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There are two questions at issue. First is whether professors will individually have more freedom of action and be able to exercise speech more freely when they get tenure. The second is whether professors in general tend to get more radical when they get tenure. On the first point, I don't think there's any question but that the security of tenure permits these things. As to whether professors choose to exercise them is a different matter, as it the question of whether they can find a way to make their input relevant or meaningful. I am quite confident that they almost never do. I'm sure the the more general question can be demonstrated to the full satisfaction of any academic conference assembled to define what "radical" means. Academe exists in this matter to translate radicalism--"Marxism," no less--into something so abstract as to lack all social meaning.. This is all has been overshadowed by the exponential growth of higher education in the 1960s and the grand delusion of the that universities could change the world. Perhaps few could see at the time how the "Red University" could be institutionalized through the Ford Foundation's funding of Black Studies, the development of Gender studies and the wonderful obtuseness of institutionalized hothouse "theory." But none of this should be too surprising today. ML _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
