In seeking to dismantle tenure, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wants to let the state decide what...
Patrick. New hires at public institutions would no longer have a shot at tenure and would instead be reviewed annually. That proposal is bad policy, but his real reason for intruding into higher education became apparent when he added that already tenured professors could lose that status for teaching the wrong things. “The law will change,” he added, “to say teaching critical race theory isThat’s appalling.
“Without tenure and the academic due process that must accompany tenure, the door is opened for faculty to be unfairly dismissed because someone doesn’t like their research or teaching or whatever,” Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, told the editorial board. She warns that it not only opens the door for interference from politicians, but also from corporate interests, big donors and others.
Texas spent a lot of years burnishing its reputation as a state that boasts elite public colleges that can compete with and often best the most prestigious in the country, from the University of Michigan to the University of California at Berkeley to Indiana University. Patrick’s promises to end tenure threatens to set that work back a generation or more.