[Alumni-chat] "Earning" opportunities

Tue Jun 26 17:04:57 EDT 2007

So Academic freedom and tenure is only worthy of those with PhDs?  I find it ironic that so many people demanding community government can also argue for an apartheid based system of job security.

  As someone that is tenure-track, I recognize (and freely admit) that tenure is nothing more than a free-pass to do 

  Is being a professor more noble and/or important than serving as an administrative assistant?  Food worker?  

  Do people arguing for tenure actually feel that they contribute more to society than others who did not have the opportunity to pursue advanced studies in their specific field of interest?

  Why should the administrative assistants and physical plant workers have the same protections that tenured PhDs have?  I believe all workers should have the same protections.  

  What's next?  Requiring people to have "earned" the ability to own property before they can vote?

Peter Bradley <pbradley at mcdaniel.edu> wrote:
  At the risk of continuing a discussion that is probably a red herring 
anyway...
This is all true, but there is another reason that is often overlooked. 
Tenure-track faculty are not just responsible for teaching, advising and 
mentoring students - they are responsible for the curriculum as well (at 
least, they are supposed to be). Non-tenure track faculty teach the 
classes they are given. Tenure-track faculty create new classes, 
programs, etc. They are entrusted to know what skills and content is 
required for a student to be considered a representative of that college 
in their future endeavors. Without tenure, the curriculum would be in 
the hands of the administration, and the faculty would be forced to 
teach the courses and programs that brought in the most money. 
Innovative programs like gender studies and queer studies, and even my 
own discipline - philosophy - would be axed as not efficient. It is not 
a surprise that the colleges without tenure are also primarily 
professional programs or polytechniques - those are programs in which 
the curriculum can be set by the administration without faculty input.
Peter Bradley '96
McDaniel College

Mark David Higbee wrote:
> Michael posed a question, a good one, asking why faculty members should be able to have 
> Tenure, when 
> virtually no other category of employee in our society has such job security.
>
> The reason is simple, but often overlooked. Without tenure, there is no possibility of 
> academic freedom. Any 
> faculty member could be fired by management for refusing to teach objectionable ideas (say, 
> that the earth was 
> created in 6 days) that some administrator favors, or for persisting in research projects that 
> are unpopular with, 
> say, the major funders of a university. Tobacco money has been known to dictate the 
> conclusions of research, 
> and recently there was a case over lumber industry money allegedly being used for the same 
> purposes; without 
> academic freedom, scholars would have essentially no possibility of resisting orders to 
> manufacture 
> conclusions that suit the paymasters of a university. 
>
> These threats are not as hypothetical and distant as one may imagine. The protections 
> against such threats 
> provided by are the bulwark of academic freedom in the United States. The practice of 
> tenure goes back only to 
> about World War I. Antioch College, under Pres. McGregor in the 1950s, fired faculty 
> members for their 
> political beliefs, which shows that even tenure is less of a protection than it is sometimes 
> imagined to be. 
>
> A secondary but still important justification for tenure is that professors' salaries, relative to 
> that of other 
> professions requiring comparable levels of education and expertise developed over years and 
> years, are very 
> low. This is not a complaint, just a fact. Without some reasonable assurance that faculty 
> members who are 
> successful, who meet the standards of their profession and thus "earn tenure" - which is not 
> automatic and is 
> denied in many instances - it is unlikely that talented people would devote themselves to 
> pursuing lots of 
> education that will result in poorly paid jobs (relative not to janitors, but say doctors and 
> accountants) that have 
> little or no job security. 
>
> And, back to academic freedom - this includes the duty of faculty to speak up professionally 
> to advocate for the 
> best interests of their students and colleges, without undue fear of retaliation. 
>
> An Antioch College without a tenure track faculty? That would mean a corporate university 
> modeled on the 
> University of Phoenix, IMHO. 
>
> --Mark Higbee, Antioch 1983
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: alumni-chat-request at w3.antioch.edu
> Date: Monday, June 25, 2007 9:13 pm
> Subject: Alumni-chat Digest, Vol 4, Issue 89
>
> 
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>> Today's Topics:
>>
>> 1. The 501(c)3 thing (Hope Anne Nathan)
>> 2. Re: The numbers don't add up (Christine Smith)
>> 3. Forty million? (Rowan Kaiser)
>> 4. Re: Forty million? (Matthew Arnold)
>> 5. New Alumni Board? (Thaddeus Russell)
>> 6. Re: Forty million? (Matthew Arnold)
>> 7. Re: The numbers don't add up (Laura F.)
>> 8. Re: Faculty Tenure (Stephanie Scott)
>> 9. Re: The numbers don't add up (Patrick Cates)
>> 10. Re: Faculty Tenure (Christine Smith)
>> 11. Re: 501 c3 status and sponsorship information 
>> (Sistersara at aol.com)
>> 12. Re: Re: [Alumni-chat] Faculty Tenure (Peter Bradley)
>> 13. Re: 501 c3 status and sponsorship information (Sistersara at aol.com)
>> 14. Re: The numbers don't add up (Robert Devine)
>> 15. AIF (Robert Abrams)
>> 16. Tenure = Haves, Non privledged People = Non Tenure
>> (TheBangaloreBlue)
>> 17. RE: 501 c3 status and sponsorship information (Thelma Seto)
>> 18. RE: Tenure = Haves, Non privledged People = Non Tenure
>> (Michael Olenick)
>> 19. RE: The Land? (Thelma Seto)
>> 20. Re: The numbers don't add up (Robert Devine)
>> 
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