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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.", ">\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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown." ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut strangely not judges" ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut strangely not judges", ">\n\nOr their own jobs. \nEdit: for those being naive I’m talking about 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.", ">\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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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." ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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" ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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" ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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." ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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" ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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." ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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." ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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." ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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." ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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?" ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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." ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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." ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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." ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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." ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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?" ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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)." ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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?" ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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." ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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" ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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" ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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." ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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." ]

[ "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!!", ">\n\nThey really are trying to dumb us all down to their level. Eventually we will be reading and writing on a pre-school level and a new dark ages will descent upon the world. With a little luck, soon after that the common cold will wipe humanity from the face of the earth.", ">\n\nThe GOP is at war with progress.", ">\n\nIt's a culture war, after all", ">\n\nCant let Texas actually turn the corner to be an economic powerhouse because they will lose control of it", ">\n\nKeeping the populace dumb - the GOP way.", ">\n\nWhat a bunch of hypocritical morons.", ">\n\nHow about taking aim at the deans that make millions for doing nothing", ">\n\nSome under educated under achievers voted for those creeps.", ">\n\n…explaining why tenure exists in the first place.", ">\n\nBut they’re all against term limits.", ">\n\nRepublicans' behavior is the best argument in favor of tenure.", ">\n\nConservatives kicking the brain drain into overdrive.", ">\n\nHold up, didn’t Nazis go after the academia too?", ">\n\nTexans have always feared people learning the truth about Texas.", ">\n\nCan't have intellectuals. Bad for the country dontcha know.", ">\n\nAs a professor, I feel like I need to buy a fedora and lurk creepily around corners or I’m just not doing it right.", ">\n\nWeird, I thought conservatives were grown adults that had something important to do with their time. Guess not.", ">\n\nWhich is part of a larger attack on higher education and education in general.", ">\n\nConservatives? I thought they were about leaving the guvment out of things. Wow, the country just gets stoopiderer.", ">\n\nThis will make college more expensive since it will drive professors out of the job", ">\n\nThey must have saw glass onion and got really excited about being disruptors", ">\n\nI wonder what conservatives’ explanation is for the fact that the vast majority of tenured professors are liberal. Is it Soros or something? The real reason, that being intelligent and well-educated and conservative are incompatible, would be difficult for them to admit.", ">\n\nThey need to concentrate on their own tenure.", ">\n\nIs tenure just what other countries call employment rights? I used to work at KFC in the UK and I'm fairly sure they could only fire me for misconduct or redundancy if the position was no longer needed. But tenure seems to be portrayed as something special.", ">\n\nBasically yeah, But in the US employee rights are almost nonexistent except for a few things like sex/race discrimination so tenure is a rare perk.", ">\n\nUltimately, they would love for most Universities to shut down. Hotbeds of liberalism those places are. People learning how to think for themselves, and they can't have THAT. They want Christian Universities and that's it. Education to them is dangerous. They need workers that are just smart enough to keep it all running, while they shovel in the bucks.", ">\n\nDestroying all of civilized society to benefit rent seekers.", ">\n\nMy dad is a retired conservative professor. If we still talked politics, I’d be curious what his take on this would be.", ">\n\nThe idea behind conservative law is selective enforcement. No, they aren't afraid of the same laws coming to get them themselves. This is an idea just to go after vocally 'woke' professors challenging white supremacy.", ">\n\nDing ding ding", ">\n\nWhat about tenure of politicians, judges, and government officials? Seems like a more pressing matter.", ">\n\nWhile tenure shouldn't be gotten rid of entirely it definitely needs changes, as a current university student the only professors I've had a negative opinion of have been tenured, and about half of them have been some of the most technological incompetent, self centered and just down right nasty humans I've ever meet. They probably couldn't keep a job at a grocery store but are somehow in charge of my education that I'm paying thousands for", ">\n\nNot a Republican, but I’m behind this. I had some absolutely awful professors who should be held accountable in the same way that I would be if I didn’t do my job as a nurse correctly.", ">\n\nWhy is it every policy from conservatives is to make peoples lives worse?", ">\n\nThey just want professors to not earn money", ">\n\nTenure is incompatible with how modern American universities are run. Straight up. It’s going away. Doesn’t matter what the Texas state house wants. There are a lot of reasons for this, first because tenure is so tight it’s almost impossible to bounce a prof once they’ve got it. Like I’ve seen wild shit, profs who’ve missed classes, fucked over students, tried to fuck students, who use tenure as an excuse not to teach or only teach classes which 6 kids take. And the grounds for denying tenure are very formal and are a high bar. Also think about personal workplace dynamics, if you like someone at work you probably wouldn’t vote to fire them. So tenure votes become popularity contests, not a vote on competence or research quality. I’ve seen a couple tenure votes, the only person I ever saw denied was someone who was universally considered a douchebag by other faculty. This leads to the second problem the only way to get rid of a problem prof is not to hire them in the first place. This makes job searches, already rigorous and difficult, extremely expensive and political. Everything about a job candidate is scrutinized, every line on the cv, every word in an app, everything you say in a job talk. Because faulty are terrified they’re going to hire some pervert, or a do nothing, or some kind of neo-fascist weirdo. And so people get bounced for the stupidest things. But it’s fine because tenure tracked positions have decline so significantly every opening probably averages 100 applicants for a small thing, and double or triple that for your average R1. I once read an article about a UC Berkeley position which claimed 1000 people applied for that position.\nBut the truth of it is, academia is not worth it without tenure. It’s completely unreasonable to move to Alaska or Montana or Alabama just to get laid off after three semesters, especially considering virtually every public school uses seniority based promotion. To teach humanities in a university you need on average twelve years of post-secondary education (4 years undergrad + 2 years MA + 6-7 years PhD, sciences average 4-5, but often have to finish off with a two year post doc). So 10-12 years in uni, racking up debt, the need to move across the country to find one of the few good positions left, just to make $50k which is a very common starting salary. Just so you can work in a state where you can get fired for saying Slavery was bad. \nAmerican academia is a sinking ship. Since the 1950s it transitioned from something dominated by the white 1% to something egalitarian. Profs and students both were working class, diverse, and skilled. But increasingly it’s a divided system, dominated by elite institutions. And the only academics who can make it are those who can fall back on mommy and daddy’s money, or who can trade a prestigious degree for an interview. All to teach at a school where football matters more than anything else.", ">\n\nI think that tenure is not a good thing as when they get tenure its hard to get rid of a professor that has gone from a good professor to a bad one.", ">\n\nAwesome……more talent for the good schools", ">\n\nGoing after the important things as always. /s", ">\n\nAnti intellectualism is one of the primary tenets of the Republican Party’s regressive political platform.", ">\n\nThe cold civil war continues.", ">\n\nI’m pretty darn liberal but definitely think we need some reform when it comes to university teacher tenure. Too many bad and low effort teachers out there. \nDon’t see how this is political at all", ">\n\nConservatives should just drool and shut up.", ">\n\nTenure can't be stripped from those who've already attained it.", ">\n\nThat'll fix America", ">\n\nSee also... \nFree societies are fragile things.", ">\n\nThey refer to higher education as \"indoctrination\" because for some reason once people learn more about how the world works they're vastly less likely to be reactionary christofascists...\nThey want you broke, illiterate, going to church to be told what to think every week, so that you don't even have the vocabulary to describe how what they're doing to you is abusive and wrong.\nWhy do you think that the local church leaders are always vehemently opposed to sex education in public schools? Harder to keep the altar boy quiet about your extracurricular touching sessions when he knows that grownups aren't supposed to do that.", ">\n\nWell, I'm impressed that they understand the original point of tenure... to teach and write freely without worrying about political or administrative influence. \nAnyway, fear of the truth should be the definition of ignorance. Thus, conservatives embrace ignorance and the ignorant rejoice.", ">\n\nFuckers who won’t accept term limits want to pull things like this. I am so tired of this shit. It’s numbing.", ">\n\nHave they seen young professors? Removing old professors and adding young professors will make universities more liberal. Unless they really mean just an action against liberal professors….", ">\n\nWho cares if it’s conservatives or progressives or liberals or whoever. It’s time higher education gets weeded out. It’s bloated and fat because of easy money and no regulation.", ">\n\nThis os obviously a political witch hunt. However, as someone closely linked with a university, I’m not against changing the tenure system. I don’t think people need lifetime appointments to pursue their research with integrity or avoid outside bias. What if instead of tenure, we had 5 or 10 year appointments with automatic renewal pending extreme circumstances or a certain time limit, say 30 years. \nThere are many people in my department who are well past their ability to meaningfully contribute. Perhaps they should be given some kind of post tenure position.", ">\n\nI had an awful teacher my last semester who was tenured. He gave no shits on helping people. He preferred failing them. I can see the need for tenure to be reviewed but fuck conservatives.", ">\n\nDestroy the institutional education system = more dumb Qanon minions to vote them in.", ">\n\nI don't have a problem with this in theory, I just wouldn't ever expect it to be done or used responsibly.", ">\n\nThey just want to destabilize everything. \nWhy don't they come out already as anarchists since that's what they really are.", ">\n\nLet the people who are experts make decisions about curriculum. Not ideologues with little or no background in academics.", ">\n\nAnd exactly how does that improve the country? Their policy these days might as well be, \"how can we ruin the country some more?\"", ">\n\nWell, of course they do- they're not the least nit interested in governing..", ">\n\nRepublicans War on America. They’re winning.", ">\n\nThey are going to accidentally reinvigorate academia. Academia has a similar gerontocracy issue as our government", ">\n\n…again.", ">\n\nLet’s be real a MAJORITY of them believe litter boxes are in schools. Critical thinking and education scares them. I’m just waiting for them to start targeting “thought crimes” who would have thought a book written 2000 years ago, and changed over and over and over again would be creating the dark ages 2.0 magaboogalo. I don’t know how many times I need to bang my head against the wall trying to understand how we live in an age where we can put lighting into sand that produces every bit of human history and knowledge into our hands yet we have a whole group of people in this country banging rocks and sticks together going “not ugh” and disagreeing with everything because of a sky daddy.", ">\n\nTenure was specifically designed to remove politics from academia. Obviously, Russians, Republicans and their Chinese allies would be reflexively hostile to it.", ">\n\nWe present , Alternate Tenure", ">\n\nThat's why they burned books in Germany. The more people learn the more liberal they become. It wasn't an coincidental.", ">\n\nImagine living in a world where most professors support democrats not because they are trained to be rational and evidence-based thinkers, but because the world is out to get conservatives.", ">\n\nA literal child", ">\n\nUniversities have been doing that for at least a decade.", ">\n\nAlabama is fucked then I guess, what would even be left of the state", ">\n\nOne person making an offhand remark about tenure is not really republicans taking aim at tenure", ">\n\nAny tenure position, where it’s paid for in part or full by the government/taxpayers, should be allowed to be looked at.\nJust because something is tenured does not mean they can do “whatever they want.”\nThis applies to Judges, government positions, and college professors alike.\nIt’s not a pass to do anything, and people who are screaming “omg this is an OUTRAGE!!” Are the same people who are calling for term limits for the Supreme Court.\nYou either support all of it, or you support none of it, because it’s the same situation.", ">\n\n30 years, authoritarian rule.", ">\n\n\"We'd like it if we could get some dummies in there. I mean some real grade-a shit-for-brains dumbasses. Someone astoundingly bad at their jobs!\"", ">\n\nWe have to remove tenure, get rid of the older teachers and bring in new, younger, teachers that somehow have the values from growing up in the 40s and 50s.", ">\n\nConservatives prove tenure is necessary by attacking tenure", ">\n\nThey’ve been in this for decades", ">\n\nThat shady dude in the photo definitely looks like he is laying in wait to assassinate tenure.", ">\n\nWeird considering it protects some of their staunchest supporters...", ">\n\nWho is destroying Western Civilization and it’s traditional values again? Who is immoral and decadent? Who can’t play by the rules?", ">\n\nTexas is going on the attack and simultaneously build their own far-right college in Austin. :-(", ">\n\nBecause that’s what they were elected to do….fucking republican idiots", ">\n\nFascist Playbook is out and being highlighted. Honestly do most Republican voters really list University Professor Tenure high on their list of things to get done?", ">\n\nSmall government ..", ">\n\nNot one progressive on this thread can acknowledge the fact that tenure creates a higher class of employee that can just kind of suck at their job if they want to without any repercussions?", ">\n\nThe flip side of this is that only things like tenure give employees any measure of job security in at-will states. If you're on board with ending at-will employment and affording employees more ability to feel safe and secure in a job, barring egregious circumstances, then sure we can talk about tenure protecting bad employees as well as good. Let's get the protections for non-tenured folks first, though.", ">\n\nWhy should professors have that when staff members don’t?", ">\n\nWho said anything about restricting it to professors? I sure didn't. I'm very much on board with protecting staff equally as well as professors, but I feel that level should be above \"we can fire you literally any time we care to.\"", ">\n\n“Small government”", ">\n\nHow is this a political issue?! There are some many of things to focus on. Holy hell!", ">\n\nHow about pay for Congress 60k across the board", ">\n\nwe like anything that is bad…this bad…we like", ">\n\nAyy right in time for me to become a professor too.", ">\n\nProfessor, this is your goal: to raise up youth who glorify, unquestionably, and with doubt, our race, culture, and national supremacy! Any deviation, you will be removed, banned from teaching, possibly arrested! -Nazi Germany", ">\n\nAgain..", ">\n\nConservatives as a whole severely underestimate exactly how much academia benefits them ideologically. Marxists have always considered academia to be a tool of the bourgeoisie.", ">\n\nDay 1 hitting the pavement hard. Now let’s just get a Hunter Biden investigation going and they will hit peak productivity", ">\n\nThe only conservative professors I knew through 3 degrees at 2 major universities only had their jobs because of tenure, and the boards of regents were frothing at the mouth to fire them. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’d bet it’s conservatives mostly knowing F&$k-all about higher education", ">\n\nThere are some real issues with the tenure system, and academic compensation overall, but I’m pretty sure conservatives are not trying to address those issues. how can the government interfere in this type of employment agreement, that I think is defined via employment contract?", ">\n\nnext they’ll be passing a law making the Bellamy Salute compulsory.", ">\n\nWell we all know the earth is really flat. They are just lying to us for some reasons unknown.", ">\n\nBut 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." ]

[]

[ "i need examples of animals" ]

[ "i need examples of animals", ">\n\nTiger, Bear, venomous animals (with venom)..." ]

[ "i need examples of animals", ">\n\nTiger, Bear, venomous animals (with venom)...", ">\n\noh buddy. those are not domesticated animals. i thought you were gonna say horses or something. thats why i was confused" ]

[ "i need examples of animals", ">\n\nTiger, Bear, venomous animals (with venom)...", ">\n\noh buddy. those are not domesticated animals. i thought you were gonna say horses or something. thats why i was confused", ">\n\nHorses? \nHorses want you to ride them. Horses will delicately eat food from your hand without crushing your puny little hand bones with their massive chonker tombstone teeth.\nUnless you fuck with them, in which case, ouch!\nBut yeah horses are quite docile." ]

[ "i need examples of animals", ">\n\nTiger, Bear, venomous animals (with venom)...", ">\n\noh buddy. those are not domesticated animals. i thought you were gonna say horses or something. thats why i was confused", ">\n\nHorses? \nHorses want you to ride them. Horses will delicately eat food from your hand without crushing your puny little hand bones with their massive chonker tombstone teeth.\nUnless you fuck with them, in which case, ouch!\nBut yeah horses are quite docile.", ">\n\nThat's an unpopular opinion for sure." ]

[ "i need examples of animals", ">\n\nTiger, Bear, venomous animals (with venom)...", ">\n\noh buddy. those are not domesticated animals. i thought you were gonna say horses or something. thats why i was confused", ">\n\nHorses? \nHorses want you to ride them. Horses will delicately eat food from your hand without crushing your puny little hand bones with their massive chonker tombstone teeth.\nUnless you fuck with them, in which case, ouch!\nBut yeah horses are quite docile.", ">\n\nThat's an unpopular opinion for sure.", ">\n\nSome people are just genocidal like that ig" ]

[]

[ "Don’t touch it or you’ll ruin its ability to see into the cosmos" ]

[]

[ "I think I'm going to look into tofu scrambles." ]

[ "I think I'm going to look into tofu scrambles.", ">\n\nDo it. Honestly it's not exactly the same, but with the right kala namak black salt it's close enough to be VERY good in a 'egg mayo' sandwich, for instance." ]

[ "I think I'm going to look into tofu scrambles.", ">\n\nDo it. Honestly it's not exactly the same, but with the right kala namak black salt it's close enough to be VERY good in a 'egg mayo' sandwich, for instance.", ">\n\nThe US eats 8 Billion chickens per year. 16,000 chickens is one KFC on a busy day." ]

[ "I think I'm going to look into tofu scrambles.", ">\n\nDo it. Honestly it's not exactly the same, but with the right kala namak black salt it's close enough to be VERY good in a 'egg mayo' sandwich, for instance.", ">\n\nThe US eats 8 Billion chickens per year. 16,000 chickens is one KFC on a busy day.", ">\n\n3,909 KFCs in the US, which purportedly sell 400 pieces of chicken per minute\nThis means that a single chain is selling 0.10232796111 pieces per minute, which would be 6.1396776666 pieces of chicken per hour.\nThat means 1 KFC, which was open from 10AM to midnight is open for 14 hours, and sells about 86 pieces of chicken in a day.\nIf we say that these pieces are split somewhat evenly among the types (2 breast [sources suggested they split the breasts], 2 thighs, 2 legs, 2 wings) we might presume that for every 8 pieces of chicken that are sold we have about 1 whole chicken.\n86 pieces of chicken would mean they sell roughly 11 whole chickens in a day.\nIn other words, it might be more fair to say that 16,000 is equal to roughly the output of about 1454 KFCs (or roughly 37% of all KFCs in a day)" ]

[ "I think I'm going to look into tofu scrambles.", ">\n\nDo it. Honestly it's not exactly the same, but with the right kala namak black salt it's close enough to be VERY good in a 'egg mayo' sandwich, for instance.", ">\n\nThe US eats 8 Billion chickens per year. 16,000 chickens is one KFC on a busy day.", ">\n\n3,909 KFCs in the US, which purportedly sell 400 pieces of chicken per minute\nThis means that a single chain is selling 0.10232796111 pieces per minute, which would be 6.1396776666 pieces of chicken per hour.\nThat means 1 KFC, which was open from 10AM to midnight is open for 14 hours, and sells about 86 pieces of chicken in a day.\nIf we say that these pieces are split somewhat evenly among the types (2 breast [sources suggested they split the breasts], 2 thighs, 2 legs, 2 wings) we might presume that for every 8 pieces of chicken that are sold we have about 1 whole chicken.\n86 pieces of chicken would mean they sell roughly 11 whole chickens in a day.\nIn other words, it might be more fair to say that 16,000 is equal to roughly the output of about 1454 KFCs (or roughly 37% of all KFCs in a day)", ">\n\nYou divided the wrong way there, it would be 400/24,000 to find sales per branch, not the other way around. Additionally the 400 pieces per minute figure comes from the US only." ]

[ "I think I'm going to look into tofu scrambles.", ">\n\nDo it. Honestly it's not exactly the same, but with the right kala namak black salt it's close enough to be VERY good in a 'egg mayo' sandwich, for instance.", ">\n\nThe US eats 8 Billion chickens per year. 16,000 chickens is one KFC on a busy day.", ">\n\n3,909 KFCs in the US, which purportedly sell 400 pieces of chicken per minute\nThis means that a single chain is selling 0.10232796111 pieces per minute, which would be 6.1396776666 pieces of chicken per hour.\nThat means 1 KFC, which was open from 10AM to midnight is open for 14 hours, and sells about 86 pieces of chicken in a day.\nIf we say that these pieces are split somewhat evenly among the types (2 breast [sources suggested they split the breasts], 2 thighs, 2 legs, 2 wings) we might presume that for every 8 pieces of chicken that are sold we have about 1 whole chicken.\n86 pieces of chicken would mean they sell roughly 11 whole chickens in a day.\nIn other words, it might be more fair to say that 16,000 is equal to roughly the output of about 1454 KFCs (or roughly 37% of all KFCs in a day)", ">\n\nYou divided the wrong way there, it would be 400/24,000 to find sales per branch, not the other way around. Additionally the 400 pieces per minute figure comes from the US only.", ">\n\nFixed the first point. Your second point is not relevant because its the best I could find number wise. I can update to the US, but it would also be like saying the numbers are off because not every KFC is open from 10-12, and not all sell the average amount of chicken quote per minute, or that the numbers come from different years. You'll have to accept a little fuzziness!" ]

[ "I think I'm going to look into tofu scrambles.", ">\n\nDo it. Honestly it's not exactly the same, but with the right kala namak black salt it's close enough to be VERY good in a 'egg mayo' sandwich, for instance.", ">\n\nThe US eats 8 Billion chickens per year. 16,000 chickens is one KFC on a busy day.", ">\n\n3,909 KFCs in the US, which purportedly sell 400 pieces of chicken per minute\nThis means that a single chain is selling 0.10232796111 pieces per minute, which would be 6.1396776666 pieces of chicken per hour.\nThat means 1 KFC, which was open from 10AM to midnight is open for 14 hours, and sells about 86 pieces of chicken in a day.\nIf we say that these pieces are split somewhat evenly among the types (2 breast [sources suggested they split the breasts], 2 thighs, 2 legs, 2 wings) we might presume that for every 8 pieces of chicken that are sold we have about 1 whole chicken.\n86 pieces of chicken would mean they sell roughly 11 whole chickens in a day.\nIn other words, it might be more fair to say that 16,000 is equal to roughly the output of about 1454 KFCs (or roughly 37% of all KFCs in a day)", ">\n\nYou divided the wrong way there, it would be 400/24,000 to find sales per branch, not the other way around. Additionally the 400 pieces per minute figure comes from the US only.", ">\n\nFixed the first point. Your second point is not relevant because its the best I could find number wise. I can update to the US, but it would also be like saying the numbers are off because not every KFC is open from 10-12, and not all sell the average amount of chicken quote per minute, or that the numbers come from different years. You'll have to accept a little fuzziness!", ">\n\nAbout 16,000 chickens were culled in Yunlin County, southern Taiwan, after birds at two chicken farms were confirmed as being infected by the highly pathogenic type A of subtype H5N1 of the avian influenza, the county's Animal Disease Control Center said in a statement Saturday.After the birds were destroyed, the two farms and surrounding area were thoroughly cleaned and disinfected in a bid to prevent the spread of the disease, the center said." ]

[ "I think I'm going to look into tofu scrambles.", ">\n\nDo it. Honestly it's not exactly the same, but with the right kala namak black salt it's close enough to be VERY good in a 'egg mayo' sandwich, for instance.", ">\n\nThe US eats 8 Billion chickens per year. 16,000 chickens is one KFC on a busy day.", ">\n\n3,909 KFCs in the US, which purportedly sell 400 pieces of chicken per minute\nThis means that a single chain is selling 0.10232796111 pieces per minute, which would be 6.1396776666 pieces of chicken per hour.\nThat means 1 KFC, which was open from 10AM to midnight is open for 14 hours, and sells about 86 pieces of chicken in a day.\nIf we say that these pieces are split somewhat evenly among the types (2 breast [sources suggested they split the breasts], 2 thighs, 2 legs, 2 wings) we might presume that for every 8 pieces of chicken that are sold we have about 1 whole chicken.\n86 pieces of chicken would mean they sell roughly 11 whole chickens in a day.\nIn other words, it might be more fair to say that 16,000 is equal to roughly the output of about 1454 KFCs (or roughly 37% of all KFCs in a day)", ">\n\nYou divided the wrong way there, it would be 400/24,000 to find sales per branch, not the other way around. Additionally the 400 pieces per minute figure comes from the US only.", ">\n\nFixed the first point. Your second point is not relevant because its the best I could find number wise. I can update to the US, but it would also be like saying the numbers are off because not every KFC is open from 10-12, and not all sell the average amount of chicken quote per minute, or that the numbers come from different years. You'll have to accept a little fuzziness!", ">\n\nAbout 16,000 chickens were culled in Yunlin County, southern Taiwan, after birds at two chicken farms were confirmed as being infected by the highly pathogenic type A of subtype H5N1 of the avian influenza, the county's Animal Disease Control Center said in a statement Saturday.After the birds were destroyed, the two farms and surrounding area were thoroughly cleaned and disinfected in a bid to prevent the spread of the disease, the center said.", ">\n\nIt's only a matter of time before the wrong bird cross with the wrong pig. Influenza's ability for Antigenic Shift (combination of genetic material from two separate strains) is no joke. This is the exact process that can eventually lead to a human-to-human transmissable variant of H5N1." ]

[ "I think I'm going to look into tofu scrambles.", ">\n\nDo it. Honestly it's not exactly the same, but with the right kala namak black salt it's close enough to be VERY good in a 'egg mayo' sandwich, for instance.", ">\n\nThe US eats 8 Billion chickens per year. 16,000 chickens is one KFC on a busy day.", ">\n\n3,909 KFCs in the US, which purportedly sell 400 pieces of chicken per minute\nThis means that a single chain is selling 0.10232796111 pieces per minute, which would be 6.1396776666 pieces of chicken per hour.\nThat means 1 KFC, which was open from 10AM to midnight is open for 14 hours, and sells about 86 pieces of chicken in a day.\nIf we say that these pieces are split somewhat evenly among the types (2 breast [sources suggested they split the breasts], 2 thighs, 2 legs, 2 wings) we might presume that for every 8 pieces of chicken that are sold we have about 1 whole chicken.\n86 pieces of chicken would mean they sell roughly 11 whole chickens in a day.\nIn other words, it might be more fair to say that 16,000 is equal to roughly the output of about 1454 KFCs (or roughly 37% of all KFCs in a day)", ">\n\nYou divided the wrong way there, it would be 400/24,000 to find sales per branch, not the other way around. Additionally the 400 pieces per minute figure comes from the US only.", ">\n\nFixed the first point. Your second point is not relevant because its the best I could find number wise. I can update to the US, but it would also be like saying the numbers are off because not every KFC is open from 10-12, and not all sell the average amount of chicken quote per minute, or that the numbers come from different years. You'll have to accept a little fuzziness!", ">\n\nAbout 16,000 chickens were culled in Yunlin County, southern Taiwan, after birds at two chicken farms were confirmed as being infected by the highly pathogenic type A of subtype H5N1 of the avian influenza, the county's Animal Disease Control Center said in a statement Saturday.After the birds were destroyed, the two farms and surrounding area were thoroughly cleaned and disinfected in a bid to prevent the spread of the disease, the center said.", ">\n\nIt's only a matter of time before the wrong bird cross with the wrong pig. Influenza's ability for Antigenic Shift (combination of genetic material from two separate strains) is no joke. This is the exact process that can eventually lead to a human-to-human transmissable variant of H5N1.", ">\n\nThis is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 60%. (I'm a bot)\n\n\nTaipei, Jan. 7 About 16,000 chickens were culled in Yunlin County, southern Taiwan, after birds at two chicken farms were confirmed as being infected by the highly pathogenic type A of subtype H5N1 of the avian influenza, the county's Animal Disease Control Center said in a statement Saturday.\nAs bird flu infections have spread in Taiwan recently, Yunlin County Magistrate Chang Li-shan, who was elected to a second term in November, has instructed related agencies to come up with preventative measures, while poultry farmers will receive financial compensation as soon as possible when their poultry are culled, the center added.\nThe center urged poultry farmers to keep alert over possible bird flu infections by tightening access to their farms and enhancing disinfection efforts undertaken by personnel and vehicles coming and going from the farms.\n\n\nExtended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: farm^#1 bird^#2 Center^#3 chicken^#4 virus^#5" ]

[ "I think I'm going to look into tofu scrambles.", ">\n\nDo it. Honestly it's not exactly the same, but with the right kala namak black salt it's close enough to be VERY good in a 'egg mayo' sandwich, for instance.", ">\n\nThe US eats 8 Billion chickens per year. 16,000 chickens is one KFC on a busy day.", ">\n\n3,909 KFCs in the US, which purportedly sell 400 pieces of chicken per minute\nThis means that a single chain is selling 0.10232796111 pieces per minute, which would be 6.1396776666 pieces of chicken per hour.\nThat means 1 KFC, which was open from 10AM to midnight is open for 14 hours, and sells about 86 pieces of chicken in a day.\nIf we say that these pieces are split somewhat evenly among the types (2 breast [sources suggested they split the breasts], 2 thighs, 2 legs, 2 wings) we might presume that for every 8 pieces of chicken that are sold we have about 1 whole chicken.\n86 pieces of chicken would mean they sell roughly 11 whole chickens in a day.\nIn other words, it might be more fair to say that 16,000 is equal to roughly the output of about 1454 KFCs (or roughly 37% of all KFCs in a day)", ">\n\nYou divided the wrong way there, it would be 400/24,000 to find sales per branch, not the other way around. Additionally the 400 pieces per minute figure comes from the US only.", ">\n\nFixed the first point. Your second point is not relevant because its the best I could find number wise. I can update to the US, but it would also be like saying the numbers are off because not every KFC is open from 10-12, and not all sell the average amount of chicken quote per minute, or that the numbers come from different years. You'll have to accept a little fuzziness!", ">\n\nAbout 16,000 chickens were culled in Yunlin County, southern Taiwan, after birds at two chicken farms were confirmed as being infected by the highly pathogenic type A of subtype H5N1 of the avian influenza, the county's Animal Disease Control Center said in a statement Saturday.After the birds were destroyed, the two farms and surrounding area were thoroughly cleaned and disinfected in a bid to prevent the spread of the disease, the center said.", ">\n\nIt's only a matter of time before the wrong bird cross with the wrong pig. Influenza's ability for Antigenic Shift (combination of genetic material from two separate strains) is no joke. This is the exact process that can eventually lead to a human-to-human transmissable variant of H5N1.", ">\n\nThis is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 60%. (I'm a bot)\n\n\nTaipei, Jan. 7 About 16,000 chickens were culled in Yunlin County, southern Taiwan, after birds at two chicken farms were confirmed as being infected by the highly pathogenic type A of subtype H5N1 of the avian influenza, the county's Animal Disease Control Center said in a statement Saturday.\nAs bird flu infections have spread in Taiwan recently, Yunlin County Magistrate Chang Li-shan, who was elected to a second term in November, has instructed related agencies to come up with preventative measures, while poultry farmers will receive financial compensation as soon as possible when their poultry are culled, the center added.\nThe center urged poultry farmers to keep alert over possible bird flu infections by tightening access to their farms and enhancing disinfection efforts undertaken by personnel and vehicles coming and going from the farms.\n\n\nExtended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: farm^#1 bird^#2 Center^#3 chicken^#4 virus^#5", ">\n\nI love how when it comes to us we won't even close borders or stop flights to the country where the outbreak is occurring, but when it comes to domesticated animals it no holds barred. Of course they were going to be slaughtered anyway, but still, just saying it's interesting." ]

[ "I think I'm going to look into tofu scrambles.", ">\n\nDo it. Honestly it's not exactly the same, but with the right kala namak black salt it's close enough to be VERY good in a 'egg mayo' sandwich, for instance.", ">\n\nThe US eats 8 Billion chickens per year. 16,000 chickens is one KFC on a busy day.", ">\n\n3,909 KFCs in the US, which purportedly sell 400 pieces of chicken per minute\nThis means that a single chain is selling 0.10232796111 pieces per minute, which would be 6.1396776666 pieces of chicken per hour.\nThat means 1 KFC, which was open from 10AM to midnight is open for 14 hours, and sells about 86 pieces of chicken in a day.\nIf we say that these pieces are split somewhat evenly among the types (2 breast [sources suggested they split the breasts], 2 thighs, 2 legs, 2 wings) we might presume that for every 8 pieces of chicken that are sold we have about 1 whole chicken.\n86 pieces of chicken would mean they sell roughly 11 whole chickens in a day.\nIn other words, it might be more fair to say that 16,000 is equal to roughly the output of about 1454 KFCs (or roughly 37% of all KFCs in a day)", ">\n\nYou divided the wrong way there, it would be 400/24,000 to find sales per branch, not the other way around. Additionally the 400 pieces per minute figure comes from the US only.", ">\n\nFixed the first point. Your second point is not relevant because its the best I could find number wise. I can update to the US, but it would also be like saying the numbers are off because not every KFC is open from 10-12, and not all sell the average amount of chicken quote per minute, or that the numbers come from different years. You'll have to accept a little fuzziness!", ">\n\nAbout 16,000 chickens were culled in Yunlin County, southern Taiwan, after birds at two chicken farms were confirmed as being infected by the highly pathogenic type A of subtype H5N1 of the avian influenza, the county's Animal Disease Control Center said in a statement Saturday.After the birds were destroyed, the two farms and surrounding area were thoroughly cleaned and disinfected in a bid to prevent the spread of the disease, the center said.", ">\n\nIt's only a matter of time before the wrong bird cross with the wrong pig. Influenza's ability for Antigenic Shift (combination of genetic material from two separate strains) is no joke. This is the exact process that can eventually lead to a human-to-human transmissable variant of H5N1.", ">\n\nThis is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 60%. (I'm a bot)\n\n\nTaipei, Jan. 7 About 16,000 chickens were culled in Yunlin County, southern Taiwan, after birds at two chicken farms were confirmed as being infected by the highly pathogenic type A of subtype H5N1 of the avian influenza, the county's Animal Disease Control Center said in a statement Saturday.\nAs bird flu infections have spread in Taiwan recently, Yunlin County Magistrate Chang Li-shan, who was elected to a second term in November, has instructed related agencies to come up with preventative measures, while poultry farmers will receive financial compensation as soon as possible when their poultry are culled, the center added.\nThe center urged poultry farmers to keep alert over possible bird flu infections by tightening access to their farms and enhancing disinfection efforts undertaken by personnel and vehicles coming and going from the farms.\n\n\nExtended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: farm^#1 bird^#2 Center^#3 chicken^#4 virus^#5", ">\n\nI love how when it comes to us we won't even close borders or stop flights to the country where the outbreak is occurring, but when it comes to domesticated animals it no holds barred. Of course they were going to be slaughtered anyway, but still, just saying it's interesting.", ">\n\nPETA: ..." ]

[ "I think I'm going to look into tofu scrambles.", ">\n\nDo it. Honestly it's not exactly the same, but with the right kala namak black salt it's close enough to be VERY good in a 'egg mayo' sandwich, for instance.", ">\n\nThe US eats 8 Billion chickens per year. 16,000 chickens is one KFC on a busy day.", ">\n\n3,909 KFCs in the US, which purportedly sell 400 pieces of chicken per minute\nThis means that a single chain is selling 0.10232796111 pieces per minute, which would be 6.1396776666 pieces of chicken per hour.\nThat means 1 KFC, which was open from 10AM to midnight is open for 14 hours, and sells about 86 pieces of chicken in a day.\nIf we say that these pieces are split somewhat evenly among the types (2 breast [sources suggested they split the breasts], 2 thighs, 2 legs, 2 wings) we might presume that for every 8 pieces of chicken that are sold we have about 1 whole chicken.\n86 pieces of chicken would mean they sell roughly 11 whole chickens in a day.\nIn other words, it might be more fair to say that 16,000 is equal to roughly the output of about 1454 KFCs (or roughly 37% of all KFCs in a day)", ">\n\nYou divided the wrong way there, it would be 400/24,000 to find sales per branch, not the other way around. Additionally the 400 pieces per minute figure comes from the US only.", ">\n\nFixed the first point. Your second point is not relevant because its the best I could find number wise. I can update to the US, but it would also be like saying the numbers are off because not every KFC is open from 10-12, and not all sell the average amount of chicken quote per minute, or that the numbers come from different years. You'll have to accept a little fuzziness!", ">\n\nAbout 16,000 chickens were culled in Yunlin County, southern Taiwan, after birds at two chicken farms were confirmed as being infected by the highly pathogenic type A of subtype H5N1 of the avian influenza, the county's Animal Disease Control Center said in a statement Saturday.After the birds were destroyed, the two farms and surrounding area were thoroughly cleaned and disinfected in a bid to prevent the spread of the disease, the center said.", ">\n\nIt's only a matter of time before the wrong bird cross with the wrong pig. Influenza's ability for Antigenic Shift (combination of genetic material from two separate strains) is no joke. This is the exact process that can eventually lead to a human-to-human transmissable variant of H5N1.", ">\n\nThis is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 60%. (I'm a bot)\n\n\nTaipei, Jan. 7 About 16,000 chickens were culled in Yunlin County, southern Taiwan, after birds at two chicken farms were confirmed as being infected by the highly pathogenic type A of subtype H5N1 of the avian influenza, the county's Animal Disease Control Center said in a statement Saturday.\nAs bird flu infections have spread in Taiwan recently, Yunlin County Magistrate Chang Li-shan, who was elected to a second term in November, has instructed related agencies to come up with preventative measures, while poultry farmers will receive financial compensation as soon as possible when their poultry are culled, the center added.\nThe center urged poultry farmers to keep alert over possible bird flu infections by tightening access to their farms and enhancing disinfection efforts undertaken by personnel and vehicles coming and going from the farms.\n\n\nExtended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: farm^#1 bird^#2 Center^#3 chicken^#4 virus^#5", ">\n\nI love how when it comes to us we won't even close borders or stop flights to the country where the outbreak is occurring, but when it comes to domesticated animals it no holds barred. Of course they were going to be slaughtered anyway, but still, just saying it's interesting.", ">\n\nPETA: ...", ">\n\nStop farming animals = problem (among others) solved." ]

[ "I think I'm going to look into tofu scrambles.", ">\n\nDo it. Honestly it's not exactly the same, but with the right kala namak black salt it's close enough to be VERY good in a 'egg mayo' sandwich, for instance.", ">\n\nThe US eats 8 Billion chickens per year. 16,000 chickens is one KFC on a busy day.", ">\n\n3,909 KFCs in the US, which purportedly sell 400 pieces of chicken per minute\nThis means that a single chain is selling 0.10232796111 pieces per minute, which would be 6.1396776666 pieces of chicken per hour.\nThat means 1 KFC, which was open from 10AM to midnight is open for 14 hours, and sells about 86 pieces of chicken in a day.\nIf we say that these pieces are split somewhat evenly among the types (2 breast [sources suggested they split the breasts], 2 thighs, 2 legs, 2 wings) we might presume that for every 8 pieces of chicken that are sold we have about 1 whole chicken.\n86 pieces of chicken would mean they sell roughly 11 whole chickens in a day.\nIn other words, it might be more fair to say that 16,000 is equal to roughly the output of about 1454 KFCs (or roughly 37% of all KFCs in a day)", ">\n\nYou divided the wrong way there, it would be 400/24,000 to find sales per branch, not the other way around. Additionally the 400 pieces per minute figure comes from the US only.", ">\n\nFixed the first point. Your second point is not relevant because its the best I could find number wise. I can update to the US, but it would also be like saying the numbers are off because not every KFC is open from 10-12, and not all sell the average amount of chicken quote per minute, or that the numbers come from different years. You'll have to accept a little fuzziness!", ">\n\nAbout 16,000 chickens were culled in Yunlin County, southern Taiwan, after birds at two chicken farms were confirmed as being infected by the highly pathogenic type A of subtype H5N1 of the avian influenza, the county's Animal Disease Control Center said in a statement Saturday.After the birds were destroyed, the two farms and surrounding area were thoroughly cleaned and disinfected in a bid to prevent the spread of the disease, the center said.", ">\n\nIt's only a matter of time before the wrong bird cross with the wrong pig. Influenza's ability for Antigenic Shift (combination of genetic material from two separate strains) is no joke. This is the exact process that can eventually lead to a human-to-human transmissable variant of H5N1.", ">\n\nThis is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 60%. (I'm a bot)\n\n\nTaipei, Jan. 7 About 16,000 chickens were culled in Yunlin County, southern Taiwan, after birds at two chicken farms were confirmed as being infected by the highly pathogenic type A of subtype H5N1 of the avian influenza, the county's Animal Disease Control Center said in a statement Saturday.\nAs bird flu infections have spread in Taiwan recently, Yunlin County Magistrate Chang Li-shan, who was elected to a second term in November, has instructed related agencies to come up with preventative measures, while poultry farmers will receive financial compensation as soon as possible when their poultry are culled, the center added.\nThe center urged poultry farmers to keep alert over possible bird flu infections by tightening access to their farms and enhancing disinfection efforts undertaken by personnel and vehicles coming and going from the farms.\n\n\nExtended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: farm^#1 bird^#2 Center^#3 chicken^#4 virus^#5", ">\n\nI love how when it comes to us we won't even close borders or stop flights to the country where the outbreak is occurring, but when it comes to domesticated animals it no holds barred. Of course they were going to be slaughtered anyway, but still, just saying it's interesting.", ">\n\nPETA: ...", ">\n\nStop farming animals = problem (among others) solved.", ">\n\nYikes. They're about to have expensive eggs too" ]

[ "I think I'm going to look into tofu scrambles.", ">\n\nDo it. Honestly it's not exactly the same, but with the right kala namak black salt it's close enough to be VERY good in a 'egg mayo' sandwich, for instance.", ">\n\nThe US eats 8 Billion chickens per year. 16,000 chickens is one KFC on a busy day.", ">\n\n3,909 KFCs in the US, which purportedly sell 400 pieces of chicken per minute\nThis means that a single chain is selling 0.10232796111 pieces per minute, which would be 6.1396776666 pieces of chicken per hour.\nThat means 1 KFC, which was open from 10AM to midnight is open for 14 hours, and sells about 86 pieces of chicken in a day.\nIf we say that these pieces are split somewhat evenly among the types (2 breast [sources suggested they split the breasts], 2 thighs, 2 legs, 2 wings) we might presume that for every 8 pieces of chicken that are sold we have about 1 whole chicken.\n86 pieces of chicken would mean they sell roughly 11 whole chickens in a day.\nIn other words, it might be more fair to say that 16,000 is equal to roughly the output of about 1454 KFCs (or roughly 37% of all KFCs in a day)", ">\n\nYou divided the wrong way there, it would be 400/24,000 to find sales per branch, not the other way around. Additionally the 400 pieces per minute figure comes from the US only.", ">\n\nFixed the first point. Your second point is not relevant because its the best I could find number wise. I can update to the US, but it would also be like saying the numbers are off because not every KFC is open from 10-12, and not all sell the average amount of chicken quote per minute, or that the numbers come from different years. You'll have to accept a little fuzziness!", ">\n\nAbout 16,000 chickens were culled in Yunlin County, southern Taiwan, after birds at two chicken farms were confirmed as being infected by the highly pathogenic type A of subtype H5N1 of the avian influenza, the county's Animal Disease Control Center said in a statement Saturday.After the birds were destroyed, the two farms and surrounding area were thoroughly cleaned and disinfected in a bid to prevent the spread of the disease, the center said.", ">\n\nIt's only a matter of time before the wrong bird cross with the wrong pig. Influenza's ability for Antigenic Shift (combination of genetic material from two separate strains) is no joke. This is the exact process that can eventually lead to a human-to-human transmissable variant of H5N1.", ">\n\nThis is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 60%. (I'm a bot)\n\n\nTaipei, Jan. 7 About 16,000 chickens were culled in Yunlin County, southern Taiwan, after birds at two chicken farms were confirmed as being infected by the highly pathogenic type A of subtype H5N1 of the avian influenza, the county's Animal Disease Control Center said in a statement Saturday.\nAs bird flu infections have spread in Taiwan recently, Yunlin County Magistrate Chang Li-shan, who was elected to a second term in November, has instructed related agencies to come up with preventative measures, while poultry farmers will receive financial compensation as soon as possible when their poultry are culled, the center added.\nThe center urged poultry farmers to keep alert over possible bird flu infections by tightening access to their farms and enhancing disinfection efforts undertaken by personnel and vehicles coming and going from the farms.\n\n\nExtended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: farm^#1 bird^#2 Center^#3 chicken^#4 virus^#5", ">\n\nI love how when it comes to us we won't even close borders or stop flights to the country where the outbreak is occurring, but when it comes to domesticated animals it no holds barred. Of course they were going to be slaughtered anyway, but still, just saying it's interesting.", ">\n\nPETA: ...", ">\n\nStop farming animals = problem (among others) solved.", ">\n\nYikes. They're about to have expensive eggs too", ">\n\nWhen they have to cull here in the U.S., it's often a couple of million birds at a time. So 16,000 is peanuts." ]

[]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?" ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔" ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/" ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw" ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump" ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!" ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting..." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol" ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA" ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"" ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after..." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?" ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding.", ">\n\nAll you have to do is ignore interest rates. Just close your eyes and pretend that interest rates have nothing to do with the housing market. Admittedly, throwing Clinton into an argument is like throwing sand in the eyes. Clinton was a great ally to Wall Street. However, is there any pro-finance-industry policy enacted by Clinton that any part of the GOP is organizing to stop? No, there isn’t. Anything pro-Wall Street, that Clinton did, will be untouched by the GOP" ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding.", ">\n\nAll you have to do is ignore interest rates. Just close your eyes and pretend that interest rates have nothing to do with the housing market. Admittedly, throwing Clinton into an argument is like throwing sand in the eyes. Clinton was a great ally to Wall Street. However, is there any pro-finance-industry policy enacted by Clinton that any part of the GOP is organizing to stop? No, there isn’t. Anything pro-Wall Street, that Clinton did, will be untouched by the GOP", ">\n\nTrue" ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding.", ">\n\nAll you have to do is ignore interest rates. Just close your eyes and pretend that interest rates have nothing to do with the housing market. Admittedly, throwing Clinton into an argument is like throwing sand in the eyes. Clinton was a great ally to Wall Street. However, is there any pro-finance-industry policy enacted by Clinton that any part of the GOP is organizing to stop? No, there isn’t. Anything pro-Wall Street, that Clinton did, will be untouched by the GOP", ">\n\nTrue", ">\n\nMeanwhile in real America - just ‘looking’ like a suspect will get you killed while you sleep in your bed." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding.", ">\n\nAll you have to do is ignore interest rates. Just close your eyes and pretend that interest rates have nothing to do with the housing market. Admittedly, throwing Clinton into an argument is like throwing sand in the eyes. Clinton was a great ally to Wall Street. However, is there any pro-finance-industry policy enacted by Clinton that any part of the GOP is organizing to stop? No, there isn’t. Anything pro-Wall Street, that Clinton did, will be untouched by the GOP", ">\n\nTrue", ">\n\nMeanwhile in real America - just ‘looking’ like a suspect will get you killed while you sleep in your bed.", ">\n\nThey’ll even spend months soiling your name after shooting you for trespassing in your own home" ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding.", ">\n\nAll you have to do is ignore interest rates. Just close your eyes and pretend that interest rates have nothing to do with the housing market. Admittedly, throwing Clinton into an argument is like throwing sand in the eyes. Clinton was a great ally to Wall Street. However, is there any pro-finance-industry policy enacted by Clinton that any part of the GOP is organizing to stop? No, there isn’t. Anything pro-Wall Street, that Clinton did, will be untouched by the GOP", ">\n\nTrue", ">\n\nMeanwhile in real America - just ‘looking’ like a suspect will get you killed while you sleep in your bed.", ">\n\nThey’ll even spend months soiling your name after shooting you for trespassing in your own home", ">\n\nAnd find the body cams somehow stopped working at the key moment. Oopsie!" ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding.", ">\n\nAll you have to do is ignore interest rates. Just close your eyes and pretend that interest rates have nothing to do with the housing market. Admittedly, throwing Clinton into an argument is like throwing sand in the eyes. Clinton was a great ally to Wall Street. However, is there any pro-finance-industry policy enacted by Clinton that any part of the GOP is organizing to stop? No, there isn’t. Anything pro-Wall Street, that Clinton did, will be untouched by the GOP", ">\n\nTrue", ">\n\nMeanwhile in real America - just ‘looking’ like a suspect will get you killed while you sleep in your bed.", ">\n\nThey’ll even spend months soiling your name after shooting you for trespassing in your own home", ">\n\nAnd find the body cams somehow stopped working at the key moment. Oopsie!", ">\n\nAnd they'll argue law enforcement needs even more funding despite failing to properly do their jobs effectively. \nIn real life you can't ask your boss for a raise if your performance gets worse over time. In law enforcement you somehow can get away with this tactic and if you lose funding just blame Biden not yourself." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding.", ">\n\nAll you have to do is ignore interest rates. Just close your eyes and pretend that interest rates have nothing to do with the housing market. Admittedly, throwing Clinton into an argument is like throwing sand in the eyes. Clinton was a great ally to Wall Street. However, is there any pro-finance-industry policy enacted by Clinton that any part of the GOP is organizing to stop? No, there isn’t. Anything pro-Wall Street, that Clinton did, will be untouched by the GOP", ">\n\nTrue", ">\n\nMeanwhile in real America - just ‘looking’ like a suspect will get you killed while you sleep in your bed.", ">\n\nThey’ll even spend months soiling your name after shooting you for trespassing in your own home", ">\n\nAnd find the body cams somehow stopped working at the key moment. Oopsie!", ">\n\nAnd they'll argue law enforcement needs even more funding despite failing to properly do their jobs effectively. \nIn real life you can't ask your boss for a raise if your performance gets worse over time. In law enforcement you somehow can get away with this tactic and if you lose funding just blame Biden not yourself.", ">\n\nI wonder if any of the idiots who got tricked into following along and are now sitting in jail are starting to get the picture ... Nah" ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding.", ">\n\nAll you have to do is ignore interest rates. Just close your eyes and pretend that interest rates have nothing to do with the housing market. Admittedly, throwing Clinton into an argument is like throwing sand in the eyes. Clinton was a great ally to Wall Street. However, is there any pro-finance-industry policy enacted by Clinton that any part of the GOP is organizing to stop? No, there isn’t. Anything pro-Wall Street, that Clinton did, will be untouched by the GOP", ">\n\nTrue", ">\n\nMeanwhile in real America - just ‘looking’ like a suspect will get you killed while you sleep in your bed.", ">\n\nThey’ll even spend months soiling your name after shooting you for trespassing in your own home", ">\n\nAnd find the body cams somehow stopped working at the key moment. Oopsie!", ">\n\nAnd they'll argue law enforcement needs even more funding despite failing to properly do their jobs effectively. \nIn real life you can't ask your boss for a raise if your performance gets worse over time. In law enforcement you somehow can get away with this tactic and if you lose funding just blame Biden not yourself.", ">\n\nI wonder if any of the idiots who got tricked into following along and are now sitting in jail are starting to get the picture ... Nah", ">\n\nMcCarthy voted against continuing our democracy, and not only has he not been hanged yet: they just made him Speaker." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding.", ">\n\nAll you have to do is ignore interest rates. Just close your eyes and pretend that interest rates have nothing to do with the housing market. Admittedly, throwing Clinton into an argument is like throwing sand in the eyes. Clinton was a great ally to Wall Street. However, is there any pro-finance-industry policy enacted by Clinton that any part of the GOP is organizing to stop? No, there isn’t. Anything pro-Wall Street, that Clinton did, will be untouched by the GOP", ">\n\nTrue", ">\n\nMeanwhile in real America - just ‘looking’ like a suspect will get you killed while you sleep in your bed.", ">\n\nThey’ll even spend months soiling your name after shooting you for trespassing in your own home", ">\n\nAnd find the body cams somehow stopped working at the key moment. Oopsie!", ">\n\nAnd they'll argue law enforcement needs even more funding despite failing to properly do their jobs effectively. \nIn real life you can't ask your boss for a raise if your performance gets worse over time. In law enforcement you somehow can get away with this tactic and if you lose funding just blame Biden not yourself.", ">\n\nI wonder if any of the idiots who got tricked into following along and are now sitting in jail are starting to get the picture ... Nah", ">\n\nMcCarthy voted against continuing our democracy, and not only has he not been hanged yet: they just made him Speaker.", ">\n\nThis." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding.", ">\n\nAll you have to do is ignore interest rates. Just close your eyes and pretend that interest rates have nothing to do with the housing market. Admittedly, throwing Clinton into an argument is like throwing sand in the eyes. Clinton was a great ally to Wall Street. However, is there any pro-finance-industry policy enacted by Clinton that any part of the GOP is organizing to stop? No, there isn’t. Anything pro-Wall Street, that Clinton did, will be untouched by the GOP", ">\n\nTrue", ">\n\nMeanwhile in real America - just ‘looking’ like a suspect will get you killed while you sleep in your bed.", ">\n\nThey’ll even spend months soiling your name after shooting you for trespassing in your own home", ">\n\nAnd find the body cams somehow stopped working at the key moment. Oopsie!", ">\n\nAnd they'll argue law enforcement needs even more funding despite failing to properly do their jobs effectively. \nIn real life you can't ask your boss for a raise if your performance gets worse over time. In law enforcement you somehow can get away with this tactic and if you lose funding just blame Biden not yourself.", ">\n\nI wonder if any of the idiots who got tricked into following along and are now sitting in jail are starting to get the picture ... Nah", ">\n\nMcCarthy voted against continuing our democracy, and not only has he not been hanged yet: they just made him Speaker.", ">\n\nThis.", ">\n\nNot only that. They pretended to fuck around all week just so they wouldn't be able to officially address it on the anniversary. As soon as it became January 7th, surprise, we suddenly have a speaker." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding.", ">\n\nAll you have to do is ignore interest rates. Just close your eyes and pretend that interest rates have nothing to do with the housing market. Admittedly, throwing Clinton into an argument is like throwing sand in the eyes. Clinton was a great ally to Wall Street. However, is there any pro-finance-industry policy enacted by Clinton that any part of the GOP is organizing to stop? No, there isn’t. Anything pro-Wall Street, that Clinton did, will be untouched by the GOP", ">\n\nTrue", ">\n\nMeanwhile in real America - just ‘looking’ like a suspect will get you killed while you sleep in your bed.", ">\n\nThey’ll even spend months soiling your name after shooting you for trespassing in your own home", ">\n\nAnd find the body cams somehow stopped working at the key moment. Oopsie!", ">\n\nAnd they'll argue law enforcement needs even more funding despite failing to properly do their jobs effectively. \nIn real life you can't ask your boss for a raise if your performance gets worse over time. In law enforcement you somehow can get away with this tactic and if you lose funding just blame Biden not yourself.", ">\n\nI wonder if any of the idiots who got tricked into following along and are now sitting in jail are starting to get the picture ... Nah", ">\n\nMcCarthy voted against continuing our democracy, and not only has he not been hanged yet: they just made him Speaker.", ">\n\nThis.", ">\n\nNot only that. They pretended to fuck around all week just so they wouldn't be able to officially address it on the anniversary. As soon as it became January 7th, surprise, we suddenly have a speaker.", ">\n\nOMG the plan worked" ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding.", ">\n\nAll you have to do is ignore interest rates. Just close your eyes and pretend that interest rates have nothing to do with the housing market. Admittedly, throwing Clinton into an argument is like throwing sand in the eyes. Clinton was a great ally to Wall Street. However, is there any pro-finance-industry policy enacted by Clinton that any part of the GOP is organizing to stop? No, there isn’t. Anything pro-Wall Street, that Clinton did, will be untouched by the GOP", ">\n\nTrue", ">\n\nMeanwhile in real America - just ‘looking’ like a suspect will get you killed while you sleep in your bed.", ">\n\nThey’ll even spend months soiling your name after shooting you for trespassing in your own home", ">\n\nAnd find the body cams somehow stopped working at the key moment. Oopsie!", ">\n\nAnd they'll argue law enforcement needs even more funding despite failing to properly do their jobs effectively. \nIn real life you can't ask your boss for a raise if your performance gets worse over time. In law enforcement you somehow can get away with this tactic and if you lose funding just blame Biden not yourself.", ">\n\nI wonder if any of the idiots who got tricked into following along and are now sitting in jail are starting to get the picture ... Nah", ">\n\nMcCarthy voted against continuing our democracy, and not only has he not been hanged yet: they just made him Speaker.", ">\n\nThis.", ">\n\nNot only that. They pretended to fuck around all week just so they wouldn't be able to officially address it on the anniversary. As soon as it became January 7th, surprise, we suddenly have a speaker.", ">\n\nOMG the plan worked", ">\n\nIt’s been clearly exposed that the law does not apply equally to everyone. \nThere is a sitting congressman with ample proof that he trafficked children across state lines for sex, but he’s not in jail or charged with anything yet.\nWe have a former President that had classified docs in his club, assessable to foreign actors and people without clearance. He’s still free and actively fundraising.\nOur laws are meaningless for everyone but the working class." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding.", ">\n\nAll you have to do is ignore interest rates. Just close your eyes and pretend that interest rates have nothing to do with the housing market. Admittedly, throwing Clinton into an argument is like throwing sand in the eyes. Clinton was a great ally to Wall Street. However, is there any pro-finance-industry policy enacted by Clinton that any part of the GOP is organizing to stop? No, there isn’t. Anything pro-Wall Street, that Clinton did, will be untouched by the GOP", ">\n\nTrue", ">\n\nMeanwhile in real America - just ‘looking’ like a suspect will get you killed while you sleep in your bed.", ">\n\nThey’ll even spend months soiling your name after shooting you for trespassing in your own home", ">\n\nAnd find the body cams somehow stopped working at the key moment. Oopsie!", ">\n\nAnd they'll argue law enforcement needs even more funding despite failing to properly do their jobs effectively. \nIn real life you can't ask your boss for a raise if your performance gets worse over time. In law enforcement you somehow can get away with this tactic and if you lose funding just blame Biden not yourself.", ">\n\nI wonder if any of the idiots who got tricked into following along and are now sitting in jail are starting to get the picture ... Nah", ">\n\nMcCarthy voted against continuing our democracy, and not only has he not been hanged yet: they just made him Speaker.", ">\n\nThis.", ">\n\nNot only that. They pretended to fuck around all week just so they wouldn't be able to officially address it on the anniversary. As soon as it became January 7th, surprise, we suddenly have a speaker.", ">\n\nOMG the plan worked", ">\n\nIt’s been clearly exposed that the law does not apply equally to everyone. \nThere is a sitting congressman with ample proof that he trafficked children across state lines for sex, but he’s not in jail or charged with anything yet.\nWe have a former President that had classified docs in his club, assessable to foreign actors and people without clearance. He’s still free and actively fundraising.\nOur laws are meaningless for everyone but the working class.", ">\n\nIt mostly seems to be Republican politicians who are above the law." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding.", ">\n\nAll you have to do is ignore interest rates. Just close your eyes and pretend that interest rates have nothing to do with the housing market. Admittedly, throwing Clinton into an argument is like throwing sand in the eyes. Clinton was a great ally to Wall Street. However, is there any pro-finance-industry policy enacted by Clinton that any part of the GOP is organizing to stop? No, there isn’t. Anything pro-Wall Street, that Clinton did, will be untouched by the GOP", ">\n\nTrue", ">\n\nMeanwhile in real America - just ‘looking’ like a suspect will get you killed while you sleep in your bed.", ">\n\nThey’ll even spend months soiling your name after shooting you for trespassing in your own home", ">\n\nAnd find the body cams somehow stopped working at the key moment. Oopsie!", ">\n\nAnd they'll argue law enforcement needs even more funding despite failing to properly do their jobs effectively. \nIn real life you can't ask your boss for a raise if your performance gets worse over time. In law enforcement you somehow can get away with this tactic and if you lose funding just blame Biden not yourself.", ">\n\nI wonder if any of the idiots who got tricked into following along and are now sitting in jail are starting to get the picture ... Nah", ">\n\nMcCarthy voted against continuing our democracy, and not only has he not been hanged yet: they just made him Speaker.", ">\n\nThis.", ">\n\nNot only that. They pretended to fuck around all week just so they wouldn't be able to officially address it on the anniversary. As soon as it became January 7th, surprise, we suddenly have a speaker.", ">\n\nOMG the plan worked", ">\n\nIt’s been clearly exposed that the law does not apply equally to everyone. \nThere is a sitting congressman with ample proof that he trafficked children across state lines for sex, but he’s not in jail or charged with anything yet.\nWe have a former President that had classified docs in his club, assessable to foreign actors and people without clearance. He’s still free and actively fundraising.\nOur laws are meaningless for everyone but the working class.", ">\n\nIt mostly seems to be Republican politicians who are above the law.", ">\n\nAnd they never will be unless its by The People. \nThe law, law enforcement and government is completely incapable of holding themselves responsible for anything. They only hold others responsible. This is fact, historical fact proven time and time again.\nAnd when unabashed lying to constituents is the norm, the whole ‘vote them out’ thing is a moot point.\nSeriously, who protects is from our own elected officials?\nIts time for people to remove the Red White and Blue tinted glasses. America is Not the greatest country in the world (but it could be, and perhaps was at one point) \nThe divide between rich and poor directly reflects our political divides.\nThe people must bring the elected officials down of this golden pedestal we created for governance, squeeze their face and force them to gaze upon the burning corpse of the American Dream. Gaze into our horror you feckless walking dead men." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding.", ">\n\nAll you have to do is ignore interest rates. Just close your eyes and pretend that interest rates have nothing to do with the housing market. Admittedly, throwing Clinton into an argument is like throwing sand in the eyes. Clinton was a great ally to Wall Street. However, is there any pro-finance-industry policy enacted by Clinton that any part of the GOP is organizing to stop? No, there isn’t. Anything pro-Wall Street, that Clinton did, will be untouched by the GOP", ">\n\nTrue", ">\n\nMeanwhile in real America - just ‘looking’ like a suspect will get you killed while you sleep in your bed.", ">\n\nThey’ll even spend months soiling your name after shooting you for trespassing in your own home", ">\n\nAnd find the body cams somehow stopped working at the key moment. Oopsie!", ">\n\nAnd they'll argue law enforcement needs even more funding despite failing to properly do their jobs effectively. \nIn real life you can't ask your boss for a raise if your performance gets worse over time. In law enforcement you somehow can get away with this tactic and if you lose funding just blame Biden not yourself.", ">\n\nI wonder if any of the idiots who got tricked into following along and are now sitting in jail are starting to get the picture ... Nah", ">\n\nMcCarthy voted against continuing our democracy, and not only has he not been hanged yet: they just made him Speaker.", ">\n\nThis.", ">\n\nNot only that. They pretended to fuck around all week just so they wouldn't be able to officially address it on the anniversary. As soon as it became January 7th, surprise, we suddenly have a speaker.", ">\n\nOMG the plan worked", ">\n\nIt’s been clearly exposed that the law does not apply equally to everyone. \nThere is a sitting congressman with ample proof that he trafficked children across state lines for sex, but he’s not in jail or charged with anything yet.\nWe have a former President that had classified docs in his club, assessable to foreign actors and people without clearance. He’s still free and actively fundraising.\nOur laws are meaningless for everyone but the working class.", ">\n\nIt mostly seems to be Republican politicians who are above the law.", ">\n\nAnd they never will be unless its by The People. \nThe law, law enforcement and government is completely incapable of holding themselves responsible for anything. They only hold others responsible. This is fact, historical fact proven time and time again.\nAnd when unabashed lying to constituents is the norm, the whole ‘vote them out’ thing is a moot point.\nSeriously, who protects is from our own elected officials?\nIts time for people to remove the Red White and Blue tinted glasses. America is Not the greatest country in the world (but it could be, and perhaps was at one point) \nThe divide between rich and poor directly reflects our political divides.\nThe people must bring the elected officials down of this golden pedestal we created for governance, squeeze their face and force them to gaze upon the burning corpse of the American Dream. Gaze into our horror you feckless walking dead men.", ">\n\nAmerica is the greatest country in the world based on global media perception. Based on metrics the US is not #1 in education, health care, law enforcement effectiveness, technological development, infrastructure. We are middle of the pack in all of these categories." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding.", ">\n\nAll you have to do is ignore interest rates. Just close your eyes and pretend that interest rates have nothing to do with the housing market. Admittedly, throwing Clinton into an argument is like throwing sand in the eyes. Clinton was a great ally to Wall Street. However, is there any pro-finance-industry policy enacted by Clinton that any part of the GOP is organizing to stop? No, there isn’t. Anything pro-Wall Street, that Clinton did, will be untouched by the GOP", ">\n\nTrue", ">\n\nMeanwhile in real America - just ‘looking’ like a suspect will get you killed while you sleep in your bed.", ">\n\nThey’ll even spend months soiling your name after shooting you for trespassing in your own home", ">\n\nAnd find the body cams somehow stopped working at the key moment. Oopsie!", ">\n\nAnd they'll argue law enforcement needs even more funding despite failing to properly do their jobs effectively. \nIn real life you can't ask your boss for a raise if your performance gets worse over time. In law enforcement you somehow can get away with this tactic and if you lose funding just blame Biden not yourself.", ">\n\nI wonder if any of the idiots who got tricked into following along and are now sitting in jail are starting to get the picture ... Nah", ">\n\nMcCarthy voted against continuing our democracy, and not only has he not been hanged yet: they just made him Speaker.", ">\n\nThis.", ">\n\nNot only that. They pretended to fuck around all week just so they wouldn't be able to officially address it on the anniversary. As soon as it became January 7th, surprise, we suddenly have a speaker.", ">\n\nOMG the plan worked", ">\n\nIt’s been clearly exposed that the law does not apply equally to everyone. \nThere is a sitting congressman with ample proof that he trafficked children across state lines for sex, but he’s not in jail or charged with anything yet.\nWe have a former President that had classified docs in his club, assessable to foreign actors and people without clearance. He’s still free and actively fundraising.\nOur laws are meaningless for everyone but the working class.", ">\n\nIt mostly seems to be Republican politicians who are above the law.", ">\n\nAnd they never will be unless its by The People. \nThe law, law enforcement and government is completely incapable of holding themselves responsible for anything. They only hold others responsible. This is fact, historical fact proven time and time again.\nAnd when unabashed lying to constituents is the norm, the whole ‘vote them out’ thing is a moot point.\nSeriously, who protects is from our own elected officials?\nIts time for people to remove the Red White and Blue tinted glasses. America is Not the greatest country in the world (but it could be, and perhaps was at one point) \nThe divide between rich and poor directly reflects our political divides.\nThe people must bring the elected officials down of this golden pedestal we created for governance, squeeze their face and force them to gaze upon the burning corpse of the American Dream. Gaze into our horror you feckless walking dead men.", ">\n\nAmerica is the greatest country in the world based on global media perception. Based on metrics the US is not #1 in education, health care, law enforcement effectiveness, technological development, infrastructure. We are middle of the pack in all of these categories.", ">\n\nThey’re going to try again. Honestly they’d be dumb not to. They got caught red-handed committing one of the worst crimes you can commit against a country and there were no consequences. Given there’s zero cost, they should try again." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding.", ">\n\nAll you have to do is ignore interest rates. Just close your eyes and pretend that interest rates have nothing to do with the housing market. Admittedly, throwing Clinton into an argument is like throwing sand in the eyes. Clinton was a great ally to Wall Street. However, is there any pro-finance-industry policy enacted by Clinton that any part of the GOP is organizing to stop? No, there isn’t. Anything pro-Wall Street, that Clinton did, will be untouched by the GOP", ">\n\nTrue", ">\n\nMeanwhile in real America - just ‘looking’ like a suspect will get you killed while you sleep in your bed.", ">\n\nThey’ll even spend months soiling your name after shooting you for trespassing in your own home", ">\n\nAnd find the body cams somehow stopped working at the key moment. Oopsie!", ">\n\nAnd they'll argue law enforcement needs even more funding despite failing to properly do their jobs effectively. \nIn real life you can't ask your boss for a raise if your performance gets worse over time. In law enforcement you somehow can get away with this tactic and if you lose funding just blame Biden not yourself.", ">\n\nI wonder if any of the idiots who got tricked into following along and are now sitting in jail are starting to get the picture ... Nah", ">\n\nMcCarthy voted against continuing our democracy, and not only has he not been hanged yet: they just made him Speaker.", ">\n\nThis.", ">\n\nNot only that. They pretended to fuck around all week just so they wouldn't be able to officially address it on the anniversary. As soon as it became January 7th, surprise, we suddenly have a speaker.", ">\n\nOMG the plan worked", ">\n\nIt’s been clearly exposed that the law does not apply equally to everyone. \nThere is a sitting congressman with ample proof that he trafficked children across state lines for sex, but he’s not in jail or charged with anything yet.\nWe have a former President that had classified docs in his club, assessable to foreign actors and people without clearance. He’s still free and actively fundraising.\nOur laws are meaningless for everyone but the working class.", ">\n\nIt mostly seems to be Republican politicians who are above the law.", ">\n\nAnd they never will be unless its by The People. \nThe law, law enforcement and government is completely incapable of holding themselves responsible for anything. They only hold others responsible. This is fact, historical fact proven time and time again.\nAnd when unabashed lying to constituents is the norm, the whole ‘vote them out’ thing is a moot point.\nSeriously, who protects is from our own elected officials?\nIts time for people to remove the Red White and Blue tinted glasses. America is Not the greatest country in the world (but it could be, and perhaps was at one point) \nThe divide between rich and poor directly reflects our political divides.\nThe people must bring the elected officials down of this golden pedestal we created for governance, squeeze their face and force them to gaze upon the burning corpse of the American Dream. Gaze into our horror you feckless walking dead men.", ">\n\nAmerica is the greatest country in the world based on global media perception. Based on metrics the US is not #1 in education, health care, law enforcement effectiveness, technological development, infrastructure. We are middle of the pack in all of these categories.", ">\n\nThey’re going to try again. Honestly they’d be dumb not to. They got caught red-handed committing one of the worst crimes you can commit against a country and there were no consequences. Given there’s zero cost, they should try again.", ">\n\nand they keep lying about the day trump sent an armed mob to the capitol to overturn an election that he lost by seven million votes. \"they're not here to hurt me.\" what a brave patriotic public servant that donnie donuts is. so proud of our country for allowing him and his flock of half-wit sheep to continue to try to overthrow the government two years after they violently attacked the capitol. his campaign tag-line should be \"hang mike pence\". traitors every one." ]

[ "Why can't Republican lawmakers also be lawfollowers?", ">\n\nBecause one of the core ideologies of conservative-ism since its inception amongst the deposed nobles of France after their revolution is hierarchy. Specifically, the idea that people are Good or Bad based on their position in society. Not whether or not they do good or bad things, merely whether or not they are wealthy and or have prestige and power and are part of the right group(s). \nOne of the ways they demonstrate this is through unequal enforcement of the law. Hypocrisy is not seen as a bad thing by them, just a demonstration of their power and position.", ">\n\nIt reminds me of the debate he had with Hillary where she accused him of not paying taxes. His reply was that it was because he was smart. He had no doubt that this was a completely honest thing for him to do.\nHis supports and those who are now part of Cult 45 thought is was great. It's a conservative mindset that only caring for themselves is their right, privilege and responsibility to do.\nCompletely twisted.", ">\n\nTrump supporter's brains are not wired the same as rational people. That's not taking a shot at them, it's reality based on their actions and words. Basically, they don't give a shit about others or rules. That's why it's safe to call them sociopaths and some of them psychopaths.", ">\n\nThat's true. Scary how many there are.", ">\n\nEveryone but the ones in charge have been charged. Trump is still out here making false claims about everything he doesn't believe in. Like that dumbass has any authority to do anything.", ">\n\nAnd if you ask any random conservative about it, the response will be, \"all in the past, if they had something they'd have charged [insert politician's name].\" \nThen they demand something be done about hunter biden's laptop.", ">\n\nIt's sad this laptop is more important than the officers who risked their lives on 1/6/21. Aren't Conservatives the ones that say Blue Lives Matter? 🤔", ">\n\nThey literally told the cops to stop doing the job of protecting congress, while beating on those cops, claiming they are on the same side. :-/", ">\n\nRubes like my uncle & brother believes that it was all antifa & not what, you know, what everyone else saw", ">\n\nmy dad repeatedly told me to 'just wait' believing some special 'stolen election' evidence would vindicate Trump", ">\n\nYup, there still waiting!", ">\n\nstill waiting...", ">\n\nI want to believe the DOJ is getting as many people to flip on the ringleaders in power as possible before making a move, but regardless, those in support of a clear terrorist attack NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. You don’t get to keep your job after trying to burn your office down.", ">\n\nEspecially the Republican Congressmen who asked for a pardon.", ">\n\n\"Key GOP lawmakers go unpunished\"?\nHave any of the GOP lawmakers involved in the coup been indicted? If not, then the word \"key\" can be deleted from the headline.", ">\n\nIMO it is useful because it implies that they were heavily involved in January 6th, which implication is not as clear if you omit “Key” from the headline.", ">\n\nPeople just have to find a gripe with every headline that isn't \"GOP evil; deserves death.\"\nInstead of asking if the headline accurately describes the story, they ask if it accurately describes their rage. They have no clue about journalistic integrity or what makes a headline accurate. They're just pissed and want the world to reflect their rage.", ">\n\nI mean, more than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results despite knowing they were legitimate, which is tantamount to abolishing our democracy, so most of them are worthy of punishment.\nRemoving “key” only further obscured the link to the wrongdoing, IMO, though.", ">\n\n\nmore than half of GOP legislators did vote to throw out the election results\n\nSounds like you've identified them as the key GOP legislators, right? As in the ones relevant to the story? Lol", ">\n\nI’m the guy who was agreeing with you, buddy. I was just pointing out that even though “key” is far more often used to specify a small minority than it is to specify a supermajority, it still adds something here. But because a supermajority of the GOP in the House was in fact involved in trying to end our democracy, the general anger at the GOP is pretty reasonable.\nAnyhow, just saying “GOP legislators” with no linkage word to what they’re being accused of (the role “key” plays in the headline) would make it sound like the author believes people should be punished solely for being GOP legislators after January 6th happened. Instead of just most of them, for being traitors.\nEdited for clarity.", ">\n\nYeah the key people responsible are never going to get charged. We don’t have a system that punishes the rich and powerful (unless they cross other people who are more rich and powerful, and even then it’s in all their best interests to not set a precedent of rich people going to jail). They don’t have to pay taxes, abide by laws, honor subpoenas, or even work in the true sense of the word. \nMeanwhile I’m holding down two jobs, paying taxes out my ass, my taxes/utilities/HOA fees/groceries are continuing to get more expensive, I abide by the law, and I’ve never attempted to overthrow the government. Actually served in Afghanistan (there’s another thing you won’t catch these people doing) which, as it turns out, was a 2-decade-long ploy to make these same people even richer. \nI hope I’m wrong but it sure looks like we are being foolishly optimistic by even discussing the possibility of Trump and other GOP leaders being charged for Jan. 6.", ">\n\nThe reason this happens is that you are selfish and lazy and need to work smarter to succeed. \nThat's what your average Conservative lawmaker will tell you. They'll tell this long boring story about how they had nothing and worked to the top. When in reality they got favors they never earned in order to get their start to success (Donald Trump). So when January 6th is brought up the people who stormed the couple are the same as you in Conservative lawmakers mind because those people are stupid and lazy too.", ">\n\n... and this is flooding the companies for which we work. It's always been there, but look around at work and listen to the words. I've never been so insulted as to hear a \"leader\" talk about how hard they work. If a person works hard, they don't have to declare it.", ">\n\nLaws for thee, but not for me…. Republicans/MAGA", ">\n\nSorry to break it to you, but the entire political establishment is guilty of this.", ">\n\nGop are terrorists to the United States.", ">\n\nlol that's the best you've got?\n\"look at what rate hikes as a consequence of trump printing trillions did to your stocks!!\"", ">\n\nThrough out the last 20-30 years or so there is this constant progression of Republicans robbing the cookie jar, Democrats fixing it and catching all the hate over it, ad infinitum. The one case where that wasn't true was the housing market collapse in the early 2000's, I do think that was more Democrat inspired than Republican. To be fair though a Republican in office would have probably done something way worse - my only evidence for the claim is what quickly followed after...", ">\n\nThe housing collapse of 2008?", ">\n\nyea, Clinton signed into law some policies that lead to that is my understanding.", ">\n\nAll you have to do is ignore interest rates. Just close your eyes and pretend that interest rates have nothing to do with the housing market. Admittedly, throwing Clinton into an argument is like throwing sand in the eyes. Clinton was a great ally to Wall Street. However, is there any pro-finance-industry policy enacted by Clinton that any part of the GOP is organizing to stop? No, there isn’t. Anything pro-Wall Street, that Clinton did, will be untouched by the GOP", ">\n\nTrue", ">\n\nMeanwhile in real America - just ‘looking’ like a suspect will get you killed while you sleep in your bed.", ">\n\nThey’ll even spend months soiling your name after shooting you for trespassing in your own home", ">\n\nAnd find the body cams somehow stopped working at the key moment. Oopsie!", ">\n\nAnd they'll argue law enforcement needs even more funding despite failing to properly do their jobs effectively. \nIn real life you can't ask your boss for a raise if your performance gets worse over time. In law enforcement you somehow can get away with this tactic and if you lose funding just blame Biden not yourself.", ">\n\nI wonder if any of the idiots who got tricked into following along and are now sitting in jail are starting to get the picture ... Nah", ">\n\nMcCarthy voted against continuing our democracy, and not only has he not been hanged yet: they just made him Speaker.", ">\n\nThis.", ">\n\nNot only that. They pretended to fuck around all week just so they wouldn't be able to officially address it on the anniversary. As soon as it became January 7th, surprise, we suddenly have a speaker.", ">\n\nOMG the plan worked", ">\n\nIt’s been clearly exposed that the law does not apply equally to everyone. \nThere is a sitting congressman with ample proof that he trafficked children across state lines for sex, but he’s not in jail or charged with anything yet.\nWe have a former President that had classified docs in his club, assessable to foreign actors and people without clearance. He’s still free and actively fundraising.\nOur laws are meaningless for everyone but the working class.", ">\n\nIt mostly seems to be Republican politicians who are above the law.", ">\n\nAnd they never will be unless its by The People. \nThe law, law enforcement and government is completely incapable of holding themselves responsible for anything. They only hold others responsible. This is fact, historical fact proven time and time again.\nAnd when unabashed lying to constituents is the norm, the whole ‘vote them out’ thing is a moot point.\nSeriously, who protects is from our own elected officials?\nIts time for people to remove the Red White and Blue tinted glasses. America is Not the greatest country in the world (but it could be, and perhaps was at one point) \nThe divide between rich and poor directly reflects our political divides.\nThe people must bring the elected officials down of this golden pedestal we created for governance, squeeze their face and force them to gaze upon the burning corpse of the American Dream. Gaze into our horror you feckless walking dead men.", ">\n\nAmerica is the greatest country in the world based on global media perception. Based on metrics the US is not #1 in education, health care, law enforcement effectiveness, technological development, infrastructure. We are middle of the pack in all of these categories.", ">\n\nThey’re going to try again. Honestly they’d be dumb not to. They got caught red-handed committing one of the worst crimes you can commit against a country and there were no consequences. Given there’s zero cost, they should try again.", ">\n\nand they keep lying about the day trump sent an armed mob to the capitol to overturn an election that he lost by seven million votes. \"they're not here to hurt me.\" what a brave patriotic public servant that donnie donuts is. so proud of our country for allowing him and his flock of half-wit sheep to continue to try to overthrow the government two years after they violently attacked the capitol. his campaign tag-line should be \"hang mike pence\". traitors every one.", ">\n\nPoliticians always get out of anything. Trump and his stupid nonsense should’ve been stopped already" ]