Victor Davis Hanson Ping !
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Posted on 05/12/2005 4:46:30 AM PDT by Tolik
Tenure in our universities is simply unlike any other institution in American society. Take the case of Ward Churchill at the University of Colorado. Because of his inflammatory slander of the September 11 victims, the public turned its attention to his status. We discovered that he did not have a Ph.D., created a Native-American identity, and appropriated the intellectual property of others — but was promoted to a tenured full professorship, protected by a lifetime contract.
No equivalent for CEOs or for dishwashers exists. Journalists, politicians, lawyers and others who take unpopular stands also lack guaranteed jobs. Doctors do no not enjoy them. They can lose their posts, despite 30 years of reputable work, because of a single missed diagnosis.
Professors, however, after an initial probationary period of six years, win the equivalent of lifelong employment from their peers. Why does this strange practice linger on? The standard rationale is that the stuff of higher education is unfettered inquiry. Only by enjoying shelter from the storm of politics can professors be bold enough to take up the tough task of challenging young minds to question orthodoxy.
McCarthyism is evoked as the only bleak alternative to tenure. Once untenured professors find themselves on the wrong side of popular majority opinions, politicized firings will supposedly follow.
Why then does uniformity of belief characterize the current tenured faculty?
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(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
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tenure bump
BTTT
Thanks. This one helped raise my vocabulary, too.
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