New bill making its way through Texas legislature would preserve "tenure in name only"...

...or a kind of pseudo-tenure, as Keith Whittington explains:

Section 3(c) defines the property interest in tenure as a single year salary. This is designed to allow university to fire tenured faculty without good cause so long as it pays out a single year salary. A mockery of meaningful tenure...

And then we have terms of good-cause dismissal of tenured faculty. Section 3(c-1)(2)(A)(iv) allows for moral turpitude. Would like to know how common this is in tenure policies. I suspect not very. Seems ripe for abuse in context of faculty position....

And then part (v) allowing termination for violating university policies. Could easily facilitate death penalty for misdemeanors, and leaves open possibility of university adopting lots of highly dubious policies — such as bans on teaching divisive concepts....

And then part (vi) allowing termination for “unprofessional conduct.” Much more sweeping than how university policies are generally written. I would not like to arm an unfriendly administrator with such an I’ll-defined power.