Republican attacks on tenure ramp up in latest battle with higher education

Tenure for college professors is the latest front in Republicans’ battle with higher education. 

Since tenure gives a professor job security for decades, undercutting it is one way conservatives can more easily change campus culture, experts say, as well as fight against the liberal values the right says have taken over schools. 

In Indiana, lawmakers are moving legislation forward that would require boards of trustees at state universities to review tenured professors every five years based on “free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity.” 

“I think that conservatives as they try to address the lopsided nature of our university system are kind of looking for strategies that can undermine this hold that progressives currently have on U.S. higher education, and it may be that here is really just a strategy to kind of be able to shake things up at campuses,” said Beth Akers, a senior fellow focused on higher education at the American Enterprise Institute.  

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) released data last year showing that in the fall of 2021, only 24 percent of faculty in U.S. colleges held full-time tenured appointments, compared to 39 percent in the fall of 1987.  

Tenure for a professor is a long process. They must first get on a tenure track, where they are evaluated for between six to 10 years before they can qualify for a full-time tenure spot.

However, once they receive tenure, they often keep it for the rest of their career, as it is very difficult for a university to get rid of a tenured faculty member.  

“The existence of tenure makes the system really slow to change, and maybe that's even an additional rationale for having it, which is we don't want these institutions changing on the whims of local leaders. We want these institutions and faculty targeting truth finding,” Akers said. But that also means “it's hard to change the political lean because you have to wait until someone retired or new funding comes up for a new line to fund a faculty member position.” 

Part of the reason tenure positions were created was to give professors academic freedom in their research so they could conduct it without fear of repercussions from anyone, including the university itself.  

And that reasoning is one of the big concerns opponents have with Republican efforts to do away with the protection.  

“These attacks on tenure are designed to weaken the faculty power. It's designed to make it easier to get rid of faculty when some person with power and influence doesn't like what they're doing," said Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors.    

“If tenure is weakened, then faculty will not take risks in research. They'll be less likely to do risky research because they'll be afraid they'll get fired. ... And the real frightening thing is people will be less likely to speak out against wrongdoing, against corruption,” Mulvey added. 

No state has completely outlawed tenure. Georgia’s Board of Regents did approve a policy that makes it easier to punish tenured professors, and Texas failed in its efforts to completely ban tenure but they were able to pass a law that gives more power to state lawmakers in the future to regulate it.

“Let's be clear, they are succeeding. I think the reason that we have a mostly untenured faculty in American higher education today is because you have Republican governance and a lot of these states that attack university budgets and don't invest in these institutions in such a way to make wages livable for faculty,” said Alvin Tillery, professor of political science at Northwestern University.  

“I just wished that there was actually more counter-mobilization on the part of my colleagues to push back against these assaults, but we really don't see that,” Tillery added.  

If the current trend continues, warns Ann Marcus, professor and director of the Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy at New York University, we could see “the research function of the university really start to vanish.” 

“I mean, some people say, 'Just abolish tenure.' You really lose one of the main purposes of having universities, which is the production of new knowledge, whether it's a scientific breakthrough or a new understanding of archaeology,” said Marcus.  

Aker recognizes that blows against tenure could disincentivize some professors from going to states without it, but says abolishing the practice would have “neutral” effects “because progressives would likely be targeted in red states and conservatives would likely be targeted in blue states."

"So, I see it as kind of party neutral in that way," she said.

But there is another movement for a “longer run perspective” where “more conservative faculty members” look to acquire tenure, Akers said, pointing out “the reality is that there are centers that are focused on hiring and getting tenure to conservative thinkers.”