Disagree on Tenure
Wiener, Jon
DENNIS WRONG presents a laundry list of arguments that have been brought up by critics of tenure. He seems to favor replacing tenure with a more marketdriven system that would get rid of all...
...Presumably Wrong favors a system in which a peer-review panel would hear complaints of violations of academic freedom...
...What about faculty members fired because the dean wants to give their jobs to his relatives...
...WBONG IS right that deadwood is a problem in the university...
...it denied National Labor Relations Board protection to teachers at private colleges...
...But that's hardly the only thing academic freedom protects: what about faculty fired for criticizing the dean...
...The Wall Street Journal editorial page says things like that practically every day, but it's hard to believe that argument will find much support among readers of Dissent...
...or for not giving a good grade to the star quarterback...
...JON WIENER teaches history at the University of California, Irvine, and is a contributing editor of the Nation...
...At a time when the logic of the market is spreading with unprecedented speed, when job insecurity is a fact of life for everyone from service workers to corporate executives, it's hard to argue that DISSENT / Summer 1998 87 anybody should have more protection for his or her job, rather than less...
...He seems to favor replacing tenure with a more marketdriven system that would get rid of all those incompetents in our midst...
...Few petitioners are going to be able to refute arguments like these—especially when review panels would consist of other untenured faculty members who themselves would have to worry about whether they would be reappointed if they displeased the administration...
...Dennis Wrong can't think of a reason...
...Don't we all recognize the logic of the bottom line: why should anybody be exempt...
...He says unions provide "protection for the inept...
...88 DISSENT / Summer 1998...
...Those most vulnerable to firing are those who teach classes with low enrollments—poetry, classics, medieval history—and those who irritate deans and department chairs by disagreeing with them...
...But Wrong is against unions for college teachers...
...If the university abandons tenure for a more market-driven system, the faculty who survive will be those who teach big, popular courses and who ingratiate themselves with the administration —along with a few well-known superstars...
...besides, the former professors' teaching wasn't outstanding, and their research lacked sufficient distinction...
...The solution to the problem of deadwood is not to abolish tenure, but rather to strengthen the review process so that everyone is reviewed every two or three years...
...Wrong's one positive recommendation to protect academic freedom in a world without tenure is to establish "legal protection of faculty against being fired for expressing opinions offensive to some organized group...
...Of course incompetence should be grounds for dismissal...
...The university is valuable in part because it is one of the few institutions today that is not completely market driven, because it supports and nurtures independent thought that might seem unproductive or useless to the mainstream—the kind of work Dennis Wrong had done for the last thirty years...
...But eliminating tenure is not likely to bring higher intellectual standards...
...Wrong criticizes me for arguing that, in the absence of a tenure system, unionization provides the only hope for college teachers in a market-driven economy...
...They can still organize and seek to negotiate a union contract...
...My article criticized that kind of proposal, and tried to imagine how such a system might work: fired professors would exercise their right to appear before a review panel to state their belief that their teaching and research had been good, and that the reason they hadn't been renewed was illegitimate...
...But the Yeshiva decision didn't prohibit faculty unions...
...The university lawyers would respond that the school's development plan calls for downsizing in their fields...
...Competent people could be hired at lower salaries...
...or for teaching courses with low enrollments...
...And the tens of thousands of college teachers who work in public community colleges aren't covered by the Yeshiva decision...
...The Supreme Court's 1980 Yeshiva decision makes faculty unions "moot," he says...
Vol. 45 • July 1998 • No. 3
