To the editor:
Though I’m a compulsive Inside Increased Ed reader, I one way or the other missed James Wetherbe’s latest argument in opposition to tenure (“Presumably My Final View on the Bother With Tenure,” April 29, 2026)—or, quite, I didn’t learn the specific phrases he used as a result of I’ve encountered these arguments advert nauseam. They’re comprehensible, however they’re improper.
Let’s break it down.
Wetherbe writes, “Tenure renders U.S. schools much less aggressive on the world stage.”
Whereas our establishments are hurting proper now, that’s hardly tenure’s fault. If something, American establishments got here to dominate the worldwide increased training market over the twentieth century, precisely when tenure grew to become an trade norm. As many of us have argued, tenure unfold as a result of it served as a recruitment and retention system. The “mind drain” we at the moment are experiencing is itself partly conscious of reductions in job safety triggered by assaults on tenure.
He writes, Tenure “mak[es] it troublesome to … reallocate labor from much less widespread disciplines to these in rising demand.”
That is true, however inappropriate. As I clarify in Chapter 8 of The Struggle on Tenure, it takes time to develop tutorial experience. Firing a tenured professor as we speak (as a result of laptop science is so 2015) doesn’t imply you’ll be able to substitute them tomorrow (with an AI scholar), as a result of there hasn’t been sufficient time to coach specialists on that new attractive matter—and, by the point we’ve performed that, we’ll have moved on to the subsequent matter. Shifting quick can certainly break issues, however it could’t construct data.
He writes, “Tenure makes too many professors much less progressive than they now should be.”
Ah, this can be a perennial favourite. Everybody—politicians, tenured professors and even professors like Wetherbe who’ve really lived their rules by refusing tenure—thinks job safety makes folks lazy. Why? As a result of it’s solely rational. (Thanks, classical economics.) Due to Joe down the corridor who hasn’t printed because the Reagan administration. (The provision heuristic comes for us all.) However as I clarify in Chapter 14, the empirics don’t bear this out.
He writes, “Tenured professors will not be below the gun to overtake their beliefs, curriculum and educational strategies.”
That is undoubtedly a Rubin’s vase: Wetherbe sees inefficiency and rancid practices the place others see safety from misguided exterior strain. However simply as academia’s critics can level to proof of unchanged practices (disciplinary boundaries, course constructions, the Socratic technique), supporters can level to transformations (flipped lecture rooms, versatile studying, experiential approaches). What Wetherbe assumes—and due to this fact should show (however doesn’t)—is that anybody innovates finest out of worry.
I’ve saved this for final as a result of it depends alone work. Wetherbe writes, “It may be exhausting to revoke tenure even from professors discovered to have dedicated misconduct.”
If a professor has been discovered to have dedicated misconduct, all that’s standing in a college’s path is itself. Like all just-cause contracts, tenured jobs could be terminated. College employers are free to make dangerous selections, however they shouldn’t be free guilty it on tenure.
I don’t say that tenure is ideal, and I gained’t say we shouldn’t critique it throughout this second of disaster. However let’s no less than consider one thing new, or one thing substantiated, to say in opposition to it.
