It would seem, however, rather than being a sinecure, tenure rights become a restraint when rights become nullified by other means of informal social control or "collegial" cliquishness via gossip or cabal, necessitating individual legal action that seem to have better civil safeguards outside of the academy and are often the time-consuming tactic of last resort as in the first tenured women in some departments. In that sense the working class has more mobility and perhaps more labor rights against arbitrary and capricious behavior; my favorite individual example is a colleague at a major research university who was challenged in their tenure review to objectively prove that they were one of the top 15 people in their obscure arts field using the Nobel prize as a benchmark. I also think of Deborah Woo's book on Asian Americans and the Glass Ceiling. My institutional example would be the less controversial stupidity of various university administrations to marginalize womens studies and ethnic studies departments either by capricious tenure decisions, salary discrimination, lateral appointments or placing them in some "reorganized" curricular backwater or the continued retention of obviously sociopathic faculty to avoid embarrassing a college suffering from ex loco parentis guilt. This may or may not be the frame being created for Churchill. You may wish to supply your own examples like some White House Cabinet members who were Provosts of major universities, but as I perhaps have mentioned before, the Comical of Higher Education often has stories that might be better received when published in the Enquirer since we always have to read between the lines. I still want to pitch a PBS version that would use the Entertainment Tonight themesong. Or to follow on Jim's remark, we could pitch a game show "Academia: Lumpen or Leave it?".
Ann ----- Original Message ----- From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2005 12:15 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Ward Churchill: one liberal view > I wouldn't call profs part of the working class or proletariat. Maybe the semi-proletariat. > > Alas, it seems more likely that tenure rights will go away before they are extended to the (rest of the?) working class. The attack on Churchill (not the actual killer, the old UK PM) will mesh well with the current movement to abolish tenure rights. > > Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine > > ________________________________ > > From: PEN-L list on behalf of Eubulides > Sent: Sat 2/12/2005 7:06 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Ward Churchill: one liberal view > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Devine, James > > [snip] > > If academic tenure means anything at all, it means professors must be > allowed to say and write what they choose without fearing removal by popular > referendum. > > [snip] > > > ------------------------- > > Gee, wouldn't it be nice if the rest of the working class had the same free > speech rights at work as the tenured professoriat..............
