How? Because humans are humans why come equipped individually and in ensemble with various emotional and intellectual drives all of which can be used for good or bad. By providing a protected place, a protected job -- you create a magnet, a attractor for those who seek to exploit it, to abuse the protections for the sake of indulging other drives that would otherwise be repressed, those that should be repressed and called to account.
We see the result in every sinecure -- tenured professors, closed-shop unions, civil servants. We see it in politicians -- although we have the vote to rebuke them with, the super protections we blanket our 537 US elected officals are so strong they overly immunize that group.
Tenure and protections like tenure are -- by clear and widespread evidence of examples -- a sure way to suppress novel ideas, to bring about a monolithic orthodoxy of ideas and ideals that fierecely act to erradicate ideas and ideals that weaken, compete with, or attack the prevalent orthodoxies.
From bvw...great post and worth posting again...wisdom herein
Things like this point to the folly of tenure. Look what tenure has brought about -- or at least substantially contributed to -- the raising and protection of frauds like Ward C., and worse -- the ruining of very thing they meant to protect -- a robust free discussion and refining exchange of ideas.
How? Because humans are humans why come equipped individually and in ensemble with various emotional and intellectual drives all of which can be used for good or bad. By providing a protected place, a protected job -- you create a magnet, a attractor for those who seek to exploit it, to abuse the protections for the sake of indulging other drives that would otherwise be repressed, those that should be repressed and called to account.
We see the result in every sinecure -- tenured professors, closed-shop unions, civil servants. We see it in politicians -- although we have the vote to rebuke them with, the super protections we blanket our 537 US elected officals are so strong they overly immunize that group.
Tenure and protections like tenure are -- by clear and widespread evidence of examples -- a sure way to suppress novel ideas, to bring about a monolithic orthodoxy of ideas and ideals that fierecely act to erradicate ideas and ideals that weaken, compete with, or attack the prevalent orthodoxies.