Fighting Back Against "The War on Tenure"

"At least five tenured faculty members have been terminated or put on leave over comments they made on social media following the killing of conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk. As tenured professors, in theory they should have some of the strongest job security protections in the country, especially when it comes to freedom of expression. But the speed with which they were punished for their speech suggests an erosion of tenure protections years in the making."

"The book, as I say in the introduction, isn't about the war on tenure, it's a response to the war on tenure. So my first goal was to provide a vocabulary and a conceptual framework for that response. These tools are, unfortunately, becoming more necessary by the day. How do we talk about and explain academic labor in ways that help us defend the industry and the institutions and the individuals that comprise academia? Providing that vocabulary as a basis for response was goal No. 1."

State legislation and university policies over the past two decades have incrementally weakened tenure protections, often justified by claims that tenured faculty are too difficult to remove. Political and institutional reforms have targeted a largely nonexistent problem, producing faster disciplinary responses to faculty speech, particularly on social media. High-profile terminations and leaves demonstrate how swift punishment undermines academic freedom and job security for tenured professors. A defensive strategy emphasizes developing vocabulary and a conceptual framework to explain academic labor and to defend institutions, faculty rights, and the balance between accountability and freedom of expression.

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