Tenure Is under Attack Once Again, Part 1: Reasons for Higher Education’s Vulnerability

While most of us have been occupied by the many facets of the pandemic and the attention that systemic racism and the social justice movement have generated, threats to the continuation of tenure have increased considerably. This is manifested by lawmakers who seek to legislatively ban or change aspects of tenure, governing boards that insert their mandates into basic institutional decisions, and campus administrations whose moves ignore the due process and academic freedom protections afforded by tenure. Like virtually every other facet of life in this country, the tenure issue has been become embroiled in the vicious political partisanship that dominates our culture. All this comes at a time when public trust in higher education is at a low point (Kanelos, 2018), a situation that will make it more difficult to protect tenure.