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The Future Of Tenure

1973; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 5; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00091383.1973.10568489

1939-9146

Robert Nisbet,

Legal Education and Practice Innovations

should be clear at the outset what tenure is in actual operation in the American university and college. It is a guarantee by the institution to the individual, irrespective of his age, of appointment until the time of retirement comes. Mental deterioration, sloth, abandonment of professional standards, gross immorality in or outside the university, flagrant breach of academic position, none of these on the evidence is likely to affect the permanence of appointment once tenure has been granted. I am aware that the AAUP, in response no doubt to rising criticism of tenure from outside the university, has recently been stressing the thesis that tenure is not impregnable, that tenured faculty members may be dismissed for cause, including financial stringency. But the AAUP is being disingenuous, it seems to me. The trouble with this kind of defense is that the record refutes it. All one need do is think of the very large number of individuals who have taught or are teaching in universities and colleges in this country, and think too of the much smaller but by no means insignificant number of the tenured in whom signs of deterioration, incompetence, gross neglect of duty and wilful flouting of academic authority are only too evident, and then ask how many tenured faculty members in this country have ever in fact been dismissed for cause. The number is, of course, minuscule. I am confident investigation would reveal that in a very large number of institutions no tenured individual has ever been dismissed. ROBERT NISBET is a professor of history and sociology at the University of Arizona and is a frequent contributor to Encounter and Commentary. His most recent book is The Degradation of The Academic Dogma (Basic Books, 1971).