I do have some familiarity with the application of the First Amendment to public colleges and universities and, as I noted in my post, there is usually a heavy burden of proof on an insitution to justify curtailing free speech or free expression of religion. We’ll see what happens at the appeals level. Anyway, if you do write something for our front page, it needn’t be terribly elaborate or lengthy, but you know the demands on your own time. Did you happen to see the comments thread for Kerry Emanuel’s article? I’d be interested in your thoughts there. In any case, please do consider yourself welcome, we appreciate your input.

On the case at hand, I’m horrified at what’s happening in that program. But I’m not sure that First Amendment rights trump the right of the program to determine its own standards. I’m no constitutional scholar, however.

I do believe that tenure is probably the cornerstone of academic freedom. Without tenure, academic freedom is gone. Either they can get rid of you or they can’t, it’s almost that simple.

I also have to say, without the prospect of a tenure-track position, with the possibility of tenure down the road, an academic career would be of no future interest to me. The other rewards and opportunities outside academia are just too great. (Approximately double the pay right after Ph.D., for starters.) I’m talking about the natural sciences, I know little about the other fields.

Too busy trying to get out more of those worthless publications to write an article! But thanks for the offer. By the way, how much do you pay? Just kidding LOL!

I pity today’s student who pays megadollars for an education is receives an inferior education. Seems like stealing to me.
James A. Glasscock, Longdrycreek Ranch,Texas Panhandle

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/iteam&id=7134922

I am a nontraditional history scholar who entered the academy in 1989 after a decade-long career in a high-profile public institution. The Washington bureaucracy is a model of democracy compared to the academy. In my public institution, we had annual reviews, clear-cut objectives for the next year’s performance, and an appeals process. Young staff members were encouraged to follow their instincts and develop new research strategies. Granted, there were problems with the rambling bureaucracy, but there was a good deal of flexibility and tolerance.

By contrast, I have found that most, but not all, universities are filled with Chokepoint Charlies. I was lucky to find a graduate school mentor who encouraged me to write on a nontraditional topic, but the majority of faculty members could not see beyond the dominating OAH/AHA mantra of Race, Class, and Gender or some other “dominant paradigm.” A brief stint on the tenure-track at a large northeastern university exposed me to the narrowness of academic research, and more egregiously, to administrators who publicly claimed to support a diversity of opinion but who would not stand up to the social historians. To name names, the Jon Silber administration turned out not to be user friendly to this scholar with centrist values.

Since leaving my full-time academic position in 2002, I have established a very successful consulting business and published up a storm, but recently encountered the Chokepoint Charlies again in a job search at a local public university. The troops rallied, closed ranks, and used tenure as a mechanism for discounting highly qualified nontraditional applicants for a public history position. The end result was that yet another faculty member espousing the same-old same-old was added to the department, while those of us with stronger publication records, more experience as fundraisers, and a broader interdisciplinary focus were excluded. “Dear Worm, You don’t currently hold tenure, so we won’t even consider your application. We hope you will be happy to continue working as our adjunct slave.”

Most universities have become mono-versities, and the tenure system has contributed to the problem. The exclusion of non-tenured faculty from a job search is particularly problematic given the current employment situation. As the U.S. Department of Education has just told us, 57% of faculty are now off the tenure track. Nearly 60% of people who received history Ph.D.’s from 1990 to 2004 do not work as faculty in academic history departments. When the Checkpoint Charlies exclude non-academics or adjunct faculty from the pool of candidates for full time slots, they exclude the bulk of available talent.

But, then, why would the Checkpoint Charlies want to include people who see the world through a different set of lenses?