Today's talk about tenure must be framed within broader discussions about the role of the university. Our university system is now over one hundred years old, the “Old-Time College” is gone, the “cold war” university is no longer viable, and the foundations of the modern “multiversity” are cracking, so it is time to talk about change. But change is not necessarily reform, and resisting change probably will not keep things the way they are, so academics must understand the forces reshaping the university. Whenever I listen to colleagues defend the status quo by saying that the United States has a university system that is the envy of the world, I hear echoes of the Detroit automobile industry's casual dismissal of foreign competitors in the early 1960s. The decision not to change did not preserve the auto industry, and it is unlikely to preserve public universities as we know them.

The current debates about tenure began with ideological attacks on “tenured radicals” who used their secure jobs to subvert conservative cultural values. The attack on tenure gathered steam as fiscal hawks in financially-strapped states looked for ways to save money and found huge state university systems with budgets to match. When asked why he robbed banks, the legendary Willie Sutton replied, “Because that's where the money is.” When asked why they are robbing tenure, legislators, regents, and administrators reply, “Because that's where the money is.” Personnel costs are a large share of university budgets and tenure ties the hands of administrators and legislators accustomed to using purse strings to control universities.

At 9:02 on the morning of April 19, 1995, a powerful fertilizer bomb exploded in front of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. One hundred sixty-eight people, including twenty children, were killed. More than 500 people were badly injured. Federal authorities at first suspected foreign terrorists. The trail, however, led elsewhere—to two (and possibly more) self-styled American “patriots” with ties to the neo-nazi “militia” movement. One of the suspects, Timothy McVeigh, carried a copy of The Turner Diaries, the “bible” of various radical right, neo-nazi militia groups. At his trial in Denver, the prosecution made numerous references to The Turner Diaries. McVeigh himself chose not to speak during the trial in which he was found guilty and sentenced to death. If we are to understand the thinking of McVeigh and other home-grown terrorists, we must understand the contents of this book.

The Turner Diaries is a work of fiction. It purports to be the diaries kept by Earl Turner, a militant member of a neo-nazi group called the Organization which in the “Great Revolution” of the late twentieth century overthrew the Jewishled “System” (i.e., the U.S. government) and in the twenty-first century inaugurated an all-white, racially pure New Era. During the Old Era, the System discriminated against patriotic white Americans by confiscating their guns, promoting policies of affirmative action, encouraging non-white foreign immigration and interracial marriage, and putting Jews, African-Americans, and other minorities in positions of authority in schools and universities, the mass media, the FBI, and other governmental institutions.

Here, two college professors explore the dilemma of tenure, and ultimately argue for a change in the way tenure is promoted and perceived within the academy. One professor—an associate dean and former department head—has over 35 years of experience with the academy and has observed the best and worst aspects of tenure. The other, currently teaching his third semester of classes, has a perspective on tenure based more on expectations than experience. The perspectives differ, but at the same time provide insight into the two sides of tenure—one that views tenure as a public good needed to protect academic freedom and the other which sees it as a menace that protects incompetence.

As a young professor, I was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War at a university in very conservative section of the Midwest. My public stand against the war was criticized on local radio, television, and in the newspaper. In that Midwestern city, the war could be seen in two ways: through the eyes of the patriotic American or those of the traitor. The community made clear its attitude toward opposition to the war. Being an untenured assistant professor, I was most fortunate that the department head and academic dean were devoted defenders of academic freedom. If these academic administrators had not held their respective positions during the Vietnam War, there is no doubt my contract would have expired without renewal.

Should university professors be exempt from the job insecurity that afflicts much of the population? As businesses become leaner and meaner, shouldn't universities do the same? After all, Universities have become expensive. Wouldn't abolishing tenure make change possible—especially by eliminating deadwood?

These are fair questions. One answer is that a great many savings of the same kind that have become commonplace in business are already extensively employed by universities. For example, much of the teaching at our universities, is done by poorly paid part-time employees or graduate students, and as older faculty retire, they are often not replaced. So universities HAVE been part of the larger trends. In many respects, universities were, in fact, leaders in shifting work to part-timers.

Why shouldn't university presidents be like corporate CEO's and (as they were in the 19th century) able to hire and fire at will? Wouldn't a workforce responsive to changing organizational goals be good for universities? These questions look like two parts of the same question, and surely many people outside the university do not see the two questions as distinct. Indeed, perhaps precisely because of the way in which organizational change is occurring in business presently, the two problems seem to be one.

The two issues are not the same, and separating them is crucial to understanding the role of tenure in universities.

Today, tenure means many different things, including job security, merit reward, career motivator, protection for academic freedom, a multi-million dollar investment in a single professor, and the output of a legislative personnel process to colleges and universities (Whicker et al. 1993; p. 8–21). But increasingly, to the public and politicians, tenure is an unwarranted, unjustified, and unaffordable job perk that borders on a “rip-off” of innocent participants and bystanders in higher education (Naylor and Willimon 1996). Events at the University of Minnesota are but one example of several recent skirmishes over the practice of tenure (Sanchez 1996). Each side in the great tenure wars has interests which, if solidified in hardened positions, present an impediment to negotiating a compromise (Fisher et al. 1991; Crawley 1994). One approach is to draw from economics and its spillover into public choice to impute economic motivations—the maximization of various income streams—as the primary driving force behind parties debating the practice of tenure. This simplification of complex psychological motivations loses subtlety, a certain amount of realism, and contextual richness. It gains power, however, through simplistic theoretical eloquence that allows us to delve below the surface of positions to underlying interests.