Way past time to abolish tenure in academia

There is a parallel of sorts between tenure within academic walls and marriage as an idealized monogamous relationship between a man and a woman.  Yes, there is. Let me explain.

First about the marriage.  As much as I prefer, and practiced, the monogamous marriage, what we are so passionately debating is quite a recent and modern social innovation.  I was reminded of that when I was in Tanzania--a local who worked as a house-help said that she changed her husband after being married to him for about eleven years because she, and her husband, wanted a change.  Larry King going through such fresh re-starts is not anything unusual at all.  The olden days were full of stories of the rich and the powerful, and the hoi polloi too, having relationships outside of marriage.  As Ross Douthat points out in his op-ed,

What we think of as “traditional marriage” is not universal. The default family arrangement in many cultures, modern as well as ancient, has been polygamy, not monogamy. The default mode of child-rearing is often communal, rather than two parents nurturing their biological children.
Nor is lifelong heterosexual monogamy obviously natural in the way that most Americans understand the term. If “natural” is defined to mean “congruent with our biological instincts,” it’s arguably one of the more unnatural arrangements imaginable. In crudely Darwinian terms, it cuts against both the male impulse toward promiscuity and the female interest in mating with the highest-status male available. Hence the historic prevalence of polygamy. And hence many societies’ tolerance for more flexible alternatives, from concubinage and prostitution to temporary arrangements like the “traveler’s marriages” sanctioned in some parts of the Islamic world.

What we have understood as a monogamous marriage is an institution that is a very, very recent creation.  We fight till death to defend this and nuke everything else because ...? 

It is a similar story with tenure in academia.  Yes, I am tenured and thanks to that my faculty and administrative colleagues can't get rid of me, unless I am a horrible teacher (which I am not) or I somehow assault a student or colleague (which will not happen.)  Yet, as much as I enjoy my tenure, I recognize that this is not an institution that has been around forever.

Tenure is a new creation, whose formal practice can be traced back to its origin in 1915.  "The American Association of University Professors first declared the principles of academic freedom and tenure in 1915 and then revised them in 1940."  That is correct--it is not even a hundred years old!  Tenure was needed then in those bad old days, but not anymore in the contemporary world:

The most common pro-tenure argument is that it protects academic freedom. Once a professor gains tenure, the thinking goes, he or she can say anything without fear of being fired. Academia thrives on the circulation of dangerous ideas. The problem is, for every tenured professor who's liberated at age 40 to speak his mind, there are dozens of junior professors terrified to say anything the least bit controversial, lest they lose their one shot at job security for life. Academia relies on young scholars to shake things up. Yet tenure incentivizes them not to. Instead, it rewards students who follow in the footsteps of the elders whose favor they will require when the day of judgment arrives.
Besides, says Taylor, the idea that a tenured professor can finally "speak out" is absurd. "If you don't have the guts to speak out before, you're not gonna have it after." Even tenured professors still have all kinds of incentives to keep their heads down. There's still research to fund, administrators to placate, time off to negotiate.
Just as tenure creates economic inflexibility, it also creates intellectual inflexibility. By hiring someone for life, a school gambles that his or her ideas are going to be just as relevant in 35 years. Tenure can also discourage interdisciplinary studies, since professors are rewarded for plumbing deep into an established subject area rather than connecting two different ones.

One of the horrible downsides to tenure is this: faculty do not have any pressure whatsoever to do anything other than whatever is best for them, without any thought as to what ought to be in the front and center of their attention--students and their futures.  My pet peeve is about how in the university where I teach practically nothing is offered about the Middle East and Islam--not in literature or philosophy or the social sciences.  There is no collective institutional worry about how this shortchanges students either. Unfortunate!

So, where are we headed? Just as a few states have already taken the step towards granting legal recognition to same-sex marriages.

Some universities have already made the leap. Evergreen State College in Washington implemented renewable contracts back in 1971. Florida Gulf Coast University scrapped tenure when it was established in 1991. Boston University now offers salary premiums to professors who decide not to take tenure. Market forces will drive other universities to follow suit, whether they want to or not.