What exactly do professors' tenure contracts specify? Even if the university cannot cut the pay of a tenured professor, is there anything in the contract that says the courses they teach have to count toward graduation, or that they must be given offices in the same building as other faculty assigned to similar subjects?
I have a pleasant vision of Duke moving some professors into some little cubicles in a storage building some distance away from the rest of campus, and assigning them "courses" that do not count toward graduation. Having to hire new professors to teach the real courses while continuing to pay the old profs might be expensive, but I would think exiling the Duke 88 would cause a sufficient increase in alumni donations to make up the difference.
Tenure is another one of these theories like the idea that a DA cannot be sued, when in the real world can only be stretched so far. The situation with the 88 super losers at Duke is at the snapping point now, and it would only take the littlest bit of effort on the part of conservative activists there to get rid of all of them. Students are talking about major protests against all of them to the point of banging pots and pans in front of doors if they try to teach classes. That would reduce their value to the school to pretty near zero.