Colleges face challenges as states attack tenure

Boston Globe

5 hours ago

At least 11 states, including seven since the start of this year, have imposed new levels of review for tenured faculty, made it easier to fire them or proposed banning tenure altogether. Almost all have Republican-controlled legislatures or have seen lawmakers question what is being taught on campuses.
This comes at the same time as, but has gotten less attention than, the Trump administration's higher education funding cuts and investigations into colleges and universities.
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'It's the flip side of the same assault,' said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, or AFT, which
Unlike nontenured faculty, who can be dismissed or not reappointed, tenured faculty have more protections — including from being demoted or fired for what they think or say.
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Without tenure, 'If you pursue the truth in ways that are uncomfortable for donors, for students, for trustees, for the state legislature, then you'll lose your job,' said Mark Criley, senior program officer for academic freedom, tenure and governance at the faculty union the American Association of University Professors, or AAUP.
Even before the second Trump administration and this wave of tenure challenges, 45 percent of faculty members said they
Most backers of curtailing tenure say they're not doing it for ideological reasons. They say they're trying to lower costs for taxpayers and consumers by removing faculty whose productivity is low.
The goal is 'getting rid of professors who are not pulling their weight,' said Nebraska state Sen. Loren Lippincott, a Republican and sponsor of a proposal to
He hears stories 'of professors that have tenure bragging about how little they work, how little they put in or how few hours they show up to teach classes,' Lippincott said at
In other states, however, curbs on tenure have been linked directly or indirectly to faculty political views.
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An Ohio bill passed in late March will
Over the governor's veto, the Republican-dominated Kentucky General Assembly in March passed a bill
Sponsors said the measure will uphold performance standards, but Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, contended in his veto message that it
After faculty at the University of Texas at Austin signed
A legislative proposal in Texas the following year failed to eliminate tenure, but broadened
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In Indiana, a measure added to
This follows a law passed last year in Indiana requiring reviews of tenured faculty and
Arkansas legislators passed a law in March allowing university administrators to call for
There have been earlier attempts
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Tenure
The move was largely a response to firings around that time of university and college faculty for teaching the theory of evolution, said Reuben, the Harvard historian.
'Faculty had to be able to have the freedom to ask questions, and they could not be tied down to any sort of intellectual test imposed by church dogma or political parties,' Reuben said.
Momentum for removing this protection comes against a backdrop of falling trust in colleges and universities and of the people who work at them.
Only about a third of Americans have 'a great deal' or 'a lot' of
Only a little more than a third of Republicans believe university professors
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'This level of attack couldn't gain the kind of momentum it has without the declining public support for higher education,' Reuben said. 'It couldn't have happened to this magnitude before, because there was a general sense that higher education was good for society.'
In Hawai'i, it was a fiscally conservative Democrat, state Sen. Donna Mercado Kim, who pushed, beginning in 2022, for tenure to be banned for University of Hawai'i faculty who do research and other jobs besides teaching, such as providing student support. Although she did not respond to repeated requests for comment, Kim has written that the effort was a way to make sure taxpayer and student tuition money given to the university
After hundreds of faculty protested, she agreed to a compromise under which the university has set up a task force to study its tenure procedures.
'To me, it's about the Senate wanting control over the university,' said Christian Fern, executive director of the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly, or UHPA, the faculty union.
'Being able to teach without political retribution — which rings really loudly right now — do you want to have a faculty member able to teach what they learned in their research, even if it's politically incorrect?' Fern asked. 'I think yes.'
Karla Hayashi, president of the board of the UHPA and a former lecturer and English composition professor who now runs a tutoring center at the University of Hawai'i at Hilo, said she expects more attempts to weaken tenure. Hayashi sees them as an extension of political pressure that starts at the federal level.
'If I take away your tenure, then you're dependent on doing what I want you to do to earn your living,' she said.
Contrary to arguments from critics, tenure 'is not a job for life,' Criley, of the AAUP, said. 'It's a guarantee that you'll only be dismissed for cause when a case can be made that you're not fit for your professional duties — that you're negligent, incompetent or guilty of some sort of misconduct that violates professional ethics.'
Not all faculty agree that tenure is fine the way it is.
'If your main goal is job security, I don't think you're going to be that adventuresome of a professor,' said Jim Wetherbe, a professor in the business department at Texas Tech University and a longtime
Academic freedom at public universities is already protected by the First Amendment, Wetherbe has argued.
But Weingarten, the AFT head, said the immediate worry is that what faculty can say or teach will be narrowed.
'The right wing keeps talking about free speech, free speech, free speech, and an attack on tenure is an attack on free speech,' she said. 'It's basically an attempt to create compliance.'
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