If you don’t have tenure, the professors who get fired will be conservatives.
The administrators are always leftists since the search process exposes any leanings. I remember seeing one administrator candidate being blackballed by one of our hardline Marxists because he had published in a Quarterly that actually admitted all opinions. Leftists hire leftists, even in staff positions. The more turnover you get, the further left your campus drifts.
So Conservative professors would, if they were employees at will, get sacked and they would have little defense. To my certain knowledge, our administrators have harassed conservative professors by laying charges against them and then not providing evidence. And more charges and more charges, until the professor goes underground or quits. One conservative received a very nice position by faculty vote and the administration, the next day, hit him with a five year probation.
Faculty are experts at manipulating administrators too. Since I have two hardline Marxists in my department who are very cozy with the administrators, some charge could be trumped up and, if I were employed at will, I would either have to cave in and hew the party line or I would be gone.
Do you think I could assign Thomas Sowell or Ayn Rand or Bernard Lewis if I did not have the protection of tenure?
I swear I am going to do a vanity on this subject.
McVey
I never went to a college, so I certainly am not qualified to argue this point, However. You say if you didnt have tenure, Conservatives wouldnt be able to stay, and then you go on to say its hard for a conservative to get hired in the first place and then are treated to various means to get rid of them. So is tenure only good when you are a liberal?
From the little I have picked up in the 65 years of my life I have found that when anyone believes their feet are in concrete, they start acting like it ,and dont move them much to get the work done. There should always be a means to reward those who work and to get rid of those who dont.
Tenure notwithstanding.
Yikes, and this is why I decided not to become a college professor.
I could get a job at a small Christian college, which I would like, after getting a doctorate etc. But, the pay would be so horrible, even less than public school teachers.
It is not worth it.
I will probably become a HS history teacher instead, again, low-paying, especially in the plains states here, but frankly, still more than many college professors make, and the jobs are easier to get.
My hat is off to you for working in college.
I want to read that vanity.