>>In my state tenure has to be approved by the Board of Regents, but if someone has strong support from the department and department chairman, there isn’t much chance that the college committee will vote “no,” and the dean’s, the provost’s, the president’s, and the Board of Regents’ approvals are pretty much assured once the college committee has approved.<<
Yes, and that is exactly the reason for the $250 million budget cut. If they miraculously “find” the money elsewhere, it will be cut again next time around. If they can’t find the money, tenure won’t save the least productive professors.
Of course, there’s a chance that the Board will be composed of liberals and that conservatives will be the ones laid off (for “financial” reasons) but, in that event, eventually the curriculum would decay to the point that the school would suffer.
Personally, I’d cut the budget $250 million every biennial budget until free speech zones and “triggering” disappeared from the campus altogether. That’s how we’d know balance had been restored, and not before.
The tenure-track process usually takes 6 years. That is the time to weed out incompetent or unproductive faculty. Some universities have "post-tenure review" to create anxiety on the part of tenured professors.
It is hard to measure "productivity" when academic fields vary greatly. "Flagship" public universities have different expectations for quantity of publications compared to universities that put teaching first. Not all publications are equal in value.
Given what I have seen of academic administrators, I don't think enhancing their power over the faculty will make for better universities (not that I think that all administrators are bad).
Some egregious cases involving "free speech zones" and "triggering" have made the news, and there are no doubt other cases, but it may be too early to say that they represent the norm on college campuses.