[lit-ideas] Re: Pausing Philosophically for Coffee off the B9086, with Tammie Norries

  • From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2011 20:50:18 -0700

Donal wrote
The main argument for tenure is surely to protect academics from dismissal because their work is not congenial to those who might otherwise be entrusted to decide such things as the worth of an academic's work (as with the independence of judges, protected through tenure from dismissal by the state). And yet the system depends on someone being entrusted with making a judgment as to who should get tenure, as if this will not be subject to selection on the grounds of what they find congenial. And making this judgment at a somewhat speculative stage. And so there is "Heather" as an example, if genuine, who might seem to have very little chance of scoring highly with a view highly uncongenial to her marker.
This seems right, if 'congenial' is understood to mean that the work is intelligent and has some merit (that it be a contribution to knowledge may be too much to ask). There's one sense of 'congenial' though that comes closer to something like: agreeable to a certain faction within a large department because one's one's interests are similar to those of the others in it. I speak of large departments because it's there that factions develop—'Continental' philosophers vs. 'analytic' philosophers of various sorts, e.g. Yet while this sort of 'congeniality' as grounds for hiring or granting tenure may exist somewhere, it it would be rare, I think, for it to overcome sheer incompetence.
Is academic tenure a 'good thing'? I think it is. (I would say that, wouldn't I?) There is a growing movement on the part of state governors and state legislatures here to do away with tenure in secondary schools, and it has now been proposed that this be done in state-supported colleges and universities. (Often this is marketed as 'post-tenure review,' whereby tenured instructors are evaluated to see if they're still sentient.)
I believe that the most important reason for granting tenure in US colleges and universities is to prevent people from being dismissed from their academic positions because of their political opinions, as in the case of Russell, who, in 1916, was dismissed from Trinity College, Cambridge, and fined 110 pounds, for his anti-war protests.
The controversy surrounding the California loyalty oath, which required all state employees to sign an oath that they were not communists, pagans, anarchists, or otherwise a threat to the state and the federal government is instructive. 

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/uchistory/archives_exhibits/loyaltyoath/timelinesummary.html
There's also the tacit Galileo Protection Clause which protects one from being dismissed for teaching things that go against the received doctrine in one's field. This is often confused with the protection of instructors' freedom of speech across the board, as when a teacher of mathematics does nothing but lecture on the existence of flying saucers; the latter is not, on my view, shielded by his or her having tenure.
As for judges, it depends. Federal judges are appointed; state judges may be appointed, yet must, at the end of their terms, stand for election—or, having been elected at least once, for re-election; they may also be voted out of office. There are too many variations and complexities here for me to touch on them all: my point is that judges at a certain level, do not have anything resembling tenure. 

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2030526,00.html

Robert Paul,
in Oregon, the Sunshine State

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