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Reframing tenure as a crucial form of worker protection rather than promoting its benefits for academic freedom will help academics win the debate around its merits, according to the author of a new book that documents attacks against the practice.

The long-term employment contract has come under fire?from changing university hiring strategies, as well as claims that it encourages lazy behaviour and from state-level legislatures trying to abolish or undermine it.

Deepa Das Acevedo, associate professor of law at Emory University, told?̽»¨ÊÓƵ?that?politicians, especially ones at a federal level, are a major force behind criticisms?of what they view as an excessive form of job security.

¡°That unusualness naturally raises suspicion, and in a country where the default is that you can be fired for any reason, tenure is very unusual, and consequently it¡¯s ripe for political manipulation.¡±

Acevedo said her??published on 30 September will?not convince ¡°die-hard opponents¡±?of the merits of tenure but hoped to at least demystify and dispel some of the untrue stereotypes around it ¨C including encouraging academics to become ¡°ideological renegades¡± and disincentivising productivity.

The practice is often defended by the sector on academic freedom grounds because of the way it facilitates intellectual freedom and free enquiry ¨C but Acevedo said this has ¡°not helped conclude hostilities¡±.

¡°I think that has not helped us in the public sphere. I wouldn¡¯t categorise prevailing academic tendencies to defend tenure as existing for the sake of academic freedom as a force in the war on tenure, I do think that they have perhaps unconsciously and certainly unintentionally contributed to it.¡±

Tenure, which?, has also been defended in this way because it is a more noble argument to make than one of simple labour security, said Acevedo.

¡°Ultimately, there¡¯s no getting away from the fact that tenure really directly, powerfully benefits the individual professor who holds it, and that makes defending it on that ground as a form of labour security a very rhetorically tricky thing for academics to do.¡±

The legal anthropologist said ¡°circling the wagons¡± around the exceptional nature of academia is exclusionary and exacerbates the war on tenure.

Academics are also guilty of being ¡°linguistically lazy¡± by describing tenure as a job for life, which she said excludes consideration of the ¡°broader economic forces within which academia ineffably operates and that also have a role to play and determine the degree of security you can have in your work¡±.

¡°It doesn¡¯t matter if you have tenure, if your institution ceases to exist, it is not a job for life any more than any other form of employment contract.¡±

Instead, Acevedo makes the case that tenure is merely an employment contract which provides necessary labour protections to workers where ¡°the baseline assumption is an extreme degree of employment insecurity¡±.

It is particularly important in the US where ¡°at-will employees¡± can be legally fired for any number of reasons ¨C including because they ¡°support a football team [their] boss dislikes or because [they] wore teal to the office or because it¡¯s a Thursday¡±.

Tenure provides job security for workers who face long training, high barriers to entry, and poor exit options ¨C providing benefits to their students, administrators, and society at large.

It is a version of the ¡°just cause¡± employment contracts that govern millions of American workers ¡°across industries ranging from orchestras to fast-food service¡±, writes Acevedo. It is a powerful form of protection for those lucky enough to have it but is also far from ¡°the ironclad guarantee of the sun and the moon¡±. ¡°Tenure both is and isn¡¯t special,¡± she says.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com