CHE article here (subscriber-access only). Sign a petition in support of tenure at Wayne here. From the CHE article:
The conflict centers on an administration proposal, offered in the early round of contract negotiations, that would in effect scrap previously negotiated job protections for tenured or probationary faculty members, as well as seniority-based protections afforded many academic staff members, and replace them with new rules governing the suspension or termination of such employees.
The administration's proposed contract language would give the university's president, or an administrator working on the president's behalf, the power to terminate such employees for a variety of reasons, including a "failure to meet professional responsibilities," a "failure to perform academic assignments competently," and a "financially based reduction in force."
Union officials have denounced the proposed contract language as an attempt to do away with tenure and have accused the university's chief negotiator of explicitly characterizing it as such. Last week the AAUP's national office began circulating a petition protesting the proposed contract language, which it described as offering "extremely broad" justifications for termination and replacing faculty peer review with the judgment of administrators.
There's a real issue lurking here, namely, faculty who abuse tenure. But the burden is on universities to act where "good cause" for termination exists. Tenure does not mean lifetime employment; it means only that a faculty member can only be terminated for cause, to which various procedural protections apply. The Wayne State proposals are clearly meant to do an end-run around the "good cause" requirement
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