In this statement, the AAUP provides a definition of academic tenure: "a means to certain ends, specifically: (1) freedom of teaching and research and of extramural activities, and (2) a sufficient degree of economic security to make the profession attractive to men and women of ability.
They limit the number of years that any employee can remain employed as a non-tenured instructor or professor, compelling the institution to grant tenure to or terminate an individual, with significant advance notice, at the end of a specified time period.
The intent of tenure is to allow original ideas to be more likely to arise, by giving scholars the intellectual autonomy to investigate the problems and solutions as they see fit and to report their honest conclusions.
Sometimes, major donors could successfully remove professors or prohibit the hiring of certain individuals; nonetheless, a de facto tenure system existed.
Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere we believe the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.
The notorious case of the dismissal of G. B. Halsted by the University of Texas in 1903 after nineteen years of service may have accelerated the adoption of the tenure concept.
These shortages dogged the academy for ten years, and that is when the majority of universities started offering formal tenure as a side benefit.
[citation needed] In fact, the demand for professors was so high in the 1950s that the American Council of Learned Societies held a conference in Cuba noting the too-few doctoral candidates to fill positions in English departments.
During the McCarthy era, loyalty oaths were required of many state employees, and neither formal academic tenure nor the Constitutional principles of freedom of speech and association were protection from dismissal.
During the 1960s, many professors supported the anti-war movement against the Vietnam War, and more than 20 state legislatures passed resolutions calling for specific professorial dismissals and a change to the academic tenure system.
[18] Two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases changed tenure in 1972: (i) Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, 408 US 564; and (ii) Perry v. Sindermann, 408 US 593.
Further, the court held that a tenured professor who is discharged from a public college has been deprived of a property interest, and so due process applies, requiring certain procedural safeguards (the right to personally appear in a hearing, the right to examine evidence and respond to accusations, the right to have advisory counsel).
"The board overreached what was the available political consensus,” according to Richard Chait, a Harvard professor and tenure specialist hired as a consultant to the regents.
[23][24] Accounting for these disparities, numerous studies have shown that racially and ethnically underrepresented professors "still experience social isolation, subtle and occasionally overt prejudice, a lack of mentors and ambiguous expectations.
For example, a university that is under financial stress may take the drastic step of eliminating or downsizing some departments, in which case both tenured and untenured faculty are let go.
[29] In 1985, the United States Supreme Court decision Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill[30] determined that a tenured teacher cannot be dismissed without oral or written notice regarding the charges against him or her.
In one tenure battle at Indiana University, an untenured professor was accused of threatening violence against those who opposed his promotion, his wife briefly went on a hunger strike, and many called for the entire department to be disbanded.
[37] In another instance in February 2010, Amy Bishop with the University of Alabama in Huntsville shot and killed colleagues after losing her appeal for tenure.
Searle suggests that to reduce publish or perish pressures that can hamper their classroom teaching, capable professors be given tenure much sooner than the standard four-to-six years.
Patrick J. Michaels, a controversial[citation needed] part-time climate science research professor at the University of Virginia, wrote: "... tenure has had the exact opposite effect as to its stated goal of diversifying free expression.
Instead, it stifles free speech in the formative years of a scientist's academic career, and all but requires a track record in support of paradigms that might have outgrown their usefulness.
The system in the rest of the English speaking world, for example, is based on promotion up union-negotiated payscales, usually with automatic advancement towards the top of a grade, with the luckier faculty members being on 'permanent contracts' with no end-date.
Simon Batterbury argues this system offers less opportunity for sabotage, and more adherence to social justice goals, even though 'permanent' staff members can be fired at any time.
[57] Intersectionality appears to play a role in invisible labor, as professors with multiple marginalized identities experience increased pressure to engage in low-promotability work.
[59] "Tenure remains scholars' best defense of free inquiry and heterodoxy," writes Skoble, "especially in these times of heightened polarization and internet outrage.
[61] Furthermore, Schrecker continues, because research positions require extreme specialization, they must consolidate the frequency and intensity of performance evaluations across a given career, and they cannot have the same flexibility or turnover rates as other jobs, making the tenure process a practical necessity: "A mathematician cannot teach a class on medieval Islam, nor can an art historian run an organic chemistry lab.
It is structured around two assessments -- one at hiring, the other some six years later -- that are far more rigorous than those elsewhere in society and give the institution enough confidence in the ability of the successful candidates to retain them on a permanent basis.
[63] Skoble argues categorically and plainly against critics that say "tenure protects incompetent professors": "My argument is that when this happens, it is a malfunction of the system, not an intrinsic feature of its proper use.