The Weekly: Tenure Cuts and the Growing Surveillance of Faculty

Plus, tracing the financial forces shaping the humanities.

The biggest headline of the week is the elimination of tenure protections across public institutions in Oklahoma. In an executive order, Governor J. Kevin Stitt declared that no new tenure appointments are to be offered to faculty at any public regional or community colleges. Research universities will still be able to offer tenure, but faculty are now subject to regular tenure review on cycles not exceeding five years.

“Influence and public trust comes a corresponding responsibility to demonstrate continued effectiveness, relevance, and alignment with institutional and state priorities,” and “no publicly funded role should be exempt from regular performance review,” the order states.

Faculty at non-research-intensive universities will now instead be offered fixed-term renewable contracts; faculty at research-intensive universities will now be evaluated by “demonstrated performance aligned with the Research University’s mission, instructional responsibilities, and public service obligations consistent with” the order and Oklahoma law.

Tenure has been under threat for years, if not decades, but some states — Texas, Florida, Ohio, and Indiana — have put forward notable restrictions recently. Tenure, as HxA member Deepa Das Acevedo compellingly argues in her recent book The War on Tenure, offers important labor protections for academics whose work is inherently long-term. But tenure also offers protection for open inquiry and a shield against external political attacks.

As we’ve witnessed the past several years, most notably since the start of the second Trump administration, the climate universities are now operating in has fundamentally changed. While the intention is to correct, in part, for the mission drift of the past decade-plus, the administration’s actions have also led to increased surveillance and censorship on campus.

At UNC this week, a policy formalized the recording of courses without instructor permission or notice “to gather evidence in connection with an investigation into alleged violations of University policy,” or for any “lawful” purpose. Many faculty have become wary of classroom recording in general (which became largely standard practice during Covid) given that viral recordings can lead to faculty losing their jobs. With the mounting political pressure on universities, simple “allegations” are enough to warrant administrators to surreptitiously record professors and students in class.

For instance, in Houston, faculty must now sign in agreement of the following five statements: “A primary purpose of higher education is to enhance critical thinking;” “Our responsibility is to give students the ability to form their own opinions, not to indoctrinate them;” “I understand the definition and attributes of critical thinking;” “I design my courses and course materials to be consistent with the definition and attributes of critical thinking;” and “I use methods of instruction that are intended to enhance students’ critical thinking.”

The key here being “indoctrination” — a now politicized buzzword in the political fracturing of our universities. What counts? Often it’s a know-it-when-I-see-it concept, or clearly politically biased. As universities launch websites for students to report “wrongthink” on campus, it’s understandable why faculty are increasingly scared to teach. They can be reported, recorded, and fired for a single viral event.

In Utah, lawmakers are pressuring universities with proposed legislation that would require faculty to allow students to opt out of assignments that conflict with religious or moral beliefs — hardly a shift toward promoting critical thinking and viewpoint diversity. Professor at Utah Valley University Rick McDonald told The Salt Lake Tribune, “Beliefs are important, but the mission of higher education is to expose a student to the best course of knowledge in a field of study.” The fuzzy lines of this legislation and what justifies a reasonable “moral belief” worth accommodation opens yet another avenue for administrators and lawmakers to wield power over the classroom.

Lawmakers aren’t the only group exerting pressure to bend academia to their preferred viewpoints. For example, look at private foundations. In The Atlantic, Tyler Austin Harper profiles the exorbitant sums of money funding progressive scholarship through the Mellon Foundation — $540 million in 2024, compared to the just $78 million granted by the federal The National Endowment for the Humanities. When government funding for academia gets cut, private interests step in to fill the gaps, and not always in the ways in which lawmakers or academics might prefer. As Harper writes:

The humanities aren’t broke because they went woke. The humanities went woke in large part because they were broke. As other donors, the government, and universities themselves all but abandoned these fields, Mellon became a lifeline. But the foundation has proved to be—as Jacques Derrida might have said—a kind of pharmakon: a Greek word that the philosopher noted could be translated as either “remedy” or “poison,” depending on your perspective.

Harper concludes:

a higher-education system that can no longer keep them safe from the vulgarities of the market, the siren song of cultural warfare, or the decidedly sublunary work of furnishing political propaganda is one that has not just failed the humanities, but failed entirely.

As institutions face pressure from external interests — political, private, or otherwise — there is really only one good option left for academics and university leaders: take charge to lead principled changes within their institutions, labs, and classrooms. The incentive structures that have mobilized much of the mission drift and academic activism over the past decades are complex and heavy; yet, principles can endure through cultural change. And some leaders are finally taking that seriously.

One example of such a “bright spot” amid the ideological turmoil comes out of the University of Wyoming — the state’s only public institution — who have been steadfastly grounding their institution in HxA values.

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) has given the University of Wyoming the highest rating of any university they’ve evaluated to date. The University of Wyoming has one of the most active HxA chapters in the country, being an epicenter for HxA collaboration in the mountain west. They’re a prime example of how principled leadership can lead to deep cultural changes on campus.

“I couldn’t be prouder of our students, staff and faculty for leading the way in creating a campus climate in which free and open inquiry prevails over ideological conformity — and dialogue is valued over diatribe,” said University of Wyoming President Ed Seidel in a press release.

Through deliberative governance and consultation, University of Wyoming proactively adopted policies reinforcing academic freedom, institutional neutrality, civil discourse, and merit-based hiring in alignment with its scholarly mission. As their statement of principles makes clear, “UW advances the frontiers of teaching, research, and creative activity through open inquiry independent from the undue influence of donors, elected officials, ownership interests, or other external parties.” A position more universities should internalize.

Higher education is operating during an inflection point. What happens in the next few years will shape at least a generation of students and scholars. The question is no longer whether higher education will change, but who gets to decide the terms and direction. Politicians may be asserting their power, but academics have power too. And campus leaders — from faculty and staff, up to the president — play a crucial role in ensuring principles prevail over politics.

---