities) who are tenured or on tenure track is as low as a quarter by some counts — half the share of the 1970s and one-third of the 78 percent of the late 1960s, at the height of the postwar boom in university education. At the same time, the share of nontenured or adjunct faculty has skyrocketed to upward of 75 percent of teachers, while the number working in university administration and commanding outsize paychecks has grown massively. With the elimination of tenure, the drive to corporatize the university is reaching its end stages.

Despite its shrinking size, the tenure system continues to set the standard for college and university education and research. Tenure protects the academic freedom of professors, which gives them the power and latitude to conduct research independently of political interests. Faculty must be free of interference from outside forces, a common practice in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, when wealthy donors and boards could fire faculty with little justification for expressing their views. It is commonly understood that none of academia’s core functions could occur without tenure and the assurance of academic freedom it enables.

Think about the stifling of the debate over climate change, with states such as Florida and — surprise! — Wisconsin barring scientists from discussing actual science. Or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, research on the economy, sexual health, drugs and the “war on terrorism.” The relevance of tenure, shared (as opposed to corporate-bought) governance and academic freedom has never been greater.

In particular, shared governance has been a bedrock principle of higher education, through which faculty members have meaningfully participated in the institutional governance of their universities alongside other staffers and senior managers. Together with tenure, shared governance means that faculty members can have a voice beyond the particular departments, disciplines and schools in which they teach.

It is not surprising, then, that conservatives — who have long attacked the notions of tenure, shared governance and academic freedom more broadly — would now set their eyes on Walker’s Wisconsin (it’s worth noting here that Walker did not graduate from college) as the moment to break the institution of tenure, based on the same corporate-dominated neoliberal principles that supported the near fatal weakening of unions a generation ago. In fact, as University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee English professor Richard Grusin wrote on his blog, Ragman’s Circles, the “daisy chain of Republican power” now extends from the governor to the regents he appoints, the system president they appoint and the chancellors he appoints.

There is little doubt that, should Wisconsin succeed, corporatized boards of private universities and state legislatures in the majority of Republican-governed states will jump on the bandwagon and move with lightning speed to remove tenure protections, shared governance and, ultimately, academic freedom protections from their universities.

On this 100th anniversary of the founding of the American Association of University Professors, when the principles of academic freedom were first expounded in the midst of another “great” war that history looks upon with horror, the renewed threat to tenure represents not merely an attack on the minority of academics who today enjoy the privilege but also on the bedrock principles upon which America’s system of higher education was built. If faculties across the country don’t take a very public and aggressive stand in defense of their colleagues in Wisconsin, there will be little to stop the process of complete corporatization of higher education, with all the damage to the quality and diversity of teaching, research and knowledge production that this will produce.

With the United States and the rest of the world facing so many unprecedented natural and human threats and challenges, destroying the one edifice that protects independent thinking and knowledge for its intellectual class could prove even more costly than destroying the unions upon which America’s unprecedented postwar prosperity was built.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

It's time to kill the ""Wisconsin Idea."

"...........The Wisconsin Idea would go on to set an example for other states in the United States. The progressive politicians of the time sought to emulate and ultimately transcend the states of the east coast in regards to labor laws. Wisconsin progressives wished to make Wisconsin into a benchmark for other Midwestern states to strive towards. Although many of the reforms went through in 1911, conservative opponents of the progressive party took control of Wisconsin in 1914, thus minimizing the magnitude and effects of the reforms. The Wisconsin Idea would continue to be a revolutionary precedent for other universities, and its educational aspects are still relevant today. Robert La Follette, Sr. was the man who implemented much of this legislature, and he was among the earliest supporters of direct election of senators, which is now a national practice. These progressive politics also helped pass the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments to the American Constitution.

These proposed reforms, all of which were eventually adopted, included:

Primary elections, allowing the rank-and-file members of a political party to choose its nominees rather than caucuses usually dominated by political bosses.

Workers' compensation, allowing workers injured whilst working to receive a fixed payment in compensation for their injuries and related expenses rather than forcing them to go to court against their employers, which at the time was extremely difficult and had little realistic chance of success.

State regulation of railroads in addition to the federal regulation imposed by the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Direct election of United States Senators as opposed to the original method of their selection by the state legislatures, eventually ratified as the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Progressive taxation, where the wealthier pay a higher rate of tax than the less-affluent, made possible on the federal level in part by the adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Adoption of these reforms marked the high point of the Progressive Era."....

[FatherofFive]

Al link to AlJazeera? No thanks.

[Cincinatus]

Think about the stifling of the debate over climate change, with states such as Florida and — surprise! — Wisconsin barring scientists from discussing actual science.

Except that today's so-called "debate" about "climate change" isn't about actual science -- it's about politics.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Christine Evans, assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee OpEd in NYT - Feb 15, 2016: Save the Wisconsin Idea

"MILWAUKEE — EARLIER this month, Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin and potential Republican presidential candidate, unveiled a proposed budget that would cut $300 million of funds to the University of Wisconsin system and shift power over tuition from the Legislature to a new public authority controlled by appointed regents. The initial draft of Mr. Walker’s budget bill also proposed to rewrite the university’s 110-year-old mission statement, known as the Wisconsin Idea, deleting “the search for truth” and replacing it with language about meeting “the state’s work-force needs.”....

[IronJack]

This whole argle-bargle can be summed up in four words: We. Don’t. Want. Accountability.

Or these four: We’re. Better. Than. You.

[headstamp 2]

Scientism

[BlueStateRightist]

” Tenure protects the academic freedom of professors, which gives them the power and latitude to conduct research independently of political interests. Faculty must be free of interference from outside forces, a common practice in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, when wealthy donors and boards could fire faculty with little justification for expressing their views.”

The irony of this statement is that if a member of the faculty takes a conservative position on any topic his ability to be promoted and his job security are highly compromised. In other words, none of the faculty truly practices “independently of political interests.” The final arbiter at most universities and colleges is an oligarchy of leftists that shuts down any speech that deviates from liberal orthodoxy.

[txrefugee]

LOL...the funniest line in the piece is that removing tenure is “ destroying the one edifice that destroys independent thinking.” There is no independent thinking among academia when nine out of ten professors are Leftists.
But Al Jazeeta really has no shame when this bunch of Muslims, who behead those who disagree with Islam, touts independent thinking....ironic in the extreme.

[Vigilanteman]

A comparable event would be Ronald Reagan’s breaking of the aircraft controllers’ strike in 1981 by firing 12,000 workers, which completely changed the balance of power between labor on the one hand and government and corporations on the other.

Yep. LeVine talks about this like it is a bad thing. It wasn't. Just look at the challenges Reagan met in the first seven months of his presidency. The recovery from wounds in the assassination attempt and breaking this strike from a public employee union which had actually endorsed him and thought he owed them.

And Reagan didn't break the strike. He merely enforced the law. These yard birds were striking against public safety which was illegal.

He gave them a reasonable grace period to report back to work or told them their jobs would be forfeit. About one-third of them did. I remember it well because I attended church with an air traffic controller who was part of that third and told by his union "brothers" that they couldn't afford to fire two-thirds of them and he would be the one without a job when the dust settled.

Guess who made the right decision?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

They don't like the "war on terrorism" either....

Think about the stifling of the debate over climate change, with states such as Florida and — surprise! — Wisconsin barring scientists from discussing actual science. Or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, research on the economy, sexual health, drugs and the “war on terrorism.” The relevance of tenure, shared (as opposed to corporate-bought) governance and academic freedom has never been greater.

[Erik Latranyi]

...destroying the one edifice that protects independent thinking and knowledge...

Yes, thought opposing liberalism is so embraced in academia today!

This line PROVES the author is mental moron

[bert]

——the share of nontenured or adjunct faculty has skyrocketed to upward of 75 percent of teachers-——

Translation....... 75 % of the teachers are part time grad students grasping for straws to keep them afloat till they finish their degree

[sargon]

Cry me a river...

[nathanbedford]

Faculty must be free of interference from outside forces

Actually, faculty must be free of interference from faculty itself. It is professors themselves who constitute the greatest threat to academic inquiry.

The last time outside forces interfered with faculty occurred when the left through occupation, intimidation, and violence actually physically took over university campuses. Playing cowards, the faculty did not rally to its own defense, to the defense of their students who actually sought to be educated, to the principles of intellectual and academic inquiry, or to the independence of the faculty. They were utterly craven and many of them welcomed a new era of tyranny of the left imposed on ivy-covered institutions.

Leftists who inhabit America's faculty lounges are not interested in academic freedom; their speech codes, their curricula, their biased grading habits, their refusal to open their commencements proceedings to conservatives, their stunning arrogance so often associated with leftists, all put a lie to every word written by this professor.

[DH]

“Tenure protects the academic freedom of professors, which gives them the power and latitude to conduct research independently of political interests.”

---

Now there is a whopper for you. “To conduct research independently of political interests???????????”

The original concept of academic tenure may have been to ensure a professor the freedom and right to teach in the manner to which he/she/it thought right. Now, it’s ALL ABOUT POLITICAL INTERESTS.

However, I’m completely against any job placement in which the employee can’t be fired. Professors think they are far beyond the normal “employee” and are special. After all they have a piece of paper (or papers) stating they are far above the normal citizen.....right?

Obama was the product of a university in which his TENURED professors taught hatred of America, freedom, and individual responsibility for one’s own actions. We all see how that worked out. Without tenure those professors would more than likely would not have been teaching there or worse yet, complied to the will of those who financially supported the university.

Tenure is simply the bedrock of unionism and the collective mindset. Once hired they can’t be fired.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Minnesota’s economy is doing better than Wisconsin’s? Really???

[Buckeye McFrog]

I have a brother who is “part-time adjunct faculty”. He’s a high school math teacher, and picking up a remedial course at a local college on the side is how he earns his diaper and beer money.

[elcid1970]

“Al-Jazeeta”

Halal cheese product?

;^)

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Some background and some real time info:

http://spectator.org/articles/62965/halfway-there-wisconsin-becomes-25th-right-work-state

http://www.wrn.com/2015/06/governor-walker-plans-trade-mission-to-canada/

[Cincinatus' Wife]

http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=5356

Research Interests -Middle East history, cultures and religions of the modern Middle East, Globalization, the role of music in political struggles, culture jamming, critical theory