Re: tenure

[Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tenure is a very difficult subject.  It protects the lazy as well as those who
challenge the system.  It certainly does not select the best.

Jim is also correct on the tendency to go conservative -- not necessarily right
wing -- but a more comfortable brand of liberalism is probably the most common
that I have seen.  Most of our conservatives arrived as conservatives.

I think that the lack of job security is a key.  Students are far from
confident about their job prospects.  In the 60s, they just needed a degree --
in anything -- to get a good job.  Now they have to study computers, business
....  Certainly, the young faculty are not confident.  Here I am guessing.  We
don't have anyone under 45 since we have been downsizing rather than hiring.

Jim Devine wrote:

> [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

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx