Tenure

“I don’t think it works. It encourages cowardice, laziness, and intellectual conformity where it ought to do the opposite; it does not protect academic freedom, particularly in an era where the bulk of college teaching is done by the untenured; and it paralyzes the academic job market in ways that are debilitating for institutions and individuals. I also think tenure is over, that by replacing retired tenured professors with armies of cheap, contingent faculty members who can be hired and fired at will, colleges and universities have, in the aggregate, effectively dismantled the tenure system without ever having to declare (and thus debate) their intentions.”

—Erin O’Connor