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

  • From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2011 18:42:30 -0230

I believe that any accredited university must provide tenure for its faculty.
There is no academic freedom, either in research or teaching without it.
Academic freedom is what identifies the distinct character of a university and
what differentiates it from training schools, community colleges and other
organizations in which teaching is formally pursued. Apply the Hypothetical
Imperative yourself. All of this I take to be transcendental to the concept of
a university.

In practice, the granting of tenure is often contentious and political rather
than impartial and duly informed. Such considerations have no relevance to the
apriori claims I made in par one. They are relevant only to maxims of
continuing vigilance and improvement in the process of deliberation and
adjudication carried out by P&T cttees. There is nothing mysterious about
excellence in research and in teaching. Faculty Associations are clear on the
general guidelines, as is the Canadian Association of University Teachers which
monitors and responds to infringements of academic freedom in the country. It is
mysterious only to faculty who are
asked to make tenure decisions on individuals working in a scholarly discipline
radically different from those inhabited by the adjudicators. The value of my
assessment of an educational psychologist's worthiness to be tenured depends on
my knowledge of the top scholarly journals and publishers in that field. As
such, my view is worthless. My view is less worthless when it comes to
philosophy of education or moral philosophy. Fallible? Of course. But one
doesn't criticize the value of the wheel simply because people get flat tires.

On Heather: Yes, she's very real. And very bright, clearly. Any faculty member
who takes the Miss Congeniality approach to evaluating her students' work is a
fraud and does not deserve tenure or to sit on a P&T cttee or even continued
employment at a university. There is room at neither the university nor a
public school for the Jim Keegstra's and Malcolm Ross's of the world. 

Walter O
MUN





Quoting Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>:

> 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 developâ??'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 
> electionâ??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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