>


by definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you

That's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.
But strangely not judges >

Or their own jobs. 
Edit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits. >

Um...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters. >

Gerrymandering enters the conversation >

The cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep >

That's close to a Proportional system, which would fix the problem. The system mostly stays as it is, with a new rule that means a party's proportion of seats must equal it's proportion of votes - so if a party wins 55% of the vote but only wins 50% of the seats, it can add 'at large' members (aka 'list members') until the proportion is correct. That is how most democracies operate. Usually parties only add one or two 'at large' or 'list' members, if any, since there is no motivation to Gerrymander to begin with. >

Whoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that >

Well, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that. >

Hoo boy.  What could possibly go wrong here?  Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos. >

Universities going bankrupt because "only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school".
Seriously though, enrollment is going to drop because who tf would pay good money for our children to come out dumber than they were when they went in? Especially in the science and history areas of study. >


who tf would pay good money for our children to come out dumber than they were when they went in?

Have you seen the enrollment numbers at Liberty University? >

The main University is depressingly lucrative. But the soul-crushing depression sets in with their online 'university' numbers, which is a massive money pipeline selling useless/negative education through a real-estate grift masquerading as a church masquerading as a school. >


real-estate grift

What do you mean? How does this connect to their online programs? >

They buy or lease real estate for satellite campuses in other cities and sell them later on. Similar to how storage facility companies mainly make money via real estate >

Wow, I had no idea >

I mean lots of businesses are substantially real estate plays adjacent to their other businesses. One reason there's Banks on every corner. McDonald's corp is a real estate holdings company. Chain Hotels etc. >

I've wondered at the placement of a lot of chain establishments >

"The share of Republicans and independent-leaning Republicans who said higher education was having a negative effect on the country grew from 37% to 59% from 2015 to 2019 in Pew Research Center polling."
What happened in those four years, I wonder? >

I'd love to hear what that perceived negative effect is. There's an argument that too many jobs require degrees when they really shouldn't, but I suspect that's not the problem for them. >

Something, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination >

w o a k >

Stopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true. You do this at your own peril, and hubris is a fickle, chaotic mistress. >


Stopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.

Except it will. We've learned by now that truth is relative. Conservatives in the US have whipped up such a fury over Critical Race Theory that they've convinced half the country it's being taught in grade school. It isn't and never was. That truth simply didn't matter.
Donald Trump and those around him used violence and tried to overthrow a democratically elected president. In the old days, he and they would have been hung or shot. That's the truth. The other day, the speaker of the house THANKED HIM.
Truth doesn't matter. >

I'd swear to God if I believed in him that these idiots see the phrase "Critical Race Theory" and think it just means being critical of white people. Their lust for victimhood never fucking ends. >

holy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.
It's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts. >

One thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad. >

And a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink. >

I mean, slytherin traits are not exactly evil…  ambition, cunning, resourcefulness and determination. None of those are inherently evil >

Those are the triats of a lot of people who get into politics or leadership roles because they want absolute power. >

I mean… in the books Merlin was in slytherin lol 
Those traits can be in anyone. Just like a gryffindor hufflepuff or ravenclaw. Any of those traits can also be put towards your example. >


in the books Merlin was in slytherin lol

No. That was an expanded item from "Pottermore". I personally don't consider any of JK's after the book add-ons valid. >

Man, why? Colleges hardly even offer tenure-track jobs anymore.  I've been job hunting for a few years and everything is "visting" this or "adjunct" that.  You want to ban people drinking sasparilla too? >

Conservatives dont have a moral or logical backbone, so if youre looking for a well thought out argument for anything they stand for, its simply not going to exist. >

Another example of a system that does need a few tweaks through reform just getting smashed with a hammer.  There are about 50 other issues state universities need to address before they even get to shitty tenured professors.  Starting with the NCAA and how college coaches are usually the highest paid state employees in every state. >

The problem is not with tenure, it's with administrative bloat. Universities are switching to more part-time, adjunct professors and raising tuition while paying administrators like they're executives at a Fortune 500 company >

Professors got tired of administering the day to day operations of the university and so brought in a managerial class of deans and other administrators. The results sadly were predictable. >

I don't think it was the faculty choice. >

It was, historically. There are still some remnants of shared governance at universities (the deans are technically professors, so is the Provost, often there is a faculty Senate that votes on things, etc). But power concentrated in the administrative class over time. >

I understand that. I'm just not so sure it was faculty who initiated or wanted such a switch. A few years ago a paper came out that, if I remember correctly, put this shift on college BoTs (at least at state institutions). >

More protection of "free speech" by Republicans who bemoan "cancel culture."  Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy? >

The etymology isn't clear.  "hypercrisy" just looks like a misspelling.
Attacking academic freedom is not usually the act of "freedom fighters". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes.  Iran comes to mind. >

Since the Greek word 'hypo' actually means 'below' or 'under', 'hyper' would be the exact opposite, meaning 'above'. Bathocrisy would at least be linguistically okay, but that's all a Classics degree gets you. >

I'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.
Elachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy. >

Wow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new? >

Water either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️ >

The headline should be "REPUBLICANS take aim at tenure for university professors". It's pretty much the same thing, but I hate how republicans escape being called out in the media. >

The GOPs unwritten policies:
Anti-gun law
anti-healthcare 
anti-education 
anti-worker rights
anti-choice
anti-voter rights
anti-oversight 
anti-human rights 
anti-science
They are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic >

They want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves. >

They want their own "march through the institutions"...just to harken back to a time long left behind. A time that only existed in their self-deluded, misremembering minds. 
The dangers of what these Dodos are laying groundwork for, putting in place through the courts, via school boards, and other so-called "culture war issues" won't be felt for years to come. 
And yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. 
The flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. 
I can only hope they will be starved of it but I've been seeing Jim Crow politics make a slow resurgence over the last 15yrs and it's only going to get worse in these relics' deaththrows before it gets better. >

Republicans hate free speech. Sad. >

I see one misconception that this article promotes: tenure is not a perk. It is not a lifetime appointment. It is not the freedom to say whatever with no repercussions. It doesn't protect professors from laziness and incompetence.  Tenure simply guarantees due process and a hearing prior to an educator being let go.
Without tenure, professors would be forced to refrain from any controversial topics in their classes, and those controversial topics would go unaddressed by the education system. This might not seem like a problem, until you realize that the most extreme 20% of the population determines which topics are controversial at any one time. >

No it doesn't.  I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.
/s >

"I love the poorly educated!" >

This is another example of conservatives scrambling to slam the barn door shut after the horses escaped. A desperate tantrum from a dying party. Their last death spasms will be attempts to pull the building down on top of us all. Stay tuned for the upcoming debt ceiling fight. Republicans will see an engineered global financial crisis as a final opportunity to remake the world in their image. >

Conservatives have been successfully targeting tenure for many years now under the guise of “education reform.” It’s a sham. True education reform increases access to education by lowering cost and improving access, not shutting down the voices of those who have opinions with which you do not agree. Republicans have been radicalized on this issue ever since the Reagan era. >

This is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history... >

Go outside >

Tenure? That's rare already since most colleges are using adjuncts to take on the same course loads, but with lower pay, no retirement and no benefits. Tenure might as well not exist anyway because of how shit University practices are. >

Yes, and adjuncts are easy to “not renew” for any cause, like in the recent case where the instructor was not renewed because she showed medieval images of Mohammad in an Art History course.
Tenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration. >

were they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous. >

I've spent a ton of time in academia and agree that some reform to the tenure process and lifetime appointments is needed.  On one hand it allows professors to go "outside of the box" and research things that may not be hot topic grant issues without fear of repercussion, but it also leads to many lazy professors who know they are untouchable and don't have to put in any work to take a paycheck.  We've all had that 65 year old professor who hasn't changed his class or minted a new PhD in over 15 years.
However, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine. >

Then start phasing it out of offer letters. Don't promise it so someone takes the job instead of going to industry where the pay and, often, work-life balance are better then take it away mid- or late-career. That's just not cricket. >

Almost no faculty are offered tenure when hired unless they are being poached from somewhere whey they already have tenure or will soon earn tenure. There is a process to earn it after being hired. >

Of course. But the prospect of tenure is there and colors decisions. And it's the same story for those who work hard for 6 years and are awarded tenure. They devote their lives to the job partly due to tenure. You can't just pull that out from under them. >

Well, by definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you. But you can lose it due to incompetence, malfeasance, or moral turpitude.  But that takes a long time with regard to violations, evidence, reprimands, etc.