The Chronicle of Higher Education
March 3rd, 2015
The University of Tennessee’s Board of Trustees has triggered suspicion among faculty members by calling for tenure policies to be reconsidered as part of a cost-cutting plan.
The system’s administration on Monday retracted from its summary of the plan language that had especially aroused faculty opposition—a reference to the potential "enacting of a de-tenure process."
The "de-tenure" reference had helped fan faculty outrage over the plan on Twitter and elsewhere. In a blog post about the plan, Chad Black, an associate professor of early Latin American history at the Knoxville campus, asked: "What in the world is a ‘de-tenure process,’ and what place does tenure, a bulwark of academic freedom and security for the risks of academic training and employment, have in a conversation on cutting costs and increasing revenues?"