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innovation-hacking2

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shitposting_dataset5

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[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history..." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP)." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return..." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off..." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)", ">\n\nSo, conservatives want to force private institutions to do something?\nSounds like fascism to me." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)", ">\n\nSo, conservatives want to force private institutions to do something?\nSounds like fascism to me.", ">\n\nSad this is all happening. I guess the lack of action and accountability in the USA made it even more ok for insurrectionist to run free in countries all around the world." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)", ">\n\nSo, conservatives want to force private institutions to do something?\nSounds like fascism to me.", ">\n\nSad this is all happening. I guess the lack of action and accountability in the USA made it even more ok for insurrectionist to run free in countries all around the world.", ">\n\nEveryone should go to Carousel at age 30." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)", ">\n\nSo, conservatives want to force private institutions to do something?\nSounds like fascism to me.", ">\n\nSad this is all happening. I guess the lack of action and accountability in the USA made it even more ok for insurrectionist to run free in countries all around the world.", ">\n\nEveryone should go to Carousel at age 30.", ">\n\nWe really need to go after term limits…." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)", ">\n\nSo, conservatives want to force private institutions to do something?\nSounds like fascism to me.", ">\n\nSad this is all happening. I guess the lack of action and accountability in the USA made it even more ok for insurrectionist to run free in countries all around the world.", ">\n\nEveryone should go to Carousel at age 30.", ">\n\nWe really need to go after term limits….", ">\n\nIronic, considering tenure was created specifically for this reason." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)", ">\n\nSo, conservatives want to force private institutions to do something?\nSounds like fascism to me.", ">\n\nSad this is all happening. I guess the lack of action and accountability in the USA made it even more ok for insurrectionist to run free in countries all around the world.", ">\n\nEveryone should go to Carousel at age 30.", ">\n\nWe really need to go after term limits….", ">\n\nIronic, considering tenure was created specifically for this reason.", ">\n\nIsn’t this always the authoritarian tactic? They attack the education system and the educated that stand in their way of creating a culture that is blind to anything but their message. It’s the first steps of like what Mao did by throwing all the educated classes into the fields or killing them." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)", ">\n\nSo, conservatives want to force private institutions to do something?\nSounds like fascism to me.", ">\n\nSad this is all happening. I guess the lack of action and accountability in the USA made it even more ok for insurrectionist to run free in countries all around the world.", ">\n\nEveryone should go to Carousel at age 30.", ">\n\nWe really need to go after term limits….", ">\n\nIronic, considering tenure was created specifically for this reason.", ">\n\nIsn’t this always the authoritarian tactic? They attack the education system and the educated that stand in their way of creating a culture that is blind to anything but their message. It’s the first steps of like what Mao did by throwing all the educated classes into the fields or killing them.", ">\n\nTenure is pretty dumb, but if we're going to ban lifetime appointments we should ban all lifetime appointments and not pick and choose which ones are better than others." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)", ">\n\nSo, conservatives want to force private institutions to do something?\nSounds like fascism to me.", ">\n\nSad this is all happening. I guess the lack of action and accountability in the USA made it even more ok for insurrectionist to run free in countries all around the world.", ">\n\nEveryone should go to Carousel at age 30.", ">\n\nWe really need to go after term limits….", ">\n\nIronic, considering tenure was created specifically for this reason.", ">\n\nIsn’t this always the authoritarian tactic? They attack the education system and the educated that stand in their way of creating a culture that is blind to anything but their message. It’s the first steps of like what Mao did by throwing all the educated classes into the fields or killing them.", ">\n\nTenure is pretty dumb, but if we're going to ban lifetime appointments we should ban all lifetime appointments and not pick and choose which ones are better than others.", ">\n\nThere’s a lot wrong in the Michigan public education system where I live. However, there is a constitutional requirement that universities remain independent of the rest of government, meaning when the republicans were in charge they couldn’t change the tenure system even though they tried under John Engler. Ironically, Engler was appointed interim president of Michigan State, and he was eventually ousted for incompetence. More states should adopt this model of independence." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)", ">\n\nSo, conservatives want to force private institutions to do something?\nSounds like fascism to me.", ">\n\nSad this is all happening. I guess the lack of action and accountability in the USA made it even more ok for insurrectionist to run free in countries all around the world.", ">\n\nEveryone should go to Carousel at age 30.", ">\n\nWe really need to go after term limits….", ">\n\nIronic, considering tenure was created specifically for this reason.", ">\n\nIsn’t this always the authoritarian tactic? They attack the education system and the educated that stand in their way of creating a culture that is blind to anything but their message. It’s the first steps of like what Mao did by throwing all the educated classes into the fields or killing them.", ">\n\nTenure is pretty dumb, but if we're going to ban lifetime appointments we should ban all lifetime appointments and not pick and choose which ones are better than others.", ">\n\nThere’s a lot wrong in the Michigan public education system where I live. However, there is a constitutional requirement that universities remain independent of the rest of government, meaning when the republicans were in charge they couldn’t change the tenure system even though they tried under John Engler. Ironically, Engler was appointed interim president of Michigan State, and he was eventually ousted for incompetence. More states should adopt this model of independence.", ">\n\nWhy bother? Just let declining admissions and absurd admin salaries do the same thing over the next decade. Sure, it'll take a little longer, but it's far simpler way to hamstring higher ed" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)", ">\n\nSo, conservatives want to force private institutions to do something?\nSounds like fascism to me.", ">\n\nSad this is all happening. I guess the lack of action and accountability in the USA made it even more ok for insurrectionist to run free in countries all around the world.", ">\n\nEveryone should go to Carousel at age 30.", ">\n\nWe really need to go after term limits….", ">\n\nIronic, considering tenure was created specifically for this reason.", ">\n\nIsn’t this always the authoritarian tactic? They attack the education system and the educated that stand in their way of creating a culture that is blind to anything but their message. It’s the first steps of like what Mao did by throwing all the educated classes into the fields or killing them.", ">\n\nTenure is pretty dumb, but if we're going to ban lifetime appointments we should ban all lifetime appointments and not pick and choose which ones are better than others.", ">\n\nThere’s a lot wrong in the Michigan public education system where I live. However, there is a constitutional requirement that universities remain independent of the rest of government, meaning when the republicans were in charge they couldn’t change the tenure system even though they tried under John Engler. Ironically, Engler was appointed interim president of Michigan State, and he was eventually ousted for incompetence. More states should adopt this model of independence.", ">\n\nWhy bother? Just let declining admissions and absurd admin salaries do the same thing over the next decade. Sure, it'll take a little longer, but it's far simpler way to hamstring higher ed", ">\n\nOnce again the party of small government seeks to insinuate itself into areas it does not belong. They are not conservatives; they are the fascist far right!" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)", ">\n\nSo, conservatives want to force private institutions to do something?\nSounds like fascism to me.", ">\n\nSad this is all happening. I guess the lack of action and accountability in the USA made it even more ok for insurrectionist to run free in countries all around the world.", ">\n\nEveryone should go to Carousel at age 30.", ">\n\nWe really need to go after term limits….", ">\n\nIronic, considering tenure was created specifically for this reason.", ">\n\nIsn’t this always the authoritarian tactic? They attack the education system and the educated that stand in their way of creating a culture that is blind to anything but their message. It’s the first steps of like what Mao did by throwing all the educated classes into the fields or killing them.", ">\n\nTenure is pretty dumb, but if we're going to ban lifetime appointments we should ban all lifetime appointments and not pick and choose which ones are better than others.", ">\n\nThere’s a lot wrong in the Michigan public education system where I live. However, there is a constitutional requirement that universities remain independent of the rest of government, meaning when the republicans were in charge they couldn’t change the tenure system even though they tried under John Engler. Ironically, Engler was appointed interim president of Michigan State, and he was eventually ousted for incompetence. More states should adopt this model of independence.", ">\n\nWhy bother? Just let declining admissions and absurd admin salaries do the same thing over the next decade. Sure, it'll take a little longer, but it's far simpler way to hamstring higher ed", ">\n\nOnce again the party of small government seeks to insinuate itself into areas it does not belong. They are not conservatives; they are the fascist far right!", ">\n\nAnd are quietly filling administrative slots with many social platforms in order to infiltrate the last vestiges of intelligence available to most. And they censor what they do not like. And if it aint god or trump or shooting protestors (apparently the single biggest fear for chicken hawks is unarmed protestors), then say sayonara sucker! Your ass is mute.\nCensorship is alive and well in America and if republicans are saying the democrats are doing it then you can bet your ass the democrats aren't doing it and the republicans are." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)", ">\n\nSo, conservatives want to force private institutions to do something?\nSounds like fascism to me.", ">\n\nSad this is all happening. I guess the lack of action and accountability in the USA made it even more ok for insurrectionist to run free in countries all around the world.", ">\n\nEveryone should go to Carousel at age 30.", ">\n\nWe really need to go after term limits….", ">\n\nIronic, considering tenure was created specifically for this reason.", ">\n\nIsn’t this always the authoritarian tactic? They attack the education system and the educated that stand in their way of creating a culture that is blind to anything but their message. It’s the first steps of like what Mao did by throwing all the educated classes into the fields or killing them.", ">\n\nTenure is pretty dumb, but if we're going to ban lifetime appointments we should ban all lifetime appointments and not pick and choose which ones are better than others.", ">\n\nThere’s a lot wrong in the Michigan public education system where I live. However, there is a constitutional requirement that universities remain independent of the rest of government, meaning when the republicans were in charge they couldn’t change the tenure system even though they tried under John Engler. Ironically, Engler was appointed interim president of Michigan State, and he was eventually ousted for incompetence. More states should adopt this model of independence.", ">\n\nWhy bother? Just let declining admissions and absurd admin salaries do the same thing over the next decade. Sure, it'll take a little longer, but it's far simpler way to hamstring higher ed", ">\n\nOnce again the party of small government seeks to insinuate itself into areas it does not belong. They are not conservatives; they are the fascist far right!", ">\n\nAnd are quietly filling administrative slots with many social platforms in order to infiltrate the last vestiges of intelligence available to most. And they censor what they do not like. And if it aint god or trump or shooting protestors (apparently the single biggest fear for chicken hawks is unarmed protestors), then say sayonara sucker! Your ass is mute.\nCensorship is alive and well in America and if republicans are saying the democrats are doing it then you can bet your ass the democrats aren't doing it and the republicans are.", ">\n\nThey will oppose tenure until they have the last free thinking professor out of school. Then when they have installed their handpicked conservative religious zealots in all the university’s watch how fast they reinstitute tenure" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)", ">\n\nSo, conservatives want to force private institutions to do something?\nSounds like fascism to me.", ">\n\nSad this is all happening. I guess the lack of action and accountability in the USA made it even more ok for insurrectionist to run free in countries all around the world.", ">\n\nEveryone should go to Carousel at age 30.", ">\n\nWe really need to go after term limits….", ">\n\nIronic, considering tenure was created specifically for this reason.", ">\n\nIsn’t this always the authoritarian tactic? They attack the education system and the educated that stand in their way of creating a culture that is blind to anything but their message. It’s the first steps of like what Mao did by throwing all the educated classes into the fields or killing them.", ">\n\nTenure is pretty dumb, but if we're going to ban lifetime appointments we should ban all lifetime appointments and not pick and choose which ones are better than others.", ">\n\nThere’s a lot wrong in the Michigan public education system where I live. However, there is a constitutional requirement that universities remain independent of the rest of government, meaning when the republicans were in charge they couldn’t change the tenure system even though they tried under John Engler. Ironically, Engler was appointed interim president of Michigan State, and he was eventually ousted for incompetence. More states should adopt this model of independence.", ">\n\nWhy bother? Just let declining admissions and absurd admin salaries do the same thing over the next decade. Sure, it'll take a little longer, but it's far simpler way to hamstring higher ed", ">\n\nOnce again the party of small government seeks to insinuate itself into areas it does not belong. They are not conservatives; they are the fascist far right!", ">\n\nAnd are quietly filling administrative slots with many social platforms in order to infiltrate the last vestiges of intelligence available to most. And they censor what they do not like. And if it aint god or trump or shooting protestors (apparently the single biggest fear for chicken hawks is unarmed protestors), then say sayonara sucker! Your ass is mute.\nCensorship is alive and well in America and if republicans are saying the democrats are doing it then you can bet your ass the democrats aren't doing it and the republicans are.", ">\n\nThey will oppose tenure until they have the last free thinking professor out of school. Then when they have installed their handpicked conservative religious zealots in all the university’s watch how fast they reinstitute tenure", ">\n\nExamples: liberty, hillsdale." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)", ">\n\nSo, conservatives want to force private institutions to do something?\nSounds like fascism to me.", ">\n\nSad this is all happening. I guess the lack of action and accountability in the USA made it even more ok for insurrectionist to run free in countries all around the world.", ">\n\nEveryone should go to Carousel at age 30.", ">\n\nWe really need to go after term limits….", ">\n\nIronic, considering tenure was created specifically for this reason.", ">\n\nIsn’t this always the authoritarian tactic? They attack the education system and the educated that stand in their way of creating a culture that is blind to anything but their message. It’s the first steps of like what Mao did by throwing all the educated classes into the fields or killing them.", ">\n\nTenure is pretty dumb, but if we're going to ban lifetime appointments we should ban all lifetime appointments and not pick and choose which ones are better than others.", ">\n\nThere’s a lot wrong in the Michigan public education system where I live. However, there is a constitutional requirement that universities remain independent of the rest of government, meaning when the republicans were in charge they couldn’t change the tenure system even though they tried under John Engler. Ironically, Engler was appointed interim president of Michigan State, and he was eventually ousted for incompetence. More states should adopt this model of independence.", ">\n\nWhy bother? Just let declining admissions and absurd admin salaries do the same thing over the next decade. Sure, it'll take a little longer, but it's far simpler way to hamstring higher ed", ">\n\nOnce again the party of small government seeks to insinuate itself into areas it does not belong. They are not conservatives; they are the fascist far right!", ">\n\nAnd are quietly filling administrative slots with many social platforms in order to infiltrate the last vestiges of intelligence available to most. And they censor what they do not like. And if it aint god or trump or shooting protestors (apparently the single biggest fear for chicken hawks is unarmed protestors), then say sayonara sucker! Your ass is mute.\nCensorship is alive and well in America and if republicans are saying the democrats are doing it then you can bet your ass the democrats aren't doing it and the republicans are.", ">\n\nThey will oppose tenure until they have the last free thinking professor out of school. Then when they have installed their handpicked conservative religious zealots in all the university’s watch how fast they reinstitute tenure", ">\n\nExamples: liberty, hillsdale.", ">\n\nIt will never not be funny to me that conservatives are at war with education. Almost as if being worldly and educated is the Achilles heel of conservatism. Hard to be a conservative when you are made more aware of the complexity of the world and how it works." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)", ">\n\nSo, conservatives want to force private institutions to do something?\nSounds like fascism to me.", ">\n\nSad this is all happening. I guess the lack of action and accountability in the USA made it even more ok for insurrectionist to run free in countries all around the world.", ">\n\nEveryone should go to Carousel at age 30.", ">\n\nWe really need to go after term limits….", ">\n\nIronic, considering tenure was created specifically for this reason.", ">\n\nIsn’t this always the authoritarian tactic? They attack the education system and the educated that stand in their way of creating a culture that is blind to anything but their message. It’s the first steps of like what Mao did by throwing all the educated classes into the fields or killing them.", ">\n\nTenure is pretty dumb, but if we're going to ban lifetime appointments we should ban all lifetime appointments and not pick and choose which ones are better than others.", ">\n\nThere’s a lot wrong in the Michigan public education system where I live. However, there is a constitutional requirement that universities remain independent of the rest of government, meaning when the republicans were in charge they couldn’t change the tenure system even though they tried under John Engler. Ironically, Engler was appointed interim president of Michigan State, and he was eventually ousted for incompetence. More states should adopt this model of independence.", ">\n\nWhy bother? Just let declining admissions and absurd admin salaries do the same thing over the next decade. Sure, it'll take a little longer, but it's far simpler way to hamstring higher ed", ">\n\nOnce again the party of small government seeks to insinuate itself into areas it does not belong. They are not conservatives; they are the fascist far right!", ">\n\nAnd are quietly filling administrative slots with many social platforms in order to infiltrate the last vestiges of intelligence available to most. And they censor what they do not like. And if it aint god or trump or shooting protestors (apparently the single biggest fear for chicken hawks is unarmed protestors), then say sayonara sucker! Your ass is mute.\nCensorship is alive and well in America and if republicans are saying the democrats are doing it then you can bet your ass the democrats aren't doing it and the republicans are.", ">\n\nThey will oppose tenure until they have the last free thinking professor out of school. Then when they have installed their handpicked conservative religious zealots in all the university’s watch how fast they reinstitute tenure", ">\n\nExamples: liberty, hillsdale.", ">\n\nIt will never not be funny to me that conservatives are at war with education. Almost as if being worldly and educated is the Achilles heel of conservatism. Hard to be a conservative when you are made more aware of the complexity of the world and how it works.", ">\n\nIs this what small government looks like?" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)", ">\n\nSo, conservatives want to force private institutions to do something?\nSounds like fascism to me.", ">\n\nSad this is all happening. I guess the lack of action and accountability in the USA made it even more ok for insurrectionist to run free in countries all around the world.", ">\n\nEveryone should go to Carousel at age 30.", ">\n\nWe really need to go after term limits….", ">\n\nIronic, considering tenure was created specifically for this reason.", ">\n\nIsn’t this always the authoritarian tactic? They attack the education system and the educated that stand in their way of creating a culture that is blind to anything but their message. It’s the first steps of like what Mao did by throwing all the educated classes into the fields or killing them.", ">\n\nTenure is pretty dumb, but if we're going to ban lifetime appointments we should ban all lifetime appointments and not pick and choose which ones are better than others.", ">\n\nThere’s a lot wrong in the Michigan public education system where I live. However, there is a constitutional requirement that universities remain independent of the rest of government, meaning when the republicans were in charge they couldn’t change the tenure system even though they tried under John Engler. Ironically, Engler was appointed interim president of Michigan State, and he was eventually ousted for incompetence. More states should adopt this model of independence.", ">\n\nWhy bother? Just let declining admissions and absurd admin salaries do the same thing over the next decade. Sure, it'll take a little longer, but it's far simpler way to hamstring higher ed", ">\n\nOnce again the party of small government seeks to insinuate itself into areas it does not belong. They are not conservatives; they are the fascist far right!", ">\n\nAnd are quietly filling administrative slots with many social platforms in order to infiltrate the last vestiges of intelligence available to most. And they censor what they do not like. And if it aint god or trump or shooting protestors (apparently the single biggest fear for chicken hawks is unarmed protestors), then say sayonara sucker! Your ass is mute.\nCensorship is alive and well in America and if republicans are saying the democrats are doing it then you can bet your ass the democrats aren't doing it and the republicans are.", ">\n\nThey will oppose tenure until they have the last free thinking professor out of school. Then when they have installed their handpicked conservative religious zealots in all the university’s watch how fast they reinstitute tenure", ">\n\nExamples: liberty, hillsdale.", ">\n\nIt will never not be funny to me that conservatives are at war with education. Almost as if being worldly and educated is the Achilles heel of conservatism. Hard to be a conservative when you are made more aware of the complexity of the world and how it works.", ">\n\nIs this what small government looks like?", ">\n\nIs there anything more \"big government\" than removing academic freedom?" ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)", ">\n\nSo, conservatives want to force private institutions to do something?\nSounds like fascism to me.", ">\n\nSad this is all happening. I guess the lack of action and accountability in the USA made it even more ok for insurrectionist to run free in countries all around the world.", ">\n\nEveryone should go to Carousel at age 30.", ">\n\nWe really need to go after term limits….", ">\n\nIronic, considering tenure was created specifically for this reason.", ">\n\nIsn’t this always the authoritarian tactic? They attack the education system and the educated that stand in their way of creating a culture that is blind to anything but their message. It’s the first steps of like what Mao did by throwing all the educated classes into the fields or killing them.", ">\n\nTenure is pretty dumb, but if we're going to ban lifetime appointments we should ban all lifetime appointments and not pick and choose which ones are better than others.", ">\n\nThere’s a lot wrong in the Michigan public education system where I live. However, there is a constitutional requirement that universities remain independent of the rest of government, meaning when the republicans were in charge they couldn’t change the tenure system even though they tried under John Engler. Ironically, Engler was appointed interim president of Michigan State, and he was eventually ousted for incompetence. More states should adopt this model of independence.", ">\n\nWhy bother? Just let declining admissions and absurd admin salaries do the same thing over the next decade. Sure, it'll take a little longer, but it's far simpler way to hamstring higher ed", ">\n\nOnce again the party of small government seeks to insinuate itself into areas it does not belong. They are not conservatives; they are the fascist far right!", ">\n\nAnd are quietly filling administrative slots with many social platforms in order to infiltrate the last vestiges of intelligence available to most. And they censor what they do not like. And if it aint god or trump or shooting protestors (apparently the single biggest fear for chicken hawks is unarmed protestors), then say sayonara sucker! Your ass is mute.\nCensorship is alive and well in America and if republicans are saying the democrats are doing it then you can bet your ass the democrats aren't doing it and the republicans are.", ">\n\nThey will oppose tenure until they have the last free thinking professor out of school. Then when they have installed their handpicked conservative religious zealots in all the university’s watch how fast they reinstitute tenure", ">\n\nExamples: liberty, hillsdale.", ">\n\nIt will never not be funny to me that conservatives are at war with education. Almost as if being worldly and educated is the Achilles heel of conservatism. Hard to be a conservative when you are made more aware of the complexity of the world and how it works.", ">\n\nIs this what small government looks like?", ">\n\nIs there anything more \"big government\" than removing academic freedom?", ">\n\nHonestly, there are a ton of professors who shouldn’t have tenure out there, i’m not against this being changed or adapted to be more fair." ]

[ "But strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about term limits.", ">\n\nUm...they are up for review every two to six years. They just aren't being fired by the people in charge--the voters.", ">\n\nGerrymandering enters the conversation", ">\n\nThe cure for Gerrymandering- all seats run as ‘at Large’ — yep", ">\n\nThat'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.", ">\n\nWhoa! You have too much faith in the American voters- they cannot understand that", ">\n\nWell, a large chunk of the electorate really does not want to understand that.", ">\n\nHoo boy. What could possibly go wrong here? Texas science departments about to become vast wastelands of biological and environmental chaos.", ">\n\nUniversities going bankrupt because \"only liberals send their kids to college, everyone else goes to trade school\".\nSeriously 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.", ">\n\nEnrollment is already cratering because of a problem we (as in university administrators, of which I was one until 2016) all knew was coming but did nothing to address.\nThis may be kind of shocking, but, on average, it takes about 18 years to create a college freshmen. That means we can look at how many children were born in 2022 predict how many 18 year olds there will be in 2040 to potentially enter college. \nAfter 2013, the crop of 18 year olds started to trend downward, and enrollment trended downward with it. What happened around 2013? The youngest millennials turned 18. The succeeding generation is strictly smaller than the millennials, which means there were fewer 18 year olds looking to enter college. \nEveryone knew this was coming, and no one did anything to prepare for it, and now a lot of universities are getting fucked because enrollment is tanking. The university I used to work at is at full capacity with ~13,000 students. A friend who still works there told me enrollment this year is about 9,500. Take 3,500 and multiply it by the cost of tuition and fees, and you'll find a $35 million dollar hole in the university budget that has to be closed somehow.", ">\n\nPoliticizing curriculum is not the way. College has already become borderline unaffordable IMO. Tuition increases to cover the shortfall seems counter productive. What could they do to increase enrollment if the pool of students is shrinking?", ">\n\nI didn't mean to suggest that politicizing the curriculum is the solution. I more pointing out that its not (just) that \"only liberals send their kids to college,\" its that demographically speaking, we have more colleges and universities than we need for the number of 18 year olds that there will be for the next 20 years.\nThe solution is simple: some universities and colleges will just have to downsize or close.", ">\n\nI didn't mean to imply that you implied that politicizing curriculum was a solution LOL. You did not imply it and I didn't take your comment to mean that. \nI found your comment to be insightful. I figured that downsizing or closing would be the final result. I thought you were saying that universities had strategies to boost enrollment that they could have deployed years ago to prepare.\nWhen I graduated high school in the 90s, the majority of us were definitely going to a university. My kid graduated 5 years ago and it was more like 50/50. Many kids, my son included, chose alternate training programs or trade school. I was being sarcastic about the \"only liberals send their kids to college\" comment. It's echoing comments I've seen in relation to student loan forgiveness.", ">\n\nAnother major issue is the amount of money people pay for university because the government doesn’t want to cover costs.", ">\n\nThis is true, too.\nIt was a state university, and when I left in 2016, state appropriations covered 46% of operating expenses. The other 54% had to be made up from tuition and fees... which the state legislature also controlled, at least to the extent that we needed their permission to increase them. \nThis was down from a historical high of like 85% in the 80s.", ">\n\nHow much do they cover now? Zero aside from scholarships and grants to individual students?", ">\n\nAs a former higher Ed admin, it depends on the state and often institution. There is a strong correlation to funding in Red or Blue dominant states. In addition, certain institutions within the system often got special cut outs. For instance the largest institution, the institution in the state capitol, and sometimes specific programs (ie a very conservative law school at a red state school).", ">\n\n\"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.\"\nWhat happened in those four years, I wonder?", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nSomething, something vague complaints about liberal indoctrination", ">\n\nw o a k", ">\n\nStopping 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.", ">\n\n\nStopping people from telling the truth will not make things less true.\n\nExcept 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.\nDonald 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.\nTruth doesn't matter.", ">\n\nI'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.", ">\n\nAnother 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.", ">\n\nThe 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", ">\n\nProfessors 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.", ">\n\nI don't think it was the faculty choice.", ">\n\nIt 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.", ">\n\nI 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).", ">\n\nholy shit they are trying to put Dolores Umbridge in charge of education.\nIt's the first step to Government Approved Thoughts.", ">\n\nOne thing HP did was get a whole generation to understand fascism, that’s not all bad.", ">\n\nAnd a whole lot of people want to be Slytherin willingly, either to be edgy or because fascism is their kink.", ">\n\nSame for people who love the Empire in Star Wars, or the new version, the RDA in Avatar.\nBut also, for some it's just \"that's cool\" without thinking about the implications. Which is part of the problem. \nHugo Boss designed some pretty dope Nazi uniforms. You shouldn't want to wear them.", ">\n\nHugo Boss was far from the only one. Have you ever drank Fanta or used a Kodak camera?\nCoca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, Volkswagen, and a ton of other big companies had intimate ties to the Nazis, supported their war effort, and in the worst cases even facilitated the Holocaust. As long as they recognize this history and have apologized for it I say we move on. I don’t wear Hugo Boss but the company today isn’t the same as in the 1940’s.", ">\n\nHenry Ford was antisemitic and quite possibly a Nazi supporter. \nA lot of people thought it was crazy how Russia was able to turn a large population of the US against itself in 2016 but Nazi Germany was able to gather a large following in the US before WWII.", ">\n\nYep. Not just Ford, but also luminaries like Charles Lindbergh. Even many ordinary Americans admired Hitler as a model of a strong leader during the 1930's, and felt the Nazis had the right idea about the Jews. \nIt frightens me to think that it took a literal declaration of war and indisputable evidence of mass genocide to finally turn US public opinion against Hitler.", ">\n\nMan, 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?", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nMore protection of \"free speech\" by Republicans who bemoan \"cancel culture.\" Is there a word for hypocrisy beyond just hypocrisy?", ">\n\nThe etymology isn't clear. \"hypercrisy\" just looks like a misspelling.\nAttacking academic freedom is not usually the act of \"freedom fighters\". It's more aligned with tyrannical regimes. Iran comes to mind.", ">\n\nSince 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.", ">\n\nI'm trying to work something out with elachistos but I'm losing ground.\nElachicrisy sounds and looks bogus, elachistocrisy seems unwieldy.", ">\n\nWow, conservatives being anti-intellectual? What else is new?", ">\n\nWater either is or is not wet. 🤷🏻‍♂️", ">\n\nThe 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.", ">\n\nThe GOPs unwritten policies:\nAnti-gun law\nanti-healthcare \nanti-education \nanti-worker rights\nanti-choice\nanti-voter rights\nanti-oversight \nanti-human rights \nanti-science\nThey are however pro-corporate bailouts and are very supportive of russian oligarchs and their anti-democracy agenda against countries that insist on being…democratic", ">\n\nThey want a nation of exploited slaves, without having to actually pay for the care of those slaves.", ">\n\nThey 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. \nThe 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. \nAnd yes, it's all ultimately in service of minority rule a la Apartheid South Africa. \nThe flickering embers of a dying flame are gasping for one last breath of oxygen. \nI 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.", ">\n\nRepublicans hate free speech. Sad.", ">\n\nI 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.\nWithout 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.", ">\n\nNo it doesn't. I saw on a sitcom once that tenure means they can't be fired, so obviously that's the truth.\n/s", ">\n\n\"I love the poorly educated!\"", ">\n\nThis 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.", ">\n\nConservatives 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.", ">\n\nI'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.\nHowever, you shouldn't assault professorships for political reasons. That's just asinine.", ">\n\nThen 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.", ">\n\nAlmost 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.", ">\n\nOf 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.", ">\n\nWell, 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.", ">\n\n\nby definition you can’t have tenure taken away from you\n\nThat's what this whole discussion is about, though. Stripping the protections of tenure from those who already attained it.", ">\n\nThat is exceptionally difficult to do regardless of the competency of the professor and regardless of the politics. The reason being AAUP — Am Assoc of U Profs. most universities have enough AAUP members among the tenured professors that any tenured professor that risks loss of tenure will have AAUP step in and take a very close look. If AAUP decides that the loss of employment for a tenured professor was not by the book, AAUP will publicize that and it makes it very difficult for the university to recruit talent.\nMaybe things have changed I have been out of academia for over 20 years, but back in the day you heard very quick if a faculty member lost tenure, you heard why, and it rarely happened to a competent professor, and when it did it was usually a budget issue.", ">\n\nYeah, the AAUP stands up for a lot of the bs raining down these days. But (a) not every institution's faculty are eligible to join (e.g. many private institutions), and (b) it's not all-powerful. Not only can financial exigency be called for myriad reasons, allowing them to fire tenured faculty, but it can be chipped away at by the state (see GA in the past couple years). Again, that's what this conversation is about - whether or not these conservative f*wads can fire tenured faculty without reasonable cause.", ">\n\nI don’t disagree with what you say other than I think it is past the “whether or not” period and we are now in “they plan to do it and it needs to be an all hands on deck issue for faculty” yes I am looking at Florida, and my aunt retired from UT Austin a few years ago and she told me things were getting worse.", ">\n\nI'm at a small private institution and hope to just retire early, once my kids are through university. I can't afford it - I've been an academic my whole life - but my partner and I can live on her modest salary when it's just us. It's not the job I expected it to be twenty years ago.", ">\n\nTenure? 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.", ">\n\nYes, 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.\nTenure is a necessary to fight against a huge and still growing political administration.", ">\n\nwere they removed for promoting Islam, or for breaking the tenet of depicting Mohammad? either reason is ludicrous.", ">\n\nSmall government and freedom loving conservatism in action!", ">\n\nThis is some serious Fascist nonsense here... The Conservative Confederate Republican Klan wants to erase the US history...", ">\n\nGo outside", ">\n\nPlease stop calling this fascist pro-ignorance mob “conservative.”", ">\n\nThis is what conservative people are voting for as conservative.\nConservatism is dead, and the people who engage in the process to support these sorts-conservative people are mostly just displaced and don't understand that yet.", ">\n\nAs usual, Conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the best professors may just go elsewhere. Universities in liberal states can offer them the freedom & stability that tenure brings. However, lets ignore the moral and educational impacts of for a minute. \nIt’s well known that universities & educational institutions are massive drivers of state, regional, & local economies. Most obviously are the local services, restaurants, and shops that directly benefit from the money students & staff bring in. \nLess obviously, the innovation, expertise, and research that arises from good universities & professors can lead to the formation of new businesses & ventures. \nStudents may stay in the area to work or start businesses. Silicon Valley is one example of this effect. California doesn’t have an insanely big economy because it has a lack of universities & colleges. This will hurt conservative regions in the long run.", ">\n\nI love how they are too stupid to see the end result will just be to brain drain themselves. That sounds great until you realize the brains are the backbone of your economy not Jethro in his single wide with the giant trump flag over it", ">\n\nYet another strike at intellectuals. Republicans don’t like smart people unless they’re doing their bidding. It’s hard to dupe people with your lies if they’re smart enough to call you out on your self serving bullshit.", ">\n\nProtection from political influence is exactly the point of tenureship", ">\n\nRepublicans hate education. So they're going after the universities like the German nazis did.", ">\n\nOnly authoritarians target academia and the press.", ">\n\nParty of small government, amirite?", ">\n\nJust for those who didn’t read the article:\nTexan politician wanted to remove critical race theory from the classroom.\nFaculty said no. \nPolitician then makes suggestions that tenure should be removed (to make it easier to fire those who stood up to him).\nThe whole scenario shows how much tenure is actually needed.", ">\n\nSurprised this wasn’t brought up sooner. This politician is literally bullying them. “Don’t want to change your syllabus? Say bye to job security.” It’s a dangerous precedent.", ">\n\nIt used to be that leading conservative thinkers would challenge leading liberal thinkers in spirited and nuanced debates. Now that there are no more conservative thinkers, the remaining petulant lightweights require silencing and censorship of others for their ideas to get any oxygen.", ">\n\nPolitics went from a somewhat respectable debate-based thing into a screaming match where half the time the politicians don't even pretend to care about the people.", ">\n\nPBS Newshour's Friday episodes have a left vs right segment that is close to debates I remember but their \"right\" representative has pretty much gotten Overton'd out of the Republican party. David Brooks is the last \"conservative\" thinker with a platform. The left is rep'd by Jonathan Capehart who I think is excellent but has not yet reached the level of the person he replaced, Mark Shields, my all-time favorite liberal voice (RIP).", ">\n\nIdiocracy wasn’t meant to be a documentary but here we are", ">\n\n\nWhen Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.\n\n[Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”\n\nIn turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.\n“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.\n\nDan Patrick offered a bounty of $25k for tips that lead to convictions for voting fraud in the 2020 election.\nHe thought that would crack open the Democratic conspiracy\nBut he ended up having to pay Democrats who reported Republicans who had voted twice.\nDan Patrick really doesn't give a shit if something is real or not. If he can use it to scare his constituents and keep them angry at dem libs then he'll use it by gum", ">\n\nWait, wait.... what about small government, de-regulation and the free market?", ">\n\nUniversities will lose their accreditation", ">\n\nThere will be a new accreditation. PhDs in assault rifology, creation science, insurrectionism, white history.", ">\n\nYou will then have the shittiest faculties in the US: why would go to the Texas system when I can get tenure elsewhere.\nThe irony, of course, is that tenure is specifically designed to prevent this kind of coercion to teach what the power structure wants you to teach. It is called \"academic freedom.\"", ">\n\nEducation is the enemy of conservatism", ">\n\nVote in stupid people, and get stupid ideas.", ">\n\nYeah they love to attack education, smart people don’t vote Republican.", ">\n\n'Fascists say Fascist and anti-intellectual things'", ">\n\nAs the GOP becomes more powerful, they are more eager to bring any thought or idea under political control. In history, I'm sure that never turned into anything bad, right?", ">\n\nConservatives want to destroy education. Teaching science and facts are against everything they stand for. Look what they have done to Floridas education system already. Why are conservatives such bottom feeding wastes of life?", ">\n\nOf course conservatives are taking aim at tenure for professors, it means colleges can remove benefits, salaries, job stability, make them all semester to semester adjuncts and pay they slave wages. As a former adjunct professor, I saw the transition from decreasing tenure track positions to increasing adjunct positions, and it had everything to do with maximizing profits for the college as a corporate model, and taking power away from professors. Many adjunct positions, like mine, have extremely low pay and no job security, because your position is based on whether you get given a class to teach from semester to semester. This is far cheaper for the college, because since you’re not considered a full time employee, you don’t have to pay you during the holidays, they only pay you per class (as opposed to full time employees who get paid salary) and you had far fewer protections against being fired, cause all they had to do with not give you a class the following semester, and you’re essentially out of a job. I taught at 3 different colleges at a time, a class or 2 at each one, because I had to piece together classes to make enough to live… many of my colleagues were in the same position. And forget about sabbaticals to actually do the work and research in your field that makes you an expert in your subject, you have to do that on your own time outside of teaching… any lone who’s taught adjunct at 3 different colleges at a time knows just how draining and time consuming that is, and knows how hard it is to get your research done on top of it. This is why tenure is so important, it not only gives you a living wage and job stability, but allows you the times to do the research you need to do. It’s absolutely shocking how teachers, and especially adjunct professors, are treated in this country… the conservative US is anti-education, cause attacking education not only keeps their constituents stupid, which makes them more likely to vote conservative, but also helps profit their friends at the administrative level of universities.", ">\n\nAnyone who has an issue with stupid people should take note at the full range of attacks on our education system. From pre-school teachers to professors, aides/cafeteria workers/sports programs and bathrooms. Anything to destroy but not replace, unless you can afford private school! \nThese people are afraid of intelligence as it may hurt profits. Barefoot and pregnant wife with a husband who works 2 FT jobs for every person in America. Saddled with debt, just to live. It’s the corporate dream. Don’t forget to toss extra cash in the til on Sunday for the tax free haven to enrich itself further on your dime!", ">\n\nTenured prof here. Fun fact: nearly every professor, certainly in a STEM field, can make twice the salary in the private industry. Tenure is one of the VERY few perks of the job. The science we produce is for the public good, not for a single company. You push every researcher into companies you will only make it more expensive to get the technological advances you all enjoy.\nA lot of us are looking for the door as it is. Ridding us of tenure won't hurt us economically, but it sure as shit will impact students and public investments in science.", ">\n\nThis is what fascism and tyranny looks like. Fuck the Republican party. They are a bunch of goddamn nazis who hate freedom.", ">\n\nRace to the bottom in education. MAGA Madrasas.", ">\n\nthey hate education, of course they would.", ">\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t professors granted tenure by other tenured professors? It’s sounds like the party of no government oversight wanting to have oversight over a self governing group", ">\n\nTypical conservative playbook. Can't win on merit so they stack the deck.", ">\n\nLawmakers targeting faculty because they disagree with the focus of their research and instruction. This is exactly why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nAh, the continued purge of \"intellectuals.\"\nNot fascist at all!", ">\n\n“Morons attack smart people for making them feel insecure.”", ">\n\nWhy are conservatives so hell bent on getting people fired from their jobs?", ">\n\nThis is not out of character for Kansas at all. Always opposed that reading riting and rithmatic. \nAnd certainly well within character for \"conservative thought.\"", ">\n\nThis is literal Nazi playbook stuff.\nConservatives are behaving as Nazis and it's very much on purpose. Because they (certain members of them; not all conservatives; calm down) actually are Nazis in every aspect but the membership card.\nWhy are there not consequences for this brazen and public ongoing war on decent human society? They whine and beat their chests about the war on christmas but they hate that anyone outside of their elite establishment may get a decent education?\nStop comparing this shit to Harry Potter characters or making funny jokes and meme references. There's a great reference that's very appropriate. This is Nazi strategy.\nThere are issues with long term untouchable academic tenure. Sure. I've worked in the education system. This particular push and their (you know who) overall mindset does not look at those concerns. This is an attack on education because a stupid populace is easier to subjugate and control.\nedit: if anyone thinks I'm being hyperbolic do a bare minimum of research about mid-century german sociopolitical ideology and learn why in large part the US won the race for the Nuclear Weapon technology and after the war why we won the Space Race.", ">\n\nTenure doesn't really exist in Florida anymore, thanks to DeSantis. \nEvery five years, \"tenured\" professors have to be reviewed by a board of political appointees. That defeats the entire point of tenure. It's gone.", ">\n\nAlso known as \"how to guarantee your state colleges are worthless and drive everyone who makes more than minimum wage out of your state.\" \nNo researchers are going to want to live in states where they can't get tenure. Even professors who aren't politically inclined are going to look at offers from colleges in these states and compare them to offers from other colleges and go, \"Hrmm...should I go for the job where I don't have to worry about my contract not being renewed? Or should I go for the job that I only know I'll have for 9 months at a time?\" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which one of those is the better option. \nSo, all the best researchers and teachers are going to go to other schools, leaving these states with, at best, the B team. That's going to drastically impact the amount of grant money coming into the university, which is going to make tuition more expensive while simultaneously making the quality of education worse. So fewer students are going to enroll, with the rest going out of state, and staying out of state. \n​\nThis cascade continues, basically winding up in a massive exodus of skilled (and high-paid, therefor most-taxed) jobs, wiping out state budgets, and plunging these states into local depressions. \nFuck it, let 'em. They deserve it.", ">\n\nCops and veterans can be the professors!", ">\n\nKind of moot, since universities are replacing retiring tenured professors with adjuncts. They need to hoard all the university’s money for the legion of unnecessary administrators they keep hiring\nEDIT - Added missing word", ">\n\nThey're going after professors now? Anything to avoid fixing actual problems.", ">\n\nThis country is a third world shithole", ">\n\nNah- the red states are shitholes, but the rest isn’t too bad.", ">\n\nI strongly disagree with just about every conservative position on nearly any issue, but painting with a broad brush like this is exactly the kind of “us vs them” mentality that the GOP actively works to stoke. Red states aren’t shitholes, and they are full of tons of empathetic, hardworking people who don’t support the harmful ideologies of their state leadership. \nRed states are frequently crippled by poverty, gerrymandering, lack of access to quality healthcare and housing, and so many other issues that Republican government either actively encourage or fail to adequately address. You can hate the politicians who take advantage of these circumstances, but you should more so pity the shortsightedness of the many people in the American South and Midwest who have been brainwashed for decades to vote against their own interests just to “own the libs.”", ">\n\nThis is the equivalent of external economic sanctions.", ">\n\nUntil they put term limits on senate, congress and ,Supreme Court the conservatives need to shut up and sit down.", ">\n\nI get the distinct feeling this will not apply to professors that say stuff they like.", ">\n\nGreat. Thanks. That's the only secure teaching jobs anymore", ">\n\n…But not Supreme Court Justices.", ">\n\nThis is funny considering part of tenure is protecting free speech for professors.", ">\n\nMore more concerned with that than school shootings. That’s on brand.", ">\n\nThank good god Dems held on to the senate", ">\n\nTenure, that thing we set up to prevent special interests from destroying the educational process in short order. Let's keep that.\nIts should be difficult to remove a teacher after tenure. Once they have reach tenure, they have proven to be working in the common good because they should discarded before then if not. At this point we should shield them from political and short term special interests.", ">\n\nI thought they were into small government and less interference from same...\n/s", ">\n\nThis just means they want profs fired so they can put cult loons in", ">\n\nFucking republicans", ">\n\njust means less money for the christian fascist states as more and more kids go out of state for school and never return...", ">\n\nNothing like conservatives blatantly proving they don't care about \"viewpoint discrimination\" when it benefits their agenda.", ">\n\nWhen conservative politicians are done, only conservative politicians will have an income in their old age.", ">\n\nThis is the plan. Cushy political gigs for those who kiss Ron Maosantis's ass, granny police and struggle sessions for the rest of us. The Republican Cultural Revolution is leaping forward greatly.", ">\n\nRepublicans have been fantasizing about this since I was a kid.", ">\n\nLook what happen in Alaska and Louisiana- the Proffesors left for other schools", ">\n\nSounds about reich", ">\n\nI live near Univ. of Colo. About five years ago the university began a conservative academic studies dept in response to righty pressure. Guess who they hired as a chairman to show the libs the value of conservative thought…john eastman. O I see what serious conservatives are now.", ">\n\nThis isn't new but MAGA gave the Conservatives a sense of zeal and to take the masks off...", ">\n\narticles like this need to preface: \"in Texas.\"\nyeah, Texas is a shit hole. not even a little surprised that they're pulling this nonsense.", ">\n\nConservative orthodoxy has always been built on their religious and bigoted superstitions. Scientific research throughout history erodes social conservatism's perspectives, but that ideology persists because of the mental inflexibility of conservatives to incorporate new information into their world views.", ">\n\nHonestly, as a liberal person in a blue state, I agree. I’m a student right now and I’ve seen professors brag about how they’re tenured and then teach like shit. It’s like once their tenured they can do what they want. Example: this professor of mine made us attend her lecture outside of class time and made us pay to enter or we’d lose a quiz grade. People complained yet nothing happened cuz she was tenured. Instead of giving them immunity it should be reworked. Not by the insurrectionists though.", ">\n\nYou misunderstand tenure. Tenure and \"teaching like shit\" are at best tangentially related. A tenured professor can still be fired for not doing their job; they just can no longer be easily fired for teaching and/or researching things deemed politically or morally offensive to [whoever's in power]. \nNow, it is true that a professor is extremely unlikely to be disciplined for forcing students to attend a lecture, even one they have to pay for. This would be true for an untenured professor as well ... unless their upset students were able to make an exceptionally good case to the school administration or were able to weaponize the media. (Students are increasingly good at both those things.)", ">\n\nSo, conservatives want to force private institutions to do something?\nSounds like fascism to me.", ">\n\nSad this is all happening. I guess the lack of action and accountability in the USA made it even more ok for insurrectionist to run free in countries all around the world.", ">\n\nEveryone should go to Carousel at age 30.", ">\n\nWe really need to go after term limits….", ">\n\nIronic, considering tenure was created specifically for this reason.", ">\n\nIsn’t this always the authoritarian tactic? They attack the education system and the educated that stand in their way of creating a culture that is blind to anything but their message. It’s the first steps of like what Mao did by throwing all the educated classes into the fields or killing them.", ">\n\nTenure is pretty dumb, but if we're going to ban lifetime appointments we should ban all lifetime appointments and not pick and choose which ones are better than others.", ">\n\nThere’s a lot wrong in the Michigan public education system where I live. However, there is a constitutional requirement that universities remain independent of the rest of government, meaning when the republicans were in charge they couldn’t change the tenure system even though they tried under John Engler. Ironically, Engler was appointed interim president of Michigan State, and he was eventually ousted for incompetence. More states should adopt this model of independence.", ">\n\nWhy bother? Just let declining admissions and absurd admin salaries do the same thing over the next decade. Sure, it'll take a little longer, but it's far simpler way to hamstring higher ed", ">\n\nOnce again the party of small government seeks to insinuate itself into areas it does not belong. They are not conservatives; they are the fascist far right!", ">\n\nAnd are quietly filling administrative slots with many social platforms in order to infiltrate the last vestiges of intelligence available to most. And they censor what they do not like. And if it aint god or trump or shooting protestors (apparently the single biggest fear for chicken hawks is unarmed protestors), then say sayonara sucker! Your ass is mute.\nCensorship is alive and well in America and if republicans are saying the democrats are doing it then you can bet your ass the democrats aren't doing it and the republicans are.", ">\n\nThey will oppose tenure until they have the last free thinking professor out of school. Then when they have installed their handpicked conservative religious zealots in all the university’s watch how fast they reinstitute tenure", ">\n\nExamples: liberty, hillsdale.", ">\n\nIt will never not be funny to me that conservatives are at war with education. Almost as if being worldly and educated is the Achilles heel of conservatism. Hard to be a conservative when you are made more aware of the complexity of the world and how it works.", ">\n\nIs this what small government looks like?", ">\n\nIs there anything more \"big government\" than removing academic freedom?", ">\n\nHonestly, there are a ton of professors who shouldn’t have tenure out there, i’m not against this being changed or adapted to be more fair.", ">\n\nMy alma mater, The University of Georgia, continues to promote their collegiate football program with all possible energy, trying to capitalize on a team of athletes to offset any student losses (our enrollment is stable and growing due to the fame of the team). Come join me tomorrow as they play for the national championship. Go Dogs!!" ]