Tenure doesn't protect academic freedom? Promotes conformism? At the University of Oregon a couple of years back, there was an absolutely wretched Diversity Plan that was hatched and promoted by the Administration. A sizeable group of faculty members, maybe a tenth of the tenure-track faculty, banded together to fight it publicly. Why do I say tenure-track faculty? Because of the sixty or so people who went public, only one or two, by my count, was not a tenured person, and their department head was one of the ringleaders. I happen to know several people who would have signed the public letter, but they told me they were not in a position to risk losing their jobs.

Some of the participants did much more than sign a public letter. They were very outspoken in the media, and their story made it into the national press. I am certain that they would not have done this without the protection of tenure; it was difficult enough for them as it was.

Ultimately this group was not successful in completely blocking the Diversity Plan, but they got a process going whereby it was greatly watered down and in that sense improved.

I can say with absolute certainty that it was tenure alone that allowed this to happen.

There are others at Oregon who have very publicly challenged the absurd emphasis on intercollegiate athletics. They have had a certain degree of success. Most notably, for a number of years the athletic programs are essentially self-supporting -- no subsidy from the University. Admittedly, this required the cooperation of the Administration and athletic boosters. But I don't believe it would have happened without the outspoken faculty -- I should know, I was a scoffer at the possibility when I played a minor role in discussions that led to this outcome.

Other faculty have filed legal demands for secret information about group preferences in hiring and educational programs.

I am absolutely certain that some of these people would be dead meat if they didn't have tenure.

Maybe if would-be nonconformist faculty at other institutions are not taking advantage of the protection that tenure affords, they should take a lesson from Oregon.

Mike -- of course there are exceptions to every rule. But even within the exception that you give here, you acknowledge that the vast majority of tenured faculty did not stick up for what was right, and that Oregon has a tiered system in which a great many people do not have the academic freedom that they need. That tiering is absolutely a product of the tenure system. I am intimately familiar with the manner in which academic culture breeds cowardice and conformity, as well as with the way tenure is used as a major gatekeeping device within that culture; Mark Bauerlein, Claire Potter, and others have eloquently elaborated on how this works. Perhaps our differences of opinion have to do with the differences between being in the sciences and being in the humanities.

"Other faculty have filed legal demands for secret information about group preferences in hiring and educational programs.

I am absolutely certain that some of these people would be dead meat if they didn't have tenure."

Sorry, but that strikes me as highly questionable. I can't speak to Oregon law, but in Florida, willfully interfering with a public information request is a crime. Firing someone for making such a request would get you in HUGE trouble, utterly regardless of tenure on the part of the plaintiffs. And of course, refusing to obey a subpoena will get you held in contempt anywhere.

Well, I can't say what motivated the tenured faculty who didn't sign the public statement. Maybe a lot of them didn't think what it said was "what is right". A lot of them probably were never asked to sign.

In any case, 60 signatories is a whole lot better than zero, in my book.

I don't see how eliminating tenure for the tenure-track people is going to give academic freedom to everyone. It would end up being academic freedom for nobody.

Except -- at least at the state universities, the faculty would unionize, and then it would mean de facto tenure for everyone upon being hired, or after a perfunctory probationary period.

In other words, none of the weeding out and sifting that is possible with the tenure process would exist anymore. Donald Kagan (former Arts and Sciences dean at Yale) made this point in reply to a letter in Commentary magazine a while back.

You might say that this weeding and sifting doesn't take place anyway. Well, at least in the natural sciences, it still does, and I would not want to do without it. I hope it does in the other fields too, but I am not in a position to say.

By the way, with regard again to the University of Oregon, word recently was that the Administration was becoming very lax about tenure, rumor was that everyone in Arts and Sciences who came up one year got it, over the recommendation from departmental, college, and university-wide review committees that a number of people be denied tenure. In other words, the Administration, for whatever reasons -- not all and maybe none having to do with "diversity", if that comes to mind -- was loosening up on tenure over the objections of the faculty.

I frankly don't see how the universities, at least the ones without multibillions in endowment, can possibly do without offering the prospect of tenure. In the sciences, engineering, business, law, and medicine at least, there is simply no way to compete financially with private business. Unless the universities want to start offering industrial-style salaries and career paths, there is no way they can do without the prospect of tenure. I've known some tenured people in the sciences who have left for high management positions, startup companies, and the like. These have by no means necessarily been the best people, but they tend look at those of us who have stayed as suckers. Guaranteed employment until one can afford retirement? Better to make a big pile of money while you're still young, and then decide what you want to do with your options.

I think it is frankly completely wrongheaded to think that abolishing tenure would do anything to correct the admittedly horrendous ideological imbalances at American universities. It would only make the problems worse, and drive the few conservatives further into their burrows (and out to the conservative think tanks).

By the way, the increasing use of poorly paid adjuncts is not necessarily the doing of the tenure-track faculty. As far as I can tell, it is mainly the result of decisions by the administration, with cooperation of deans and department heads. At Oregon, it has happened pretty surreptitiously. In the areas I know best, it has happened mainly at the behest of administrators and certain faculty who want "special assignments" having to do with special interests, often on the outside.

Dave, there are plenty of ways of dealing with someone without doing something as hamhanded as you suggest. Administrators are paid to be good at this. Believe me, I've seen it. Rock the boat sufficiently, and off you go, often when nobody is looking. You don't always even have to fire them for them to be "dead", though it helps to have this option. In any case, it is invariably the tenured people among the teaching staff who have the guts to do this stuff. That says something to me. I have seen non-teaching adminstrative and professional staff occasionally make waves, but not for long. I'm not talking just about Oregon.

Here's an argument against tenure I've used elsewhere:

Q. What is the one sector of American education where no one ever complains about the general quality of the teaching, though you do hear complaints about individual teachers?

A. Non-public secondary teaching, which is also the sector where tenure and unions are essentially unknown. The pay is lower than in public schools, and most teachers can be fired at any time for any reason. Nevertheless, the quality of teachers is quite high and turnover is fairly low. Because private-school teachers can be fired, very few have to be fired, those who deserve it are generally fired, those who are fired generally deserve it, and exceptions to the last point can generally find a job elsewhere. Why couldn't universities and public schools work the same way?

So, tenure "generates a nasty hierarchy in which, in higher ed anyway, it's the underpaid, untenured, usually never-to-be tenured, often questionably qualified folks who do all the teaching"?

Sorry, but that's a pretty dumb statement, for at least two reasons.

1. Where I teach (a four-year public liberal arts college), the typical load for tenured faculty is four courses per semester. Each semester, each of us typically teaches two general education courses and two upper-division courses in the major.

Our use of adjuncts is fairly modest. Looking over our fall course schedule for English, I see that we're offering 22 gen-ed courses. Tenured/tenure-track are teaching 12 of them; our one full-time instructor is teaching four, and adjuncts are teaching 6.

(FWIW, starting salaries in the humanities here are about $39-41K. I just might be earning $62K by the time I retire.)

Doubtless things are different at research universities and the Ivies. But my own situation is not exactly rare. If you got out more, you'd know my situation is typical for tens of thousands of T/TT faculty members nationwide. That's tens of thousands of faculty members who are going to take one look at your false generalizations and dismiss whatever else you have to say. Good luck rallying us to your cause!

2. It is not tenure per se that "generates [the] nasty hierarchy" you deplore. Many of us would be glad to have all courses taught by T/TT faculty. All the legislature and higher ed commission have to do is say the word and pony up the money. They're not going to do so, of course--but that's not tenure's fault. It's just a question of fiscal priorities.

Eveningsun--You cite your experience at your school as the exception that disproves the rule. I'm glad Adams State keeps its use of adjuncts-- at least in your department--to a minimum. And I freely acknowledge that colleges are much better behaved than research universities when it comes to abusing nontenure-track labor. But there is still no denying the figures--touted by the AAUP, the AFT, and others--that upwards of 60 percent of all undergraduate college teaching is not done by tenure-track faculty (so, yes, I should have said "most" and not "all" in the sentence you take issue with). The AAUP is trying to fight this by arguing against adjunct labor and urging schools to enlarge their tenure tracks--to no avail. The AFT is trying to use the legislatures to compel state schools to convert their adjuncts into tenure-track faculty when positions open up (very problematic from an academic freedom standpoint) and also trying to secure academic freedom for non-tenure-track faculty by urging schools to formalize their contract systems (much more sensible and smart). I'm glad things seem fairly stable to you where you are -- but they are by no means that way in many, many places, and as I said in my post, it's the responsibility of tenured faculty to work to ensure that non-tenure-track faculty are treated fairly and with respect. That they do not and have not done so is proven by the abysmal facts we all know about adjunct faculty work. It's all well and good to say that this is someone else's fault--that the legislature and the admins are the ones to be blamed. But that type of thinking just makes the tenured faculty into accessories to abuses that they should not tolerate and that they do benefit from--and ultimately forms a sharp case against tenure itself.

The most conformist population in higher education is non-tenured faculty. With no job security, non-tenured teachers and professors are expected to toe the line. Every academic rebel I can name has tenure, and there's a very good reason for that.

What we need is a "softer" tenure. Crystal-clear expectations, benchmarks, etc. to maintain one's job; crystal-clear indicators that one is in danger of losing one's job.

Erin, I agree with you that it's a shame that "upwards of 60 percent of all undergraduate college teaching is not done by tenure-track faculty." But blame for this state of affairs cannot be laid at the feet of tenure as an institution.

It might well be true that, at least at elite institutions, too many T/TT faculty are too complacent about the abuse of adjuncts. But how exactly would adjuncts be helped by taking tenure away from those who have it? (Well, I guess that's one way to close the gap between the haves and the have-nots: take from the haves and leave the have-nots where they are. Academic populism!)

You write, "The AAUP is trying to fight this by arguing against adjunct labor and urging schools to enlarge their tenure tracks--to no avail." But this is hardly an argument against tenure.

(FWIW, I support efforts "to secure academic freedom for non-tenure-track faculty by urging schools to formalize their contract systems." There's no intrinsic reason this can't go hand-in-hand with a gradual overall reduction in the reliance on adjuncts and increase in the number of courses taught by TT faculty.)

You write, "It's all well and good to say" that the TT faculty's acceptance of the abuse of adjuncts "is someone else's fault--that the legislature and the admins are the ones to be blamed. But that type of thinking just makes the tenured faculty into accessories to abuses that they should not tolerate and that they do benefit from--and ultimately forms a sharp case against tenure itself."

It's all well and good to talk of what faculty "should not tolerate," but the fact remains that, at least at state schools, faculty simply do not make policy. Here's how it looks from my perspective. Several years, one of my English Dept. colleagues became a dean. We were out 1.0 TT faculty. We asked for a new line to replace him. We were denied and told to make up the difference with adjuncts. We protested--quite vigorously, in fact. We protested again when the dean retired before returning to teaching, and we asked a second time for his line to be restored. Or rather, those of us with tenure protested vigorously. Quite possibly, had none of us been tenured there'd have been no protest at all. And remember, what I was protesting, knowing that tenure "had my back," is precisely the kind of abuse that you keep laying at the feet of tenure. (I've also been a vocal advocate of three-year, rather than one-year, contacts for instructors.)

Anyway, I'm not sure what you think I should have done by way of "not tolerating" this administrative move. Resigned in protest? Organized a walkout? Occupied the president's office? Burned down the ROTC building? (More to the point--what would you expect a nontenured faculty to do by way of "not tolerating" the actions of administrators who, because you've gotten your druthers, could fire them at will?)

Now, it's true that sometimes* TT faculty benefit from the abuse of adjuncts. But it simply does not follow that eliminating tenure would in any way reduce the abuse of adjuncts. Perhaps you will say that I'm exceptional, that very few tenured faculty bother to use their tenure protection to fight the administration. Maybe so. Maybe it's because they know they'll lose. Maybe it's because they're venal. Maybe it's because, while the do have tenure, they have yet to make full professor. Who knows. The point is that you're not going to help matters by taking tenure away from the few who do use it as they should. Your "sharp case against tenure itself" is nothing of the sort. It's a non sequitur. You seem to be arguing instead for a more radicalized faculty. (Don't tell ACTA!)

It's certainly true that in many cases administrators farm lower-level courses out to exploited adjuncts in order to create cushier working conditions for elite faculty (without spending extra money)--and yes, those faculty are too often complicit in that game. But eliminating tenure would not help a whit. How could it? First of all, any such action would not apply retroactively. Second, and more important, all the reasons that administrators play this game would remain in force. If they want to continue recruiting star faculty, what are they going to offer? What are they going to say at the interview? "Well, yes, Dr. Brilliant, it's, um, true that we don't have tenure any more. And it's true that, because we're trying to cut back on our adjunct addiction, we'll make you teach eight courses instead of the two or three you'd be teaching somewhere else. And it's true that you'll never have job security here, and that we're not offering a higher salary to compensate for that lack of job security, because as you know the kind of legislators who hate tenure tend to be the kind that also hate taxes and think people like you are lazy eggheaded leeches, and well I'm sure you've got financially competitive offers at other schools that do offer tenure. But you should work for us anyway, because, well, um.... Hey! Where are you going...?"

You seem to be arguing that academia's labor problems are caused by tenure rather than a combination of cost-cutting imperatives and market forces. But if we get rid of tenure those imperatives and forces will still operate--only with more ruthless efficiency and with even fewer faculty secure enough to argue against them.

I've been around long enough to see the end of the road you would have us all travel. By the time the anti-tenure arguments get out of your average legislature, where the big research universities can out-lobby schools like my own by about 100-to-1, Dr. Brilliant will still have a cushy job, and still have tenure (because, as the lobbyist will argue, R-1s need tenure to stay competitive). And adjuncts will still be exploited and abused, and I'll still be teaching the same load, only without tenure. The little guys tend to lose in these battles. You think you're fighting the big guys, but you'll only end up hurting folks like me.

* I say "sometimes" because none of the T/TT faculty in my department benefited from the adjunct hiring that took place when our colleague made dean. The adjunct picked up his gen-ed classes, and the rest of us picked up the slack for his upper-division classes. Bottom line: we were exploiting an adjunct and working harder as T/TT faculty. That's the way things look when you're not among the elite.

Very well put, Eveningsun. It won't be the tenured Ivy League professors who will be the first victims of the complete casualization of academic labor; it will be people in your own situation who are actually carrying full-time teaching responsibilities at modest levels of compensation.

One thing that is left out of this discussion is the market for academic personnel in different fields. There always has been and apparently always will be an overabundance of people in the humanities and the softer social science fields, available and apparently willing to be exploited (or "exploited") at low pay and poor to non-existent benefits. It's a good deal harder to do this in fields where most or at least a substantial part of the market is outside of academia. Good luck finding someone decent to teach organic chemistry or finance at slave wages.

To return again to the University of Oregon, the university senate and a budgeet committee overseen by the senate have been struggling for years to get the university to raise notoriously low levels of salary and total compensation for faculty. They have had a certain amount of success. Interestingly, the greatest success apparently has been at the lower levels, of assistant professors and especially non-tenure track instructors.

Again, this has to do with tenure: much if not most of the push has come from tenured people, mostly full professors, who have felt they were in a position to publicly criticize and agitate about these issues, without unduly jeopardizing their careers or employment.

I would like to end by asking Erin O'Connor about the situation in her department at the University of Pennsylvania. What is the situation for adjuncts? Have you been doing anything to help them out? If, say, the tenure-track people in your department pitched in by teaching more courses, would that help the adjunct class? Or perhaps hurt (by eliminating employment opportunities)?

Mike - I've left the University of Pennsylvania. So you will have to direct your questions to someone who is still there.

A query for both you and Eveningsun: what do you think about post-tenure review? Do you have it at your schools? And is it meaningful? Does it establish clear expectations, offer genuine carrots for strong performance, and genuine sticks to sanction--and, when necessary, retire or fire--those who are not functioning? Setting aside the adjunct issue--which is only one of my issues with tenure--let's turn to accountability.

My sense is that tenure in most places goes hand in hand with lack of transparency and lack of accountability (Claire Potter, Timothy Burke, Oso Raro, and others have all written quite a bit on the problematic "mysteriousness" surrounding the process). Not all schools have post-tenure review, and those that do tend to handle it in a rubber stamp sort of way that renders it essentially toothless (case in point: in the wake of the Ward Churchill scandal, Colorado determined that its PTR procedures were utterly inadequate and is taking steps to reform them -- it remains to be seen whether that will work). Anyhow--there's quite a bit of writing on this subject, which I won't cite here -- but suffice it to say that I am not inventing this issue or exaggerating it.

You have been focussing on tenure as necessary for academic freedom, as necessary to protect faculty who want to insist on better working conditions for all. That's all very noble. But if you look at how academic freedom is often invoked--even by the AAUP itself--it's used almost as a synonym for "anything goes." Rights and privileges are emphasized, and correlative duties and professionalism tend to drop out--even though they are a foundational component of academic freedom.

Academic freedom comes with responsibilities as well as rights -- something that is too often forgotten. And tenure--which the AAUP has for decades supported as essential for academic freedom--also in practice protects people who aren't functioning or who are abusing their positions in various ways. What solutions do you have for this problem? If you want to retain the tenure system, you need to acknowledge the problems with it and articulate a plan of reform centered on greater transparency and accountability. Or do you think everything works just fine?

I see indeed that you have left your position as an associate professor at Penn for other things.
A long answer in response to your questions, which are very reasonable things to ask about.
Re post tenure review: yes, there is a post-tenure review process at Oregon. Actually, there is an annual merit pay review, a rather perfunctory 3 year intermediate review for tenured faculty, and a major 6 year review. One of the things the faculty senate insisted on and got, in return for going along with – shall I say endorsing? – institution of the of the PTR plan and doing the work to implement it, was a system of modest but real financial rewards. With pay boosts of $0, $1000, or $2000 after the six-year reviews. The pay boosts are not automatic. I don’t know what fraction of the faculty get how much. I only really know how the process works in my department. We have an elected committee that reviews the files of those up for 6-yr. review that year, writes a report, sends it on to the department head, who sends it up the line. Whether anything is ever done with the reports at a higher level, I haven’t a clue.
Is it transparent? To the people involved, yes, I would say very much so. Again, I can only really speak of my own department.
My sense is that it’s really not worth the effort, except for the positive effects of the monetary incentives. The latter probably do help marginally to keep people motivated. It also helps in public relations. But it takes time to do the reports (either as one being reviewed or a reviewer). The underperformers were being punished without it. The strong performers usually get their major rewards in other ways (merit reviews, the game of attracting outside offers). Maybe there’s some virtue in formalizing the process. All in all, I don’t think it’s been that big a deal one way or another.
The only people who have actually been forced to leave the University seem to have had egregious problems like sexual harassment, alcoholism, or (rarely) simple refusal to perform minimal duties. These were being dealt with before the post tenure review process was instituted. People whose performance has declined, in the sciences usually meaning their research has fallen off, were eventually getting increased teaching duties. Some people actually seem to prefer this as their motivation or ability to do research falls off. It’s not pretty when a highly motivated person in mid-career becomes incapable, for whatever reason, of getting external grant funding, especially if that means, as it does in experimental science, that their research career is essentially finished (unless they leave academia).
Are there people who are “not functioning”? In the sense of not functioning at all, or functioning at so low a level as to be worthless, in my experience not really, unless as I say there is some problem that is actionable. Usually people don’t get to be a full professor without being highly capable and motivated. If there is a falloff, which of course often happens with time and age, it is usually gradual. How many people are capable of sprinting their entire lives? Once again, I know best the natural sciences, especially my own department.
How to maintain accountability? First of all, be very selective in hiring. Then, don’t give tenure lightly. The success rate in my vicinity seems to be about 2/3. I’ve usually agreed with the positive decisions and as far as I remember, have always agreed with the negative decisions. As I said, at the University of Oregon, in recent years it seems to have been the Administration that has wanted to loosen standards for receiving tenure and the faculty that has protested. (I’m sure the president of the University would disagree violently with this if he ever read it.)
Does the tenure system allow people who have become underperformers to hang on year after year? Sure. From my experience, the lower level the school, the worse the problem is.
But on the other hand, as I pointed out in one of my posts, it also affords the opportunity to “cull the herd” at the tenure-decision point. Of the 1/3 or so in my vicinity who didn’t make it, very few or none were people who were incompetent. To the contrary, by most criteria they were pretty high performers. Without the tenure process, there would be little grounds for letting them go. And I said, without the tenure process, there would be a union or civil service status (at least in public universities) or something like that, so that in effect there would be de facto tenure after a perfunctory probationary period, probably a year or so. I much prefer the “up or out” system. On the whole, it helps maintain the quality of the faculty, especially with the relatively modest compensation that the universities are able to offer. Most of the people around me have made a pretty big financial sacrifice (relatively speaking) to be in academia. In some respects, there are much better working conditions outside of academia. One of the rewards of academia is the chance to get tenure, if reward it is. (I say “if” because some people undoubtedly would be – sometimes are – better off moving on and doing something else. Maybe you, Erin O’Connor, are an example, I have no way of knowing.)
The most egregious problems, the ones that make the news, seem to be in highly politicized and perhaps vacuous “fields” like the one Ward Churchill is in. He should never have been hired in the first place. I wouldn’t blame the tenure system so much as the press to have programs like his and to hire people like him.
Again, I know best the natural sciences. I really don’t know that well what it’s like in other areas. I’ve heard a few things that have to make me wonder, but I don’t really know.
So do I want to retain the tenure system? You bet. For a variety of reasons – attracting faculty, academic freedom – I don’t the universities could meaningfully function without it. Do I think it’s in great danger? Not really. Do I think there are abuses? Undoubtedly.
As I’ve said, most of the battles that have been fought here, with a certain amount of success, by people who would be in some sympathy with organizations like NAS – over multiculturalism, Diversity, and athletics – have been fought primarily by tenured faculty and often against the administration. I can’t for the life of me see how things would have gone better without tenure.

Not much time to write just now, Erin, but I will say this. The devil is in the details. You speak of things like transparency and accountability in THE tenure process, but there is no such thing as "the" tenure process. There are different processes at different institutions with different missions and constituencies. I bring this up because what tends to happen is that something like the Ward Churchill incident comes to stand for not just what it really speaks to (problems in one weaselly department at the University of Colorado) but for a "crisis" in "THE" tenure process everywhere.

Most anti-tenure talk ignores the details (which elision allows the construction of a false sense of crisis).

A few quick details: At my public college, faculty tenure committees only make recommendations. No one gets tenure here until the decision has been vetted by the provost and president, and then approved by the trustees. The trustees represent the public, and the trustees have full access to the tenure file. They can read the candidate's scholarly work and peruse the student evaluations. They can read student comments and see how rigorously the candidate grades, etc., etc. If that isn't enough, they can meet with the candidate and others for clarification.

All this can be done by the duly appointed representatives of the public. Is that not enough transparency? What else would you have us do--place copies of the tenure file in the checkout aisles of the local Wal Mart?

I'm sure that, at private colleges in my state, tenure processes are much less transparent. But so what? Their policies are none of my business, no more so than the process by which, say, a law firm selects its partners.

Guess what else? In my state, as I'm sure in most others, all these issues have been debated up and down, inside and out, for many, many years, all through the culture wars of the 80s and 90s, through Republican gubernatorial administrations and Democratic ones, through conservative higher-ed commissions and liberal ones (well, in my state, less conservative ones). The tenure and post-tenure review processes we have right now are the product of all that open and democratic discussion. Those processes were developed with considerable input from many stakeholders. They were finalized by and approved by our state higher-ed commission and signed off on by the (Republican) governor. If there's still a big problem, these state actors are free to reopen the question, but they have not.

All of which is to say that the people who represent the people whose business all this stuff is have decided it just ain't that big of a problem right now. Maybe you think there's a problem, and maybe ACTA thinks so, but my trustees don't, my higher-ed commission doesn't, my legislature doesn't, and my governor doesn't.

What, then, keeps this issue alive (in those narrow forums where it still is alive these days)? A couple guesses: under any system there will always be people who get an unwarranted pass or who get shafted, and they will sometimes generalize their own problems into that of higher education as a whole. Understandable, but wrong. And groups like ACTA and people like David Horowitz can recruit members and solicit funds by screaming "Ward Churchill! Ward Churchill!" So it goes.

Eveningsun, you brought up several points I wish I had thought to mention. Yes, at the public university where I work, tenure is granted only with the approval of the president, ultimately. I don't know if there is a formal process at the level of the state board, but if they wanted there to be, if the state wanted it, there would be.

I just don't think it's much of an issue around here. Nobody ever seriously talks about not having tenure at the public universities. It's certainly not a public issue, nobody ever talks about it, not even crank letter writers to the papers, they have other things on their minds.

I, too think it's something of a red herring being brought forth by certain groups and people with an agenda. Some of them are people and groups or aligned with people and groups that I had long thought of as kindred thinkers, groups in which I've played a role. In this and other matters related to higher education, either they or I or both have changed. It's not easy to admit, but it may be that it's getting to be time to move on.

Eveningsun and Mike-- Thanks for your ongoing thoughts. I do think we are going to have to agree to disagree, and that's fine--I don't expect tenured academics who are basically satisfied with their own work situations to agree with me. You've got far too much at stake to do anything other than what you are doing. But it's worth observing that you are generalizing from your personal experience in much the way you suggest people who argue against tenure are generalizing; if it's bad logic one way, it's bad logic the other way, too. It's also worth noting that there is a problem with the argument that because the devil is in the details, we can't therefore make useful generalizations, and we can't even responsibly point out problems. That's a clever sidestep, and it's one I notice academics who like the status quo making a lot when they react to broad criticisms of the academy--but it's not really viable. If it were, we'd have to get rid of all science, all social science, and a whole lot more. Generalization is not itself a problematic or compromised process--and to suggest that because generalization necessarily elides certain local particulars it's not viable is not itself a viable line of argument. You don't agree with me--and that's fine. But you also really just don't like my line of thought--and while that's fine as well, that's more of an emotional position than a reasoned one and should be acknowledged as such.

Erin, just one quick comment about your observation that we are each "generalizing from [our] personal experience" and that "if it's bad logic one way, it's bad logic the other way, too":

That's just not true if my experience is that of the great majority and yours is that of a small minority. Not all generalization is false generalization, and it's only false generalization that is "bad logic." And of course the point of attending to the details is to help us test generalizations, which of course is perfectly consistent with science.

But you're right that we've pretty much run out the clock on this debate, and I'm perfectly happy to agree to disagree. Game over--any of your readers who care to may now add up the score.