If women ran things, we would have an entirely different, more humane, more productive, and more efficient way to protect academic freedom and get good work done.
Um ... what? I'll credit the notion that it would be different, but why should anyone believe it would also be all those other things?
Yup; I googled my own IA comments and found myself in favor of "modifying" tenure: 10-15 year contracts. But that was, as you say, a question internal to the academy. My point here is that times have changed, and the larger picture seems more important. I'm not so concerned about a lot of academics being specifically targeted as about the self-censorship that's inevitable after a few are.
You forgot (d) FL:
Without the potentially achievable carrot of tenure, the grad school/post-doc/adjunct/bookstore clerk slog in the lead up to a full time academic job would be even more difficult to take. I think fewer people would bother.
Although it really is interesting that the flip side of tenure is an increased reliance on those very same adjuncts, grad students and post-docs. Something about that equation seems like it has to collapse eventually.
If fewer people bothered, that would be great! Not only would the people who did bother presumably have a better chance being able to succeed on their merits (whatever "success" would come to be), but the people who would otherwise have bothered but did not would take their (hopefully genuine) interest in the litterae humaniores and whatnot into society at large, instead of adding to academia's glutted & unused hoard.
Not a bad point Ben.
But not all fields of academia are equally bloated.
Some are much more labor intensive in a 'manpower' sort of way than others.
Keith Burgess-Jackson offered a good defense of tenure a while back; a lot of people who have entered academia did so with the hope that they'd eventually have the job security that comes with tenure. Abolishing tenure now would require breaking a lot of explicit or implicit contracts. And I think abolishing it for new hires would create a pretty awful two-track system in the transition.
Didn't the UK abolish tenure, actually? It may not have had the bad effects I envision, though I also hear that UK academics are less than gruntled these days.
Gosh, Matt, if I had a different job I'd say that I entered the auto industry thinking that there'd be jobs in a decade, and there weren't...
Well, I'm thinking more of the people who actually have signed contracts (yeah, I said "implicit," but I'm changing my mind).
Have any of you read any of the Horowitz inspired state bills on "Academic Freedom?"
The florida bill has things that don't bother me:
FACULTY AND INSTRUCTORS HAVE A RIGHT TO EXPECT THAT THEY WILL NOT BE EXCLUDED FROM TENURE, SEARCH, OR HIRING COMMITTEES ON THE BASIS OF THEIR POLITICAL OR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.
But it also has things I wonder about:
STUDENTS HAVE A RIGHT TO EXPECT THAT THEIR ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND THE QUALITY OF THEIR EDUCATION WILL NOT BE INFRINGED UPON BY INSTRUCTORS WHO PERSISTENTLY INTRODUCE CONTROVERSIAL MATTER INTO THE CLASSROOM OR COURSEWORK THAT HAS NO RELATION TO THE SUBJECT OF STUDY AND SERVES NO LEGITIMATE PEDAGOGICAL PURPOSE. "
I read it to mean that the controversial matter is bad if it serves no legitimate purpose, but its poorly drafted. Even so, do we all know "legitimate" when we see it?
Benton, I defer to the resident academics, but my understanding of the Horowitzian language is that it's not poorly drafted: it's very precisely drafted to allow abuse.
I agree that this could be the case.
What I don't understand is how this profits Horowitz. There's similar stuff perking in CA, IN, OH and probably other places too. He doesn't need legislative action to drive his business of right wing outrage, but there it is. I'm also baffled as to what drives the various Solons in the State Capitols to take it up.
You'll notice I'm not including righteous indignation and anger at injustice among the motivations I'm considering.
Can someone explain to me what "Israeli-loyal" is doing in the quoted material above?