An outspoken faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Sara Goldrick-Rab, has decided to leave the university. She says in her blog that it is “no longer possible for critical scholars working in public higher education to flourish without tenure protections.” And, she adds, “McCarthyism is alive and well—especially here in Wisconsin.”
Strong words.
Last year, the Wisconsin legislature removed its state guarantee of faculty tenure. Given the reaction, you would have thought that this change thrust the state into the Dark Ages. It didn’t. It merely brought the university system closer to those of other states, which protect faculty jobs through contract and board governance, not state law.
Even Peter Schmidt of the Chronicle of Higher Education, whose articles appeared sympathetic to the protesters, pointed that out last year:
Wisconsin stands apart in how it has enshrined shared governance and college faculty members’ job protections in state law. … Although a few other states, such as California and Washington, have laws touching upon college faculty members’ tenure rights, most of those provisions cover only instructors at community colleges…. Nearly every other state leaves it up to colleges’ governing boards or systems to set the terms of employment for their faculty members.
Nevertheless, the reaction was intense. Goldrick-Rab helped it along by a tweet that asserted psychological similarities between Governor Walker and Hitler. Now she’s headed to Temple University where she will be a professor of higher education and sociology.
H-T: Chronicle Ticker