While Republican legislatures are (rightly) attracting attention for their attempts to violate the constitutional and academic freedom rights of faculty at state universities, the threats to these rights are becoming an increasingly "bi-partisan" problem (recall, e.g., it was the Democratic legislature in California that pushed for the unlawful "diversity statements"); this shocking move by the Hawaii legislature is the latest example:

Senator Donna Kim, chair of the higher education committee, said the effort to sweep the position at the university was part of cost-cutting measures. The provision is in the main budget bill for the university.

“We need to control the costs and we need to make sure that our students in Hawaii are being able to afford higher education,” she said.

Two years ago, Kim requested from the university a list of professors who did not teach classes and did not bring in any extramural funding. She had at the time proposed cutting that entire list of about 100 professors, but that did not come to pass. This year, Vogel’s position [a cancer researcher] was the only one proposed to be cut. There are no classes taught at the cancer center, where he works. She said she did not have names associated with position numbers, but she was informed that the position’s occupant did not hold office hours and was hardly on campus.

“A majority of our researchers are bringing in extramural funding, they’re doing valuable research, they work with graduate students,” she said. “I don’t believe that tenure allows you to have a position and you can do nothing.”

Senator Kim (a Democrat) is a know-nothing worthy of former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who had proposed a cost-benefit assessment of all faculty based on their external grants and the number of students taught compared to their salary (research contribution, again, did not figure on the "benefit" side).