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    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

The attack on tenure in Georgia

Brian Leiter

The vote to "change" the tenure rules yesterday by the Georgia System's Board of Regents is of enormous significance, both for tenure and for academic freedom–for now at state universities (since other states will follow suit if Georgia's change survives legal challenges), but I suspect this will creep into the private universities as well, since it would be a cost-cutter's dream come true:  to be able to fire tenured faculty without due process or having to show actual "cause."   This article explains the new Georgia rules:

The changes will replace a tenure system that allows professors to be fired only for a specific cause following a thorough peer review process with a new system that permits professors to be dismissed if they fail to take corrective steps following two consecutive subpar reviews….

A key change in the new policy adds student success as a category to be evaluated along with teaching and research.

The new "student success" metric seems to be designed to make faculty work more mentoring and advising students, but I'm not sure.  (Comments are open for readers with more information about that.)  The crucial change, however, is eliminating the "for cause" criterion of dismissal and its associated procedural safeguards, most importantly, faculty peer review.

ADDENDUM:  You can see the changed language at pp. 38 ff. of this document.

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9 responses to “The attack on tenure in Georgia”

  1. Bill Edmundson

    The president of each institution in the University System of Georgia now has to come up with a fresh set of procedures for post-tenure discipline. Conceivably, the leadership at each campus could simply adopt the same "panoply" of due process protections as those that still govern "for cause" dismissal (e.g., review by impartial peers, decision on the record of a hearing, right to cross examine, right to a reasoned explanation from higher-ups for ignoring the hearing panel's recommendation, etc.). I suspect that the presidents of the R1 campuses would be open to that, in hope of rescuing their school's reputations. But the Chancellor of the University System could veto any such proposal. As the system in this state has traditionally operated, the governor is the ultimate decider. This is how I see things as they currently stand –I would be grateful for any corrections.

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  2. M

    This all makes me wonder how common post-tenure review processes are within American higher ed, how rigorous they are, and how often they result in discipline or dismissal. I'm in a big state system that doesn't have one, and I often wish it did — or at least I think I do. I have colleagues who half-ass their classes, don't do any research, and don't do any service, but who are effectively protected by tenure. When we are scrambling to keep the lights on, this seems more than annoying, but actually damaging and unjust. So, when I look at the new GA procedure, on its own it doesn't sound horrible. There are implementation and slippery slope concerns, of course, particularly given the political climate in GA, but, if fairly implemented, would it really be that bad? What am I missing?

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  3. Brian Leiter

    Bill, or any other lawyers out there: this looks to me like a unilateral change in the terms of the tenure contract with the tenured faculty in Georgia. Could a tenured faculty mebmer or group of tenured faculty seek a declaratory judgment from a court on this? Or is there no standing to do so until someone is fired?

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  4. wb

    I am an adjunct at a (smaller) state university and I share your views. The debate is shaped by what's going on at top-tier institutions, and I suppose that's understandable. But the further you go down in the rankings the more often you see how tenure protections (i) allow professors to turn their positions in to sinecures; and (ii) prevent adjuncts from getting better pay and job security. I don't know if what's going on in Georgia is the right approach, but something has to give.

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  5. Brian Leiter

    Universities have failed for far too long to fire faculty "for cause" when cause exists, i.e., when faculty are not doing their job, whether on the research or teaching front. My former Texas colleague David Rabban, who had been general counsel of the AAUP, was a strong advocate for firing deadwood for precisely this reason: you can't defend tenure as an instiution if it means "cause" exists for termination but universities do nothing. As he also liked to say, Harvard Law School would have been justified in firing Alan Dershowitz for cause, since he produced no scholarly research for most of his career there.

    I will say I'm skeptical that this is the problem the Georgia Board of Regents is concerned with, given that it is under the control of Republicans.

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  6. Michael Kates

    While I have enormous sympathy for the plight of adjunct lecturers in Georgia and elsewhere, that can't be the reason they passed this new law since (as Brian Leiter points out) tenured professors can already be fired "for cause." Georgia's law substantially weakens "just cause" protections for tenured faculty and represents the beginning of a full-blown assault on tenure. Academics need to wake up to what's happening and collectively organize to protect their interests.

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  7. Gregory C. Mayer

    More attention needs to be paid to the "Student Success" aspect of this change. "Student Success" is the slogan of a particular view of higher education that is widely advocated by college administrators. Accepting the neoliberal consensus that the object of the educational system, taken as a whole, is to produce workers who can get jobs, government leaders of almost all stripes have pressed college administrators to demonstrate their productivity in this regard. Among the chief metrics alleged to assess the accountability of college administrators are graduation and retention rates. Hence, in an instantiation of Campbell's Law https://searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com/definition/Campbells-Law , administrators have identified "Student Success", defined as graduating or staying in school, as the thing to be increased at all costs. Graduation requirements, course prerequisites, low grades, and the like, by this logic, become "barriers to success", and should thus be eliminated. Since they can be eliminated entirely by changes instituted within higher education, this can be done much more easily than any measures that might actually lead to students learning more(which is the straightforward meaning of student success). It would be much harder to, say, fix the K-12 school system, or reduce poverty, both of which are real barriers to students learning, than to reduce mathematics requirements in college; it would also cost a lot more. By the time people realize that a degree from college X doesn't mean so much anymore, the responsible administrators of college X will have moved on. Demanding that faculty adhere to the neoliberal consensus, and be evaluated on their efforts toward its Campbell's Law-compliant implementation, is in itself line of another attack on academic freedom.

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  8. Janet Broughton

    As part of its rank-and-step ladder system for tenure-stream faculty members, the University of California requires regular reviews of all faculty members’ records. Individuals who present strong and balanced records will receive a merit-based step and salary increase; those whose records do not meet expectations will advance more slowly or, sometimes, not at all. The procedures for these reviews vary from one UC campus to another; at UC Berkeley, an Academic Senate committee plays a key advisory role in every review.

    The UC also has a policy that provides for terminating tenured faculty based on a finding of “incompetent performance.” Readers who are interested may read it here: https://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel-programs/_files/apm/apm-075.pdf

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  9. V. Alan White

    Several years ago Brian generously allowed me to post my first-hand observations about the Republican-led attacks on tenure in the University of Wisconsin System as a member of the Task Force (Farce?) on Tenure representing the 13 campuses of the UW Colleges out of the 26 total System campuses–though the Colleges no longer exist as an independent institution BTW, absorbed since into regional branch campuses of the remaining non-Madison comprehensives. In short, the legislature along with the governor's signature, without any previous announcement or hearings, unilaterally removed our strong state statutory tenure protections and replaced them with similar kinds of language as in the Georgia case. Faculty on that committee spoke powerfully–I certainly did–for retaining AAUP standards of tenure and faculty review. It was all a dog-and-pony show with Republican-appointed Regents driving the foregone conclusions. We had solid post-tenure review policies in force since the early 90s, handled by departments, that I know from first-hand experience forced some colleagues to retire rather than face the music of that review, and I testified to the committee to that effect. It didn't matter. The main power for post-tenure review was then handed to administration, as in the Georgia case. We were once a system of governance that was faculty-driven. Not anymore: faculty have almost no power in the present system. It's all politics folks–my formerly blue state turned just purple enough to change the power dynamics of faculty governance in the state forever in less than 10 years.

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