tenure

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[was: Re: [PEN-L:3358] Re: Russell R. Menard on Eric Williams]

At 10:15 PM 10/20/2000 -0400, you wrote:
> McLaren writes "No tenure, no
> peace." Maybe the slogan should be "No tenure, no intellectual treason."

maybe, but I doubt that constant economic insecurity (the opposite of
tenure) prevents intellectual treason. The part-timers who work at the
university have to please the department Chair, giving him or her the power
to determine the textbook, the content of teaching, etc. If the Chair lacks
tenure, then he or she isn't really a chair. The administrators (who often
don't need tenure, because they can use their insider power) run the show,
as the profs end up being a bunch of insecure hired guns. It wouldn't be
the left that determines the agenda.

I think the key reason why profs. go right-wing is because they're cut off
from leftist social movements that inspire and/or push them. That can
happen not only because tenure allows them to be insulated, but also
because the left movements dwindle or go off into cloud-cuckoo lands of
their own (like during the 1970s). Tenure might allow someone to escape
into his or her abstruse or obscure dreams (or simply leisure or
reactionary nonsense), but it also might allow someone like Paul Baran to
stick to his principles in the middle of the right-wing sh*t-storm of the
1950s.
Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine