Abolishing Tenure Will Undermine Red-State Efforts To Reform Higher Education  

Many red states are working to fight back against what they perceive as the corrupting influence of “wokeness” in academia by proposing bills to defund discriminatory “diversity, equity, and inclusion” bureaucracies, preventing administrators from subjecting students and faculty to tests of fealty to wokeness, and prohibiting race preferences in admissions and hiring. These reforms could help red-state universities attract top scholars who find the “woke” culture stifling. However, some red states are also proposing bills that weaken or abolish tenure protections for faculty, which would undermine all reform efforts.

Without tenure, no rational conservative or centrist professor who dissents from wokeness would accept a job at these states’ public universities because dissenting professors would have virtually no protection from administrators who want to purge them for their opinions. Tenure protects against arbitrary dismissal, which is necessary if universities want professors who speak important yet unpopular truths that administrators and some politicians want suppressed.

In reality, administrators, not faculty members, caused the “woke” takeover of universities, and administrators often originate the discriminatory and divisive initiatives that the proposed bills seek to defund. Moreover, many administrators are appointed by state officials, such as regents, trustees, and chancellors, who in red states are nominated by Republican governors and confirmed by Republican-dominated legislatures. Unfortunately, the terrible track record of Republican-appointed university officials means it’s likely that many administrators who caused the “woke” ascendancy will stay in power, regardless of what state legislatures do.

Although tenure can be abused, provisions exist at many public universities to minimize this problem, such as periodic performance reviews and dismissing faculty for poor performance or unprofessional conduct. Red-state legislators who wish to enhance their public universities face a historic opportunity to create intellectual environments free from the grip of the “woke” orthodoxy that is stifling academic freedom worldwide by passing anti-woke reforms. In so doing, they can potentially attract some of the best and brightest academic talent on the planet. However, abolishing tenure would undermine these efforts and make matters worse.