Former Gov. Bobby Jindal pushed a K-12 education “reform” package in 2012 that gutted tenure protections through the state legislature at a warp speed of just three weeks.
During this year’s legislative session, Sen. Stewart Cathey, R-Monroe, is taking it one step further by proposing a bill to “study and make recommendations relative to tenure policies of public postsecondary education institutions.”
Professors are rightfully concerned about the recommendations that would come out of this committee, considering the state’s history of weakening tenure protections.
This comes mere weeks after the Louisiana Board of Regents hired Tristan Denley from the University of Georgia System — a man described as “the architect of the death of tenure.”
Academic freedom is increasingly important given the growing attacks on truth and academic integrity in recent years. Critical race theory, for example, has become a go-to point for conservative talking heads who claim liberals are indoctrinating students.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The LSU Faculty Senate is considering a resolution urging the university administration to reaffirm its commitment to tenure. This resolution emphasizes that threats to tenure jeopardize “the ability of institutions engaged in these changes to recruit and retain a world-class faculty.”
In a 2020 policy statement, the university affirmed its “commitment to the principles of academic freedom, free speech and tenure.” The statement went on to say that “[t]enure nurtures and sustains the campus spirit that values inquiry into truth and understanding, free from pressures outside the academy or due to differing styles and ideological views.”
Cathey’s bill proposing changes to tenure is an attack on academic freedom, exerting the exact type of outside pressure that tenure is designed to protect professors from.
Cathey isn’t going after a single professor or issue; he is going after the entire academic ecosystem as we know it. Without a solid tenure foundation, the university cannot recruit or retain the world-class faculty needed to enrich the state of Louisiana.
The university is keenly aware of this potential problem. In its 2020 statement, the university described tenure as “a means to provide freedom of teaching, research and extramural activities that makes the profession attractive to those individuals with the ability to pursue knowledge and its dissemination.”
For the Legislature to move Louisiana forward in education, it must swiftly reject Cathey’s dangerous attack on tenure.
Charlie Stephens is a 21-year-old political communication junior from Baton Rouge.