on the principal stresses of my life, and the things that distract me from them

[pellucid]

1. Grading is FINISHED!!!!!!!!! Well, not entirely, but the exam marking is finished, and that's the part that has been making my brains leak out my ears the past few days. Note to self: next time you think "oh, exams go quickly, even when they're essays," remember that THIS IS NOT TRUE when there are 120 of them. Next time, I will include multiple

Comments

[pellucid]

The advantage of having senior faculty is that you get senior intellects; even in a lower-level academic environment like a public or private school, the older/more expensive/more experienced people provide value to both the other faculty and the students.

Oh, I completely agree with you. I just don't have a great deal of confidence that many college/university administrators would--at least not when push comes to shove and financial decisions have to be made.

As for the academic freedom thing, I think it actually is a significant issue, and more for institutions that are not religiously affiliated. Most religious institutions who want their faculty to adhere to particular religious standards have a contract that the faculty must sign at regular intervals; someone who breaks the contract is subject to being fired whether he or she is tenured or not. So tenure at a religious school is actually less firm than at a secular one (or one with religious affiliation but not the kind of religious environment that requires its faculty to adhere to particular religious beliefs or practices).

But it's not just about intellectual freedom--a lot of it is about identity politics, too. Not at all long ago, and probably still at a number of smaller places in particular regions of the country, LJBTQ people wouldn't come out until after they got tenure because otherwise they'd be denied. Tenure can also protect POC, women, disabled people, etc.--though obviously they have to get tenured in the first place, and there continue to be instances of less privileged people being denied tenure because of these reasons. It's not as common as it was even 10-15 years ago, fortunately, and it happens rarely if ever at top institutions, but I absolutely believe it still happens. The principle behind tenure is still something important to have mandated, I fear. There are many places where these things are not taken for granted at all.

It also protects people from the politics of academia, which is not insignificant. If your big intellectual rival, whom you think is completely wrong about everything ever (and who thinks the same about you), moves into administration, are you suddenly on the chopping block because of a personal vendetta? You could be. I realize these things are possibilities in other work environments, as well, but there are fewer other work environments in which such differences of opinion have such vehement ideological fire behind them, at least potentially. (I'd think, anyway--disagreeing about the best way to market a product is not quite the same as disagreeing about religion or political science or philosophy, y'know?)

I do believe that the vast majority of institutions of higher learning do vehemently value intellectual freedom. Unfortunately, I also believe they value other things more. Frankly, there is no institution that I trust not to screw over the intangibles for the tangibles if given the opportunity: money trumps ideology, every time. Politics and power usually trump ideology, too. So I like the idea of systems in place to protect the ideology when the going gets rough.

Does the current tenure system do this as well as it might? Of course not. As I said, it certainly needs to be overhauled and revised, but I think eliminating it wholesale becomes pretty dangerous. I've never met a university administration I would trust not to screw me over, and I suspect I never will. So I'd like some middle ground, I think.

[gabolange]

I guess I would like to have faith that people in academia can be trusted to agree to disagree on matters of religion or philosophy or political science or ideological interpretation of text. Given your experience, perhaps that faith is misplaced, but I'm not sure why academic disagreements should have anything to do with academic administration. And if they do, or can, that's a problem with administration . . . that seems to be in place. Which, to put it vernacularly, is lame.

As for identity politics, I don't think that's something that's been solved in any field--it remains difficult to be female, or LGBTQ, or POC, or whatnot in most fields (except perhaps teaching or nursing, where being female is good, but where pay is stagnated because it's traditionally viewed as "women's work" . . . but I digress). So I'm not sure we need tenure to protect people so much as a broad-based cultural shift wherein it's okay to be whatever wherever you damn well please. In some ways, it seems unfair that there are industries where by virtue of your longevity, you are protected from the vagaries of managers who don't like [insert minority of choice here]; it doesn't work like that anywhere else, and I'm not convinced it should in academia.

I suppose the question comes down to whether tenure supports the academy or not, and if it does, in what way. If the academy is something that should be viewed as entirely different by virtue of the fact that it offers inherently intangible benefits (the use of being "useless" as you say), then perhaps it requires a structure that is unique and my arguments are moot. But if it is something that can be considered analogous to other organizations wherein promotion and retention is based on merit instead of longevity (speaking ideally about business--if only it were so), then I'm not sure that academia should have fundamentally different standards of operation.

I agree that there are different concerns in academia than in other fields. I agree that before anything like what I have proposed will work, academics will have to grow up and put vehement ideological disagreements behind them when thinking about things like salary. But I don't agree that by virtue of those disagreements, academics should have a system that protects them from the difficulties of the workforce when it isn't available to anyone else.

[pellucid]

If the academy is something that should be viewed as entirely different by virtue of the fact that it offers inherently intangible benefits (the use of being "useless" as you say), then perhaps it requires a structure that is unique and my arguments are moot. But if it is something that can be considered analogous to other organizations wherein promotion and retention is based on merit instead of longevity (speaking ideally about business--if only it were so), then I'm not sure that academia should have fundamentally different standards of operation.

This is kind of the heart of it, I think: is academia analogous to other organizations or not? And I think I'd continue to argue with vehemence that there are at least some very fundamental differences between the goals and purposes of a university (or college) and other organizations. There are benefits that are, as you say, intangible, but which are also essential and which need to be protected (from all the people who don't see these benefits as essential because they are intangible--or perhaps more to the point, because they are not "useful" or commodifiable). Plenty of people would disagree with me about that, and unfortunately, too many of those people are running universities and granting agencies.

Assuming any level of agreement that there is some aspect of the university's work that is unique, threatened, and in need of protection (most humanists I know would agree with this; many people outside the humanities--even within universities--would not necessarily agree; many university administrators would only agree until it was financially disadvantageous for them to do so; etc.), the question then becomes how such protection could best be put in place. Tenure as it works now is certainly not doing this as well as it might. I continue to think that some form of the system, however, would be positive. Perhaps there are also other things that could help with this protection--or that could do it better than tenure. I don't know. But ultimately I think I come down on the side of not wanting to throw out the baby with the bathwater--at least not until we're quite sure that there's no redeeming value in the baby. ;)