Guest Post: What Is Happening With Tenure In Madison?
J Doe is a [something ranked] Professor in STEM. S/he chooses to write this post anonymously, in part to make a point about the value of tenure and the protection it affords faculty from becoming political targets.
Many of us in Madison are getting questions about what is happening with tenure, and the national media hasn’t adequately captured the reasons why there is a controversy. Cathy asked me if I could provide some insight, which I will do sort of “politifact” style. I choose to do so anonymously, in part to make a point about the value of tenure and the protection it affords faculty from becoming political targets.
——
CLAIM: What is happening in Wisconsin is the end of tenure as we know it.
RATING: Maybe
FACT: The authority to define the terms of tenure is being moved from state law to the Board of Regents. Depending on how this authority is applied, tenure could change dramatically or not at all. The worst case scenario (see below) would indeed end tenure as we know it on campus.
——
CLAIM: The tenure protections given to the Board of Regents are the same as what is in state law. The change merely moves tenure from state law to the Regents.
RATING: Mostly false
FACT: The terms of tenure as they relate to dismissal for cause remain exactly the same. However, some care was taken to define the difference between dismissal, termination and indefinite layoff. Other than dismissal for cause, most schools only allow for termination of tenured faculty for reasons of financial exigency. The proposed new tenure guidelines for Wisconsin include language such as “program redirection” and other vague terminology, and this is what has people up in arms.
——
CLAIM: This is a dangerous situation
RATING: True
FACT: The addition of language related to program redirection is not the only change happening. Other language weakening shared governance makes faculty “subordinate to” the Chancellor on matters of programs and curricula. The faculty will also now have weakened influence in selecting new Chancellors. The Regents are appointed by the Governor, with the most recent appointee being the son of a Bradley Foundation member. In most states, the Regents set the terms of tenure, but they are not effectively political appointees.
Add these things up, and the Regents could appoint a Chancellor with the authority to unilaterally make program changes and terminate tenured faculty. That is a worst-case scenario.
——
CLAIM: This is a great time to raid the UW for faculty
RATING: True, if you are an asshole
FACT: Some faculty will be looking to move on as the result of this situation. If you have previously talked about hiring a UW faculty member or are approached by UW faculty interested to make a change, by all means continue the discussion.
On the other hand, if you are suddenly strategizing on how to poach UW faculty, this makes you an opportunistic asshole. Rubbing your hands together with glee as we fight to ensure our ability to maintain a world class university is a nasty way to be. If someone’s house was on fire, would you grab a bucket of water, or would you think about stealing their TV? Make no mistake that your university could be next, so do onto others as you would have them do onto you.
mathbabe 
Look at NC if you want to see where WI is headed. This article from The Nation is gut wrenching: http://www.thenation.com/article/209289/how-right-wing-political-machine-dismantling-higher-education-north-carolina?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=headline_nation&utm_campaign=Headline%20Nation%20-%20filters%20fix%2020150608&newsletter=headline_nation
LikeLike
In that article, I don’t understand why the centers that were closed, if externally funded already, don’t just re-open independent of the university system?
FWIW, I think other points in that article show why the Republican party is becoming a local phenomenon and will not win the presidency again for some time (I’m even tempted to say never, but the other team can score own-goals, too).
LikeLike
Good question… my hunch is that being affiliated with UNC gave them cache and credibility that helped them raise donor dollars and without that linkage they might not be able to garner as much support…
The conclusion of the article, illustrating the disgust of business-minded Republicans with the anti-intellectual Tea-baggers, supports your hypothesis about getting a Republican elected to a national office… BUT… the Koch brothers have a huge war chest, they love Scott Walker, and he is the most formidable opponent to HRC, the Democrat’s anointed candidate…
LikeLike
Cathy mentioned assholes in yesterday’s post on student loans, in the context of finance. I would argue that assholes are in some sense necessary checks and balances in a functioning free market.
Applied to the present case, this would imply that other universities SHOULD poach UW faculty. A devastating loss of top faculty would be the free market’s way of driving home the point that tenure matters, that tenure is valued, and that tenure benefits the university (by allowing the university to hire and retain top faculty).
Republicans are famously immune to facts, but in the long term nobody is immune to the consequences of those facts, or to reality.
LikeLike
I also don’t get the point about poaching UW faculty as being a nasty move. It seems that one strength of the US is a degree of flexibility for states to try their own approaches and for everyone else to learn from the consequences.
LikeLike
Well, think about it. If the powers in Wisconsin do not particularly care about their faculty getting poached, which seems clear, then they will consider it a success. Other states, that also don’t want thoughtful and potent state school faculty will follow suit. The result will be fewer places for good academics. It will not be a success for the academics as a group.
LikeLike
I think it would be worse to do nothing. Doing nothing would show that top faculty do not care about tenure. I know that if tenure were abolished at my university, without any compensatory benefit (e.g. a dramatic raise in salary), I would WANT to leave, and I would be able to leave. I would hope that other universities welcome me with open arms, rather than engaging in the kind of no-poaching cartel that got Silicon Valley tech companies in trouble.
LikeLike
Because some of us do not want our university to become the poster child for how to destroy a R1. We have invested in this place. We expect our colleagues elsewhere to support us. Maybe at some point this will be throwing us a life jacket, but first help us keep the ship from sinking.
In any case, if you want a mathematical reason why you are wrong, please read up on game theory and optimization, in which you will see that greedy strategies do not lead to optimal results.
LikeLike
There are two sides to this issue. Of course I would defend the institution of tenure. But I defend it because I believe it provides practical benefits to both sides, not because of some article of faith. From the point of view of UW faculty who are not abandoning ship, sure, the best thing for them is to stay together. But from the point of view of the institution of tenure as a whole, it is important not only to consider UW faculty, but also faculty at other institutions, who are under similar threats, by administrators who are watching the events at UW closely.
My greatest fear in all of this is that other universities will watch as UW abolishes tenure, and … nothing happens. The world doesn’t end. The sky doesn’t fall. The faculty members stay put. The university continues as before. This would send the unmistakable message to other universities and administrators: yes, go ahead and abolish tenure. It isn’t doing anyone any good.
Now, in the above scenario, if the reason nothing happens is because tenure really serves no purpose, then fine, I accept this reality. But if (as I suspect) the reason nothing happens is because the other universities artificially agree to stand by and do nothing, then this is very bad. It sends a misleading signal to outside observers about the (non-)worth of tenure, one that is not supported by free-market reality.
As Cathy pointed out, there are certain politicians who would actually be encouraged by the sight of self-destructing universities. But I believe this segment represents a small minority. The large majority of outside observers will be watching with earnest intentions. For these honest participants, we need to send an honest signal: abolish tenure, and your university will die.
LikeLike
Republicans, at least the Scott Walker type, will not feel punished by this particular “free market.” It is in fact his goal that strong faculty leave.
LikeLike
True, but I believe it is useful to demonstrate the consequences of abolishing tenure, because other universities will pay attention, and they are not all run by Scott Walker types.
LikeLike
I guess I would have liked to learn more about (a) why the scenario under “this is a dangerous situation” is actually bad and (b) what the stated reasons are for the policy change.
LikeLike
(a) Because our state government is criminal, cannot be trusted, and they move to eliminate those who expose them, such as the agency who uncovered the fraud and pay-to-play in their economic development program.
(b) No reasons were given. No discussions were held even with Chancellors before a college dropout decided to unilaterally rewrite the rules of tenure, knowing that his Koch-funded puppets would vote for it.
LikeLike
There was livestreaming yesterday for the audio of the U Wisc – Madison Fac Senate meeting. I listened to the Chancellor take questions from audience. It was clear to me they were asking her not to lose her spine in dealing with the whole thing. It does sounds dangerous to me.
LikeLike
To me it is also interesting to compare the new situation in Wisconsin to that at other state universities. Having strong tenure protection written into law was almost unique nationwide as far as I can tell. At Indiana University, where I teach, tenure is entirely a matter of university policy, which is set by a board of trustees. The trustees are selected by a process that involves 6 selected by the governor and 3 elected by alumni. Currently the gubernatorial appointments are not overly political, and there appears to be no imminent threat to tenure that involves being fired only either for cause or in the case of financial exigency. And the way financial exigency is defined is fairly apocalyptic, so unlikely to occur in the short to medium run. Of course, our state legislature could change these rules at any time and we have a state Commission on Higher Education that is growing more powerful, more activist and more conservative and they might try to change the rules. But right now, Wisconsin just went from being much better off than we were to much worse off than we are. We’ve had reorganizations over the last 5 years that could, under current Wisconsin law, been viewed as legitimate reasons to fire dozens of faculty. I don’t know that firing would have occurred had that been the law, but it would have made an already difficult situation much, much worse.
The most frightening part is of course the magnitude of the derivative and the concern over what might happen next. I don’t think one will ever be able to pinpoint the day tenure died, it’s going to happen gradually and this is a strong step in that direction.
LikeLike
I think younger people would be glad to see tenure go away (I would’ve while I still was in academia). More and quicker turnaround would give more of them a chance and would also make coming and going from academia much easier.
I see my friends who stayed in academia going for their 3rd and 4th post-docs now, and it’s a completely miserable experience for them – working much harder than the tenured upper class of academia, and yet getting a much smaller piece of the pie.
LikeLike
I think you are imagining that all of this will lead to more opportunities for faculty jobs. It won’t. Unless you are aiming for a job as an at-will adjunct after they fire all the tenured faculty, cheering this on won’t help you.
LikeLike
You’re implicitly assuming that being an “at-will adjunct” is bad. And it is – in a tenure system.
I do indeed imagine that this would lead to more opportunities for faculty jobs, and yeah, where everyone is an adjunct, and I don’t see anything wrong with that. There was more than one professor that would’ve been replaced with a better mind in schools where I did my phd and post-doc in a meritocracy.
LikeLike
Adjuncts make less than a postdoc and don’t even have a contract. Why you want a worse job for less pay is beyond me.
Personally, I think the problem lies in generating too many PhDs rather than a lack of faculty jobs.
In any case, if your friends are doing 3rd or 4th postdocs, the system is telling them to move along. Not all great bands get recording contracts, either. Is someone still trying to make their band happen at age 38 a victim or someone who defined their life goals too narrowly?
LikeLike
I actually agree with most of your points, and the main difference is you see them through tenure-colored glasses, while I see them through no-tenure-colored ones.
What an adjunct is/makes in current system is one thing, what they’ll be make in no-tenure system is another, so your direct comparison doesn’t work. And honestly, maybe adjunct is just a bad title I chose, what I’m talking about is simply professors in no-tenure system.
I entirely agree that part of the problem is generating too many phds in some fields (e.g. mine). There are many reasons why that happens, but having tenured professors who have nothing to lose grabbing those students to do their “dirty” work in fields where getting a professorship is hopeless (due to all tenured jobs being taken; permanently) doesn’t help.
And I completely agree that the system is telling my friends to move along – I myself got that message first go, and am very happy I did, but just because the system tells them that ‘s what they should do, doesn’t mean that the system is correct. In fact I believe it’s quite distorted by tenure and sends the wrong message a lot.
LikeLike
I am out of recursive reply options, so this is a reply to your comment at the bottom.
I just want you to know that some professors such as myself have fought our colleagues on the PhD overproduction issue. In some fields, this is driven by the need for cheap TA labor, in other fields the need for cheap laboratory labor.
We need to stop deluding students by training them all as though they will have a faculty job at the end. Even assuming the number of faculty jobs does not decrease, this means that I have to replace myself exactly once at the research level, graduate a couple of other students to take teaching oriented jobs, and maybe a few more than that for industry jobs.
In any case, I’m glad you jumped off successfully and hope you will reach your hand out to others. I am sad to say that the glory days of being a professor are over, and if I were a newly minted PhD, I would go straight into industry.
LikeLike
I’ll actually also add, that the majority of my friends in my field got postdocs after their phds (so, short-term, the system wasn’t generating too many phds), and at that time average # of postdocs people did who actually got professorships was around 1-2. But by the time they got to through their first one it became 2-3, and by the time they got through the 2nd one – it’s now 3-4, and they are simply being exploited by the tenured faculty, with the false promise of the paradise of tenure.
The root of the problem, as I see it, is that the long-term negative effect of the tenure, though obvious once you look back, is not felt and seen by the students/postdocs now (as each time you look a couple of years into the future, it doesn’t look that bad).
LikeLike
I’m still not sure I understand why you see tenure as the problem here. I think maybe you are remembering a couple of bad apples and imagine getting rid of them will solve all the problems. The reality is that most people are quite good, and you would still have to compete against them for positions.
Regarding postdocs, doing more than two is pretty much a kiss of death. If anyone is promising that you will get a tenure track job after 3-4 postdocs, they are lying to you.
LikeLike
(just to clear up the timeline, my previous post got delayed by moderation and appeared after yours)
I’m glad you’re trying to push back at the overproduction issue – that’s important.
Please understand though, that you’re living in a walled garden where your living conditions are much better than those of the students and postdocs outside, at the cost of all those people, and ultimately you are fighting for keeping the garden walled.
And, unfortunately, I think your pushback will ultimately fail because it’s against the self-interest of the tenured faculty.
LikeLike
I am surprised to see someone who has been inside academia not really understand what tenure is for. It is not a job for life, it is protection of academic freedom.
In any case, weakening protections on faculty just allows more people to be exploited. You have every right to complain that the academic system is now set up to exploit graduate students, but this wasn’t always true. This was fueled by higher ed cuts and the need for cheap labor. Instead of railing against the few people who are treated somewhat fairly in this mess, go to the root of the problem. It’s not to get rid of tenured faculty positions but rather to have more faculty and fewer graduate students.
LikeLike
To clarify – I don’t see tenure as “the” problem, I see it as “a” problem. I don’t think removing it would magically make everything peachy for everyone, but it’s a step.
And re 2+ postdocs – in my field there hasn’t been a case of anyone getting a tenure track job in US after a single postdoc for probably a decade at this point, and only superstars get it after “just” 2 postdocs now.
I’m sorry but I don’t buy the argument that tenure is for academic freedom – in my 10+ years in academia I’ve never met a single person who said – “I want tenure to have academic freedom”. Instead they wanted it to have a decent and life-long salary, ability to stay in one place for more than 2-3 years at a time, and to not be treated like a 2nd class citizen. Except for the “life-long salary” everything else on the above list can be easily accomplished without tenure. And I understand that tenure *adds* to the academic freedom, but it is in no way the only or even the main component.
I find it ironic that you think tenured people are treated fairly. You’re at the top of the academic food chain, of course your own position seems fair to you, but believe me it doesn’t look fair from the bottom of the chain. Tenure imposes cost on everybody else, and you’re ripping the benefits of that. By removing that cost, your goal of adding more faculty jobs would be more achievable.
LikeLike
Sour grapes aren’t pretty, noneya.
I earned my place. Academia takes the best of the best researchers. It is not a big tent and never will be, at least not at a R1 school.
LikeLike
Hold on, I’m a tenured professor and I don’t believe for a minute that academia selects for the best of the best. I’ve seen many colleagues and former colleagues succeed and fail in large part according to the vagaries of luck.
LikeLike
Anyway, I’m pretty much done trying to convince you. If you are so bitter, then you seem to believe you were promised something that you were not.
If you want to see what Scott Walker will do, our state is now allowed to hire math teachers without teaching credentials. There won’t be more teaching jobs for PhDs if he gets his way. He will bypass you and let someone who didn’t even graduate from college teach the courses if they are cheap and obedient enough.
LikeLike
To clarify my biases – I’m very happy I’m not in academia – neither long-term research nor teaching were my cup of tea, and my current line of work involves a lot of impactful short-term research with significantly larger payouts. And I would not be here if I didn’t go through my phd (postdoc could probably be avoided just to get here, but it was still an experience I wouldn’t want taken out of my life), so I’m quite happy I did that and neither “bitter” nor “sour-grapes” are words I’d use to characterize my situation.
From my pov, it seems like you’re completely blind to your own biases.
Sure, you think you got rewarded exactly right for your awesomeness, and so do I. And now that you’re in this relatively great position you want to keep it as-is (as do I want to keep mine). These are entirely normal things, but any 3rd party observer would notice how many things had to go exactly the right way for me to get where I am, and I’d bet large amounts of money the same applies to you.
Even if they granted that you are objectively awesome and no matter what the random dice came up you’d still get to the same point – does that mean you’d still be as awesome in 10 years? 20 years? 30 years? Is there a number of years where you’d say that there is a 50/50 chance that you won’t be the best person for your job?
If that number is infinite, I admire your blissful arrogance. If that number is finite, then you already understand why tenure is not a great idea and perhaps contracts for N years are better. And you can bake in whatever protections you think are necessary for your academic freedom into those.
And as far as hiring non-phd’s for teaching math – so what? Most of my professors were awful teachers – that’s what current system encourages, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if one could find better teachers that didn’t have phd’s.
LikeLike
Fair enough, DJ, luck is also a factor. However, nobody gets here and gets tenure who isn’t good. In any case, sitting around feeling angry and bitter because someone else got something you wanted isn’t the path to success.
LikeLike
Yes, I agree to that. Those who get the job can, for the most part, do the job. And I will back you up on the statement that tenure is for academic freedom. If anything, I’d like to see tenure become easier to get, not harder to get (much less abolished). In my experience the tenure track tends to weed out unconventional and non-conformist researchers, the ones willing to take the big risks that lead to big breakthroughs, and to do so at an early age where the impact is maximized; in short, exactly the kind of people who need academic freedom the most. It’s not a perfect system but surely things would be worse without tenure.
I understand that this is a bit unusual, but at my university we have (in addition to research-intensive tenured positions) a number of people who hold the rank of permanent lecturer. These people have a full-time job, decent salary (70-100k), renewable 3-year contracts (which generally are renewed, unless the individual wants to leave, or something REALLY egregious happens), and first-class citizen status (e.g., they participate fully in department meetings). It’s basically everything but tenure. Some of them are incredibly good and have won nationwide recognition for teaching. Our department uses no part-time adjunct instructors; the lecturers fill the classes that otherwise would have gone to adjuncts. Having the option of a semi-permanent non-tenured position really emphasizes the role that tenure plays in academic freedom. I think this system is a humane alternative to adjuncts and I wish more universities would do it.
LikeLike
Agree with DJ, just want to add that departmental and university level politics are also a factor in tenure decisions in addition to luck (having been privy to some very revealing departmental level discussions regarding candidates for hiring and tenure). What is J Doe’s opinion of spousal hires for instance (my department hired a husband who got the job because his wife was a superstar)? And what about professors who have been tenured for 15+ years who produce one paper every 5 years or never publish again? Is that because their “academic freedom” includes a freedom to never have to publish again? Are all these people magically solving major unsolved problems by simply pottering around the department because they are the “best of the best”? Removing tenure will make academia comparable to industry, which I have found to be much more of a meritocracy. Also, it will get rid of the false dream of a lifelong job which is peddled to thousands of grad students and postdocs who will jump ship earlier and save themselves years of angst. Also this whole “only the best of the best get tenure” mentality is probably what is responsible for the high depression rates among grad students, when it should really be “very good and very lucky”.
LikeLike
We’ve lost job candidates because we won’t offer an unqualified spouse a faculty job, and we also have many stellar faculty couples. When one of the pair isn’t as strong, we do our best to arrange some other type of position. I am unaware of any faculty members who publish once every five years. We have reviews every five years, and they would be put on probation.
I guess if your institution is doing otherwise, perhaps it may indeed make sense to get rid of tenure where you’re at.
LikeLike
There is at least one tenured faculty member in the math department at UW – Madison that hasn’t published a paper in more than 5 years and is not on probabtion. There were 3 tenured professors in the math department who had not published in more than 10 years at the time they took emeritus standing. They were not on probabtion. They retired within the last 9 years.
LikeLike
I am unable to find anyone on the faculty list who has not published in five years according to google scholar.
A couple of duds could have been shoved off into retirement a bit earlier, I agree. I do not have the details of the situation, but I suspect having the faculty size go from mid-60s to low-40s made it more difficult to expel faculty and still meet teaching obligations.
Frankly, given that we have no mandatory retirement age, I am totally unopposed to using the 5-year review to “encourage” retirements among faculty who need have lost their drive.
LikeLike
There’s already been a lot of back and forth in the comments debating the merits of tenure (FTR, I jumped ship almost immediately after getting my PhD with no intention of getting a professorship from the start, though with probably one of the most promising pedigrees and growing research fields to have gotten one had I chosen to), but what I find fairly interesting about the post is that the threat to tenure isn’t really about the law change itself. It’s the coupling of the change and the fact that the Regents are basically political cronies instead of people qualified to run a higher education system. I think there is plenty of evidence that cronyism is bad for most public institutions. The issue, to my mind, is that Scott Walker is an a$$h0le…and all the checks-and-balances in the world can only limit the damage that a popularly-elected person can do so much.
At some point, painting this as “the academy” vs. “the populist” is far more damaging to academia than increased direct gubernatorial control over UW. No doubt that Scott Walker doesn’t care a whit about preserving an academy that enables free discourse and open intellectual exploration, but pretending that our current system truly allows that is absurd. Tenure may in theory offer protection of “academic freedom”, but heavily over-subscribed federal research funding programs (and a lack of many others) constrains academic pursuits in almost absurd ways. There are a multitude of reasons for this, of course, though I’d argue that over-production of PhDs and an academic research environment that is more or less predicated upon exploiting the cheap labor of graduate students and post-docs is a primary driver.
But perhaps more important is the fact that there are many symptoms of sickness displayed by our institutions of higher education today (e.g. student loan crises, majority of teaching performed by underpaid and job-insecure adjuncts, age of first PI grant ever-increasing…) and no one but the academics seems to care. The solutions posited, like MOOCs, are all aimed at further destroying the academy than at preserving and strengthening it. Without getting defensive, the onus is on those of us who care about the American university system (whether we are still part of it or not) to understand why so many Americans do not. Because I don’t think you can preserve a public higher education system if the public doesn’t care about it for very long…and somehow taking the stance that people who don’t care are stupid a$$h0l3s doesn’t seem like it’s going to be an effective long term strategy here. We have to admit that there are issues with the current system, be transparent about addressing them, and engage the public that we expect to support the university system in a conversation about why this is an important thing to do. (It doesn’t help that the overwhelming messaging around getting a college degree is increasing lifetime earnings rather than having an educated voting population…)
LikeLike
Excellent points. I agree wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, I was drawn into a debate with someone who believes that the fact that he didn’t get a tenure-track job justifies abolishing a fundamental tenet of academic freedom and subjecting a world class state university to the whims of a governor who has a political agenda to destroy education. Part of how Walker does that is exactly to feed the “politics of hate” so that people want to pull others down rather than lift others up.
LikeLike
I appreciate your response, but I did not intend to defend tenure as a fundamental tenet of academic freedom (not saying it’s not either, just saying it’s pretty debatable in the modern university and funding context). Believe me when I say I am the last person on earth who would defend Scott Walker, but I also think villain-izing him to the point where you argue he’s the reason for everything bad happening in Wisconsin (and I agree there are a lot of bad things happening) is also counterproductive.
Walker was elected, and re-elected, by people who obviously share at least some of his views. And whether you are pro-tenure or not, I think it would be hard for anyone who cares about academia to support his current meddling with UW. But I think there were a lot of indicators that he’s the sort of leader who might head in this direction. And somehow I don’t recall (though I also don’t live in Wisconsin) a lot of hue and cry from the academic/university community when Walker undermined the financial and job secuirty of public servants by abolishing public-sector unions. Why are tenured professors and their protections more important than high school and elementary school teachers? Or other state employees?
Either you support the central tenets of a progressive society or you don’t (obviously, the details are debatable). Academic freedom is important in the context where people care about freedom and enfranchisement generally. But a teacher who just lost her job protection and/or pension probably has other thigns to worry about. If we continue to stay silent while the politics around us slowly erodes hard won (people died to help legalize unions) freedoms and protections for others in our communities, why should we expect support when our own are threatened?
LikeLike
I am not sure why my comments implied that I do not support teachers or others who have been harmed by Scott Walker. I protested, I voted, I wrote letters, I spoke at legislative sessions. Nothing helped even a small amount.
At some point, living in a fascist state fueled by willful ignorance gets a little old. I am still fighting the fight, and I will do everything to save the UW. However, I now do this on behalf of a great university and no longer on behalf of a populace who does not value us.
LikeLike
My intention is certainly not to single you out as supporting or not the public-sector unions…just to point out that in general there wasn’t a major show of solidarity (that I’m aware of, I don’t live in Wisconsin, so I might not have heard of it). My larger point also, though, is that in the long run there is a certain amount of futility in fighting to preserve public institutions when the public stops caring. I don’t know how you solve this problem, but the reality of public funding is that it does reflect public values at some point.
Wisconsin is a weird case, since you effectively are dealing with cronyism as well. But the public does seem to like Scott Walker, and that’s, to me, far more worrisome than any one action he’s taken.
LikeLike
The protests that ultimately involved hundreds of thousands of people started as a small effort in which “I ❤ UW" valentines were delivered to Scott Walker. It is simply incorrect to say that there wasn't a major show of solidarity.
As to your point about public values, all I can say is that it's just sad what is happening. By the time the public realizes they didn't even get their $5 tax cut and that their kid can't get into any reasonable university at an affordable price, Scott Walker will have taken his bags of money and run.
LikeLike
J Doe’s need to publish this annonymously makes me wonder about the value of academic freedom that tenure provides.
LikeLike
It’s more about the lack of academic freedom that a lack of tenure provides, since after all the entire subject of the post is Wisconsin’s threat to abolish tenure.
LikeLike
Can I test out an argument here? Tenure is not just about freedom from political pressures. Tenure is also about the right to set your own research agenda. If we were being evaluated for rehiring every three years, we would be pressured to work only on projects which would pay off quickly. Moreover, we would be pressured to work on projects which would please those evaluating us, be they our chairman, our deans, or the Pointy-Haired Bosses appointed to boards of regents. One of the advantages of the tenure system is that it puts the decisions of what research to do in the hands of those doing the research.
The first objection to this argument that occurs to me is that there is a lot to be learned from trying to justify your work to someone outside of your field and the complete independence given by tenure would isolate one from this valuable experience. However, tenure does not give complete independence (go twenty years without a pay raise and see how independent you feel). Also there is a big difference between justifying your work to other scientists and scholars or curious layfolk and having one research direction set by deans/boards of regents.
LikeLike
I like that argument, and I’ve seen it play out. There are more than the two models “research prolifically” and “stop researching.” There’s also “switch fields,” which you can only do if you are allowed to think longer term.
LikeLike
This argument makes sense in theory, but I don’t think it really plays out. There is a fair bit of evidence to suggest that the current research funding climate is extremely limiting to research agenda-setting. In fact, I might argue that the greatest research agenda setting freedom in modern history occurred during the hey day of privately funded research labs (like the much-vaunted Bell Labs). I don’t think things are as straight-forward as you might think…and if you’ve never spent much time in an industrial research setting, you might overestimate how difficult it is to pitch new ideas.
BTW, no debate about research freedom should proceed without mentioning the wonderful work by Paula Stephan at Georgia State University on research/university economics :
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674049710
LikeLike
All good points above. I think they speak to the fact of needing to enhance protection of research freedom over political pressures rather than relaxing these protections.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Ritz Bits and commented:
Some thoughts about Madison’s tenure issue.
LikeLike