BY KRIS BOUDREAU AND MARK RICHMAN In her recent survey of a handful of research universities that have improved conditions for their teaching faculty—particularly those that provide job stability and paths for professional advancement—the Chronicle’s Becky Supiano suggests that while such a “teaching track” distinct from a tenure track can “elevate undergraduate instruction and the…
BY HANS-JOERG TIEDE Today, we released the 2022 AAUP Survey of Tenure Practices, the first survey of its kind since 2004. The findings offer a snapshot of prevailing tenure practices and policies at four-year institutions with tenure systems. Among those findings, the survey found that tenure is highly prevalent throughout US higher education, with 87 percent…
BY ROBERT A. SCOTT At the recent National Conservative Conference, the author J. D. Vance, a Yale Law School graduate and former investment banker who is running for the US Senate from Ohio, quoted former president Richard Nixon’s salvo that “the professors are the enemy.” He joins a chorus of those challenging the authority and…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE In recent years, right-wing lawmakers have mounted attacks on tenure in Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Kentucky. These efforts have been based on the claim that tenure unduly protects liberal professors who squelch the voices of conservative students. Tenure has also been cited as an obstacle to getting rid of underperforming faculty in…
BY HANK REICHMAN This week, within a span of 24 hours, I read two newly published articles that so coincided with my recent thinking and writing (and, at least implicitly, with each other) that I immediately felt a bit jealous that I hadn’t written them. Of course, there’s plenty of space for multiple voices arguing…
BY MATTHEW BOEDY A decade ago a red flag about post-tenure review was waved in Texas. It was then that the University of Texas system put “more teeth” in its post-tenure review policy and Inside Higher Ed mused that “the step by UT—one of the largest public universities in the nation, with 5,268 tenured faculty…
BY MARK JAMES Two days after news broke that the board of trustees of the University of North Carolina voted to offer Nikole Hannah-Jones the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism without the protections of tenure, Inside Higher Ed published my article in which I described being called into a meeting because a parent had…
BY HASSAN MELEHY By now, the decision by the UNC–Chapel Hill Board of Trustees to refuse a tenured professorship to Nikole Hannah-Jones is a well-known story. One trustee, speaking anonymously, made clear that the motive was “politics.” In North Carolina we’re familiar with the right-wing policymaking that governs us: one of its major sources is…
BY JENNIFER RUTH UNC-CH Board of Trustees’ decision to deny Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones tenure over the explicit recommendation of the university’s faculty and administration dramatically illustrates the danger of giving Boards authority over academic hiring. (They offered her a five year position, with the possibility of a tenure review during that period.) In…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH This news release is from the AAUP chapter at the University of Akron: The University of Akron Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (Akron-AAUP) has created a one-time donation fund, the “Akron-AAUP Faculty Care Fund”. The fund is an act of support for the 66 University of Akron (UA)…