April 13, 1999

Dear colleagues,

I agree completely with everything Richard Rice says in his "erosion" essay.

But posttenure review is not just an erosion of faculty rights and academic
freedom; it is part of a larger phenomenon: the corporatization of the
university.

 This process, now occurring nationwide,is transforming what is now the
finest higher education system in the world into a psuedo-business,  the
chief function of which is to award credentials (credit hours, CUs,
licenses, certificates, diplomas) to customers (students) in the most
cost-effective possible way (on-line courses, distance learning, hordes of
part-time instructors and some full-time instructors on term contracts who
can be easily fired when the market dries up).

Posttenure review is the first step toward a more "flexible" way to manage
human resources (faculty). [ Note that "flexible" and "fire" both begin
with the letter "F."]  And when the mission of higher education becomes
transmogrified into credential granting (degrees for dollars),
truth-seeking, free inquiry, and basic research become things of the past
and tenure, as the front-line protection for academic freedom, becomes
irrelevant and unnecessary.

Don't listen to me, or even to other tenured radicals like Cary Nelson and
Michael Berube.  Read the CHRONICLE.  Read "Why Tenure Is Indispensable,"
the back page op-ed piece in the April 2 issue by Indiana University
President Myles Brand.

I don't agree with everything he says in his piece, but we need more people
like him speaking out who value tenure and who recognize the real dangers
inherent in the kind of post-tenure review policy that the UT Board of
Trustees has so thoughtfully given us this year in lieu of a raise.

And to those of you who think that we can't do anything about the fait
accompli that the Board handed us in June, I would say that there is virtue
in resisting  evil, even if it is inevitable.  Our former Faculty Council
President Gene Ezell did the right thing in voting against posttenure
review last year, and I would encourage each faculty member to do the right
thing this year and vote against the Helms Committee's implementation plan.

Marcia Noe