Regarding tenure, and Steve Balch’s comment of 6/12, it is true that tenure can be a mechanism for protecting outrageous or incompetent behavior, but it can also protect those who challenge the reigning orthodoxies. The people who have spoken out against the radicalization of the university have often been professors with the security of tenure. Also, giving administrators power over teachers is not necessarily going to yield better results, because administrators, especially today, are really bureaucrats who will follow whatever they think is the reigning ideology. They may possess even less allegiance to, or knowledge of, the real life of the mind than the professors. Maybe tenure is like what Winston Churchill said of democracy–the worst system until you consider all the others?