Posted on 03/23/2016 2:10:08 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
This past June, American academia went into an uproar over Gov. Scott Walker’s new budget in Wisconsin,....Specifically,any professor in the system—tenured or not—could be dismissed or laid off by the 18-member Board of Regents using maddeningly vague criteria:“when such an action is deemed necessary due to a budget or program decision requiring program discontinuance,curtailment,modification or redirection.”
This,when combined with the faculty’s diminished role in governing the university—and thus determining such things as which programs should continue, be curtailed, or get modified—basically meant that these regents—16 of whom were appointed by Walker—could fire anyone,at any time, for any reason.
[SNIP]
Professors do not want research limited by the whims of 18 people appointed by a governor with an anti-education agenda.
What’s at stake here is the total loss of the public research university. Anyone with functioning eyes and a pulse knows that most U.S. states barely fund their universities anymore,...
But the situation in Wisconsin is worse than your garden-variety corporatization. You might assume it’s no big deal for superstar researchers to be competed for,hired,and fired like executives—and for everyone else to “just get a better job” if they don’t like what they’ve got. That might be how it works at your job,if you are lucky enough to have one. I understand this impulse to look around at your own likely weak labor protections,and wonder why those obnoxious hoity-toity professors think they deserve better..
But academics don’t want tenure because they think they’re better or smarter than you. Academics,whether they have it or not,want some form of tenure to exist to protect the integrity of the knowledge that is produced,preserved,and disseminated.
[SNIP]
.. Hundreds of technological and social advances that you depend upon have been made thanks to the research of some brainiac at some university somewhere:what kind of cities to plan;how (and where) to alleviate poverty and hunger;...
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
My God! The horror of it all.....a permanent and irrevocable job cannot be terminated! That just can’t be right.
Who will brainwash the Proles now and live the easy life without actually really working?
This is terrible! /Sarc
For every leftard with tenure there are uncountable more who would stab that person in the back for that job, let the left fight the left, let conservatives build orgs that run around the BIG ED brainwash facilities
Maybe universities will become diverse politically instead of malignantly leftist and conservative viewpoints will have a safe place in the halls of academia?
Nope.
Right, because now the shoe is on the other foot! When the "professors" had control, they had the power to fire ANYONE who's opinion (read that: POLITICAL VIEWS) dissented from their own.
Turn-about's fair play! Life's a bitch, suck it up cupcakes! Be careful the rules you impose on others, they always have a way of coming back to bit you in the ass.
This is true even in the climatology field.
Scientists report the valid results of their research, make some statement about how the result is due to "global warming," and then go on to talk about what their results *really* mean. I've seen the pattern repeated countless times. Journalists who have no clue about science then go on to report that there are "thousands" of research papers backing "global warming"--when, in reality, the only reason those papers mention "global warming" is to convince the leftist politicians who want to impose totalitarianism in the name of global warming to keep giving them research funding.
There are actually very few papers that support the idea of "global warming" due to CO2. In fact, even among papers that address the idea directly, there is little of substance.
For example, I saw a paper once that purported to show sea levels rising. As evidence, they had measured the elevation of an island mountain. Later in the paper, they explained that the altitude of the mountain had increased through plate tectonics (which corresponds to lower sea level around the island). They had "corrected" for the increased altitude in order to come up with the conclusion that the sea level around the island had increased in a manner consistent with "global warming" predictions. In short, their research had demonstrated that the sea level around the island is mediated by plate tectonics--which has nothing to do with global warming at all!
As I said, the hard sciences are not very amenable to being subverted to political agendas. Leftists cannot change physics, no matter how hard they try. (Biology, chemistry, geology, etc., are all forms of applied physics.)
The sky is falling. Spend more money. Inmates (professors) want to run the asylum (universities).
Worse...dissenting scientists are denied their livelihoods if they are caught expressing their concepts.
“This...basically meant that these regents—16 of whom were appointed by Walker—could fire anyone,at any time, for any reason.”
So now they are just like any other non-union employee in the entire country. So what?
Better dead than red
profiling a professor politically is necessary to allow purging of the scourge
Yes!
The new hard is now soft. Kids with degrees have been taught since pre-school that math is their friend; that math is forgiving if you have good intentions.
They then apply friendly math based on good intentions to raw data about global warming, or raw data about global economics, or raw data about their particular industry or specific shop.
They look at raw data on infant mortality through the eyes of compassionate math and conclude that expansion of medicaid is needed.
They look at urban planning and conclude that open space, not corporate office towers, is needed at the hub of their new mass transit system. Then they look at the lack of ridership on their new mass transit system through compassionate math and see that people should be penalized for choosing the car over mass transit.
The new friendly, compassionate math informs us of the new science that adapts to the needs of society rather than the cold, rigid anti-social dictates of antiquated western culture.
Time is long overdue that the Augean Stable swamp of Leftist professors indoctrinating students at the University of Wisconsin were flushed away. UW Madison isn’t known as Kremlin Midwest for nothing.
HA! Very good, sir!
Sounds like UofW is on the right path. Hopefully they’ll put their new power to good use. I can already hear the knashing of teeth when the first “professor” gets fired.
bttt
“But academics don’t want tenure because they think they’re better or smarter than you. Academics, whether they have it or not, want some form of tenure to exist to protect the integrity of the knowledge that is produced, preserved, and disseminated.”
Here is the money bullshizzat line.
“If a program is discontinued, why *should* the university keep the personnel running that program on staff?”
It is generally true (although I don’t know the details of the old policy at Wisconsin) that tenure doesn’t protect faculty if their entire program or department is abolished. What is disturbing about the new policy at Wisconsin is inclusion of program “redirection.” I would be upset, for example, if Virginia Governor McAuliffe decided to “redirect” tenured UVa sociology professor Brad Wilcox out of a job because Wilcox’s research shows that children fare best in intact, male-female marriages. In the current climate on university campuses, it is conservative professors who have the most to lose if tenure is abolished.
Tenure is a patronage system for the most part.
I understand what it is supposed to be (and that was a good idea), but it has morphed into something else.
A crock worthy of Barack. Tenure is an excuse to never do anything.
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