My Testimony on the North Dakota Tenure Reform Bill

I noted earlier that the Republican majority leader in the lower chamber of the North Dakota state legislature had introduced a bill that would effectively gut faculty tenure in the state's public universities. The bill has passed the House and is now awaiting a committee hearing in the Senate. HB 1446 has been amended to pull back somewhat on the ambitions of the initial version, but it remains an extraordinary proposal. The text of HB 1446 can be found here.

I have submitted written testimony in my individual capacity to the North Dakota Senate Education Committee. Here's a taste:

Although I appreciate the legislature's interest in ensuring that faculty employed at state universities remain productive over the course of their careers, the provisions of the current bill would significantly undercut an effective tenure system that is essential to promoting free inquiry on college campus.

. . . .

Post-tenure reviews of the performance of members of the faculty can be entirely compatible with the maintenance of a meaningful system of tenure protection. There are many ways that such a system of post-tenure review can be designed, but this bill would entrust university presidents with essentially unconstrained discretion to terminate tenured members of the faculty. Such sweeping discretion to revoke tenure and terminate a faculty member would effectively subvert the very purpose of granting tenure protections in the first place.

My testimony can be found here.

Comments

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Any comment on whether this would unconstitutionally impair the obligation of contracts?

[Old English D]

[Artifex]

… an effective tenure system that is essential to promoting free inquiry on college campus.

Assumes its conclusion

[Bob from Ohio]

I agree, this bill shouldn’t pass. Tenure should be completely abolished.

[SRG]

So academic freedom is not a value you’re interested in upholding.

[Bob from Ohio]

No. I don’t like special privileges.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Not even for those seeking snowflakey special privilege based on claims of superstition?

[Artifex]

That’s the bait and switch isn’t it ? Tenure is not academic freedom.

[Sarcastr0]

Historically it’s intertwined.

Bob is of course off his rocker with abolish, but I’d be down with some reform, but you would need to have some concessions in the form of protections of nontenuted profs’ academic freedom.

[Bob from Ohio]

You are a civil “servant”, you benefit from a special privilege too.

Tenure didn’t exist until 100 years ago or so. We had colleges before that and professors too. Tenure is just a shelter for bad teachers.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, our schools have sucked since 1923.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Dude, nobody on the left these days should be talking about academic freedom. What you display with this statement is what used to be known as crocodile tears.

[Sarcastr0]

You are angry at a left that isn’t broadly real.

[Lee Moore]

Bob : “Tenure should be completely abolished.”

I am shocked and appalled at Bob’s mimsified milquetoast timidity.

ALL government employees should be dismissible at will, on principle.

[CJColucci]

Why do you assume that the North Dakota legislature is the least bit interested in promoting free inquiry?

[Fyathyrio]

Reason is full of stories about profs getting censured, harassed, blacklisted, or fired for going against the grain of tenured group-think. Plus, the stories about how many profs find the current campus environment chilling to free speech when looked at through the lens of job security. The colleges have failed to fix themselves, so the gov’t is stepping in. Of course, they will make a mess of things, but this invasion was brought on by themselves.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The colleges have failed to fix themselves, so the gov’t is stepping in.

. . . in states controlled by half-educated, superstitious, bigoted culture war casualties.

You figure the reforms contemplated by North Dakota’s right-wingers might arrange an improvement — maybe from 49th to 47th? — in attainment of advanced degrees among the knuckle-dragging, can’t-keep-up residents of North Dakota?

[Fyathyrio]

Your reading comprehension failure is on display again. My post discussed how colleges have brought this problem on themselves, it had nothing to do with the quality of the colleges. Strawmen are gonna strawman, I guess.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

STATES RANKED BY EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT
(includes territories; 52 entities ranked)

ACT SCORES
North Dakota 38

UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE
North Dakota 32

ADVANCED DEGREE
North Dakota 49

CERTIFIED HAYSEEDS
North Dakota 4

NONSENSE-TEACHING SCHOOLS
North Dakota 5

[Rossami]

What is “the very purpose of granting tenure protections in the first place”? I ask because the statement that tenure is “essential to promoting free inquiry on college campus” comes across as a bare assertion.

That tenure still serves a positive value is a plank of the argument that needs to be proven, not merely assumed.

[Artifex]

If you really consider, the rot is deeper than just tenure.

To get the job in the first place, you need to publish in the “approved” journals. To get published in approved journals, you will be reviewed by your peers. It is hard enough to have an unpopular opinion in a STEM subject, but in subjective subjects any ideas not mainstream and popular will be quickly quashed by both your highly political peers and the political hack in charge of handing out the publics money. After having enough publications and showing you can conform to the status quo for long enough, you can be eligible for tenure so they can lock the orthodoxy into place and claim it is being done for “academic freedom”.

It is “intellectually free” only in the most sarcastrian sense. I would look just about anywhere other than academia for honest discourse.

[Sarcastr0]

I concur with this, broadly.

Though ‘the political hack in charge of handing out the publics money’ is either a career civil servant or a panel of academics. Direct your anger at the process less than the people, and maybe you’ll get somewhere.

The NSF is looking at funding opportunities for proposals with large swings among reviewers, since there are some metrics showing that means innovation.

Publications is generally not a selection criterion for most grants (though there are notable and high dollar exceptions). Publications as a proxy for ‘conforming’ seems weakly supported, based on some misconceptions about the publication review process.

Peer review is slow, but unless you have a better way to ensure that snake oil doesn’t get funded, you should at least learn the system before you pretend to know how it works.

I would look just about anywhere other than academia for honest discourse.
Amazing all these folks well outside of academia are super sure how bad it is! And they have like half a dozen articles over the past decade to confirm their priors!

[Artifex]

Though ‘the political hack in charge of handing out the publics money’ is either a career civil servant or a panel of academics. Direct your anger at the process less than the people, and maybe you’ll get somewhere.

Ahhh, the old dishonest Sarcastro telepathy at work. For extra moron points, you need to the shriek about how I am assigning motives to others.

“Panel of academics” pretty much guarantees enforced orthodoxy. In a STEM topic where results have connection to reality you have some chance of getting non-biased review depending on how embarrassing it is to be utterly objectively wrong. As you drift from things that are verifiable, you end up in pure politics. Career civil servant means someone just like you. Most objective metrics are 40,000 feet over your head. You got me there. How can I object to someone as honest, intelligent and non-partizan as yourself ?

Publications as a proxy for ‘conforming’ seems weakly supported, based on some misconceptions about the publication review process.

What exactly are these misconceptions ? Somehow knowing your history, I suspect they will never materialize. Sort of like “context” when you get caught lying.

Peer review is slow, but unless you have a better way to ensure that snake oil doesn’t get funded, you should at least learn the system before you pretend to know how it works.

Ahhh the usual Sarcastro stupidity. So what exactly do you know about my background ? You know I don’t understand how this work exactly how, moron ? Yes, peer review is good at catching snake oil. What it is not good at is preserving multiple non orthodox viewpoints. What is the moronic refrain at this point ? Something about moving goalposts ?

Amazing all these folks well outside of academia are super sure how bad it is! And they have like half a dozen articles over the past decade to confirm their priors!

Well actually you could actually try to argue ideas, but that’s well outside your wheelhouse. Do you have anything concrete to add or this your usual squawk and throw shit ?

[Sarcastr0]

You say a number of utterly wrong things about peer review, as I explained (reductive about who does peer review, wrong about peer review looks for, thinking program manager basic research choices are metrics based, conflating innovation with snake oil).
So either you don’t know what you’re talking about or you’re delusional.

But regardless of your factual inaccuracies, there is a fundamental issue that is insoluble in your rant: you can cry that peer review means high risk ideas aren’t funded, but unless you have a better model you’re just wishing there were no quality controls on research.

That ignores the sloganish nonsense in your post, like “As you drift from things that are verifiable, you end up in pure politics.” Isn’t the point of research that it’s verifiable?!

[Artifex]

Having a conversation with you is like having a conversation with a slower and dimmer ChatGPT. You have lots of verbiage but connection to actual ideas or what was even said is missing.

For peer review I said that you are reviewed by your peers. Nothing more and nothing less. I suppose this fact was obscured when you cross translated it to your native moron, and no I am not interested in the usual dishonesty where you claim “What you really meant was …”

Also “high-risk” and orthodoxy are utterly different concepts. My actual argument which you are avoid with a blast of verbal garbage is that Non-orthodox ideas are not funded, thus the concept of “academic freedom” is silly.

[Sarcastr0]

I am working on ways to move federal funding away from the peer review model, BTW. So as I said, I broadly agree with you, or at least think that peer review should be part of a mix of approaches and is currently overrepresented.

But you’re coming in with some pretty strong misconceptions.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

If you really consider, the rot is deeper than just tenure.

I consider this whining from someone aggravated by society’s longstanding, glorious turn away from superstition, ignorance, bigotry, and backwardness. Standard issue right-winger, mostly likely a grievance-consumed white evangelical.

[Jerry B.]

So, a college can’t fire a professor for failure to perform to the requirements of their job?

[Sarcastr0]

Tenured means you can only be fired for cause, generally. The specifics of cause depend on the employment agreement.

[Kibitzer]

You are a tenured faculty member in, say, a STEM department. Your expertise and lifelong research are in area X. A new dean is hired, who has no interest (and certainly no understanding) of X, but who is very interested and enthusiastic about area Y. The dean decrees that faculty in any reasonably adjacent area stop working on what they are currently doing, and instead start working on area Y. What is your answer?

If a bill such as this one passes, you are probably out of luck. Goodbye fundamental and interesting (though perhaps esoteric) research, and hello current fad / popular magazine stuff.

This is the real problem with proposals such as this. Ideological and political factors might affect some departments and colleges, but in all departments there are incentives for ambitious administrators to issue orders that attract the most publicity for them.

I am speaking from personal experience here (STEM department, major US research university, made tenure but left for industry a few years later; never regretted it!). Ideology and politics had nothing to do with it (in areas I am familiar with); administrator power and control was a major issue.

[Lee Moore]

Something not unlike this did happen to Robert Trivers.
He was assigned to teach a course he knew squat about. I forget the background but I think he had previously fallen foul of the university administration for something vaguely political. He was essentially an Old Bolshevik – a lifelong lefty who had failed to keep in step with current Party dogma and his reassignment to a labor camp teaching something he knew nothing about looked very like punishment.
But the point is not so much that the university tried to punish a tenured Professor, but that the university felt it was in useful to their academic mission to have ROBERT TRIVERS teaching something that he didn’t know about. It’s like assigning Schrödinger to teach American history.

[DavidTaylor]

Bob Trivers was treated badly by Rutgers, but he was suspended with pay — something many of us would welcome — and continued on at Rutgers until his retirement. It’s arguable that tenure preserved his job, while the North Dakota law might well have led to his being fired.

[CJColucci]

Roughly 100 years of academic history answers that question.

[Sarcastr0]

What an expert you are.

[Bob from Ohio]

No “free inquiry” before tenure! It didn’t exist, no one did any research or taught!

[CJColucci]

You do understand the difference between something being necessary for X and something promoting X, don’t you?

[bevis the lumberjack]

Yes he does. He believes that you don’t.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

How long would Volokh Conspiracy fans expect UCLA to keep Prof. Volokh on campus without the protections of tenure? Weeks? Days? Minutes? Until the next time a vile racial slur is used?

[Commenter_XY]

Years, decades even = How long would Volokh Conspiracy fans expect UCLA to keep Prof. Volokh on campus without the protections of tenure?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The UCLA law dean seems to disagree. Do you tend to believe in things that are not true, such as fairy tales?