The Conservative Case for Tenure
After my essay defending tenure appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education last month, the reaction was pretty predictable: colleagues — both people I know and people I don’t — sent heartfelt “attaboys,” while self-described conservatives wrote to explain why I was in error (to put it nicely).
The latter response is the one that interests me, not just because it always seems to be conservatives who oppose tenure but because I’m a conservative myself.
Surprised? You’re not alone. From their correspondence, my detractors clearly assumed I was just another misguided leftist professor. For that matter, those who wrote to agree probably thought the same thing (omitting the “misguided” part).
The truth is that I’ve voted for the Republican candidate in every national election since Reagan in 1980. I generally vote Republican in local elections, too, although I sometimes have to hold my nose while pulling the lever.
Moreover, as a local newspaper columnist in the Atlanta metro area — specifically, in Gwinnett County, a Republican stronghold — I’m well known for my conservative views. I’ve even been a guest on a local conservative talk radio show. No one who knows me, or who has ever read my column, would describe me as anything resembling “leftist.”
Which makes me, I suppose, a bit of an oddity: a conservative who supports tenure. In the interests of full disclosure, the fact that I’m a tenured professor probably has something to do with that. But the point is not that I believe in tenure despite being a conservative. Rather, I believe in it precisely because I am a conservative.
Before I explain that last statement, though, let’s examine some of the common objections to tenure put forward by conservative (or at least Republican) elected officials and businesspeople.
One is that tenure exists to protect bad teachers, providing them with “guaranteed lifetime employment.” Of course, anyone who actually works in higher education knows there’s no such thing. Tenured professors can be dismissed for any number of good and proper reasons, including plagiarism, sexual harassment of students, and chronic dereliction of duty. Moreover, in my 25-year career, I honestly haven’t known many “bad teachers.” The vast majority of them are hard-working and dedicated — even after they receive tenure.
Another, related complaint is that tenured professors “don’t have to do anything.” This too is manifestly untrue, as almost all institutions have built-in post-tenure review processes to ensure that professors continue doing their jobs and contributing to the profession. Again, I can say in all honesty that most of my colleagues work very hard. From where I sit, it looks like the politicians who, once they have established de facto tenure by getting reelected two or three times, don’t have to do anything.
Finally, I’ve often heard members of the business community — those I refer to in my Chronicle essay, not altogether charitably, as “chamber of commerce types” — complain that college professors are too coddled. They don’t spend enough hours working, some charge, while others respond to outspoken professors’ public comments with (real or feigned) incredulity: “How can he get away with saying that? I’d be fired if I said that.”
Such comments have always struck me as petty and ignorant. Few people understand what it takes to get an advanced degree and become a professor, much less the amount of work involved thereafter. But at least these charges bring me back to my main point, which is why, as a conservative, I support the concept of tenure.
A few far leftists? The case whether tenure should stay or go depends precisely on what one considers the state of higher education to be today. While I’m sure you’re not thrilled with the status quo, I don’t think you appreciate anywhere close to how bad the situation is, and that the war on tenure actually has to become far more radical than it is now.
The question isn’t whether there are a few bad teachers in higher ed that tenure protects. The issue is what tenure and the culture associated with it have created, namely:
- a situation where being a well-read, thoughtful college graduate does absolutely nothing for one’s career prospects (cf. Marty Nemko in The Chronicle of Higher Education)
- a situation where – haha – try getting tenure now. Hmm, it almost looks like administrators (keep labor costs low) and tenured faculty (employ adjuncts, they’re no competition within a department) have a common interest in a shared corruption. (of course there’s no empirical evidence backing this; I detail the consequences of this conspiracy theory of mine here: On a Letter of Leo Strauss to Wilmoore Kendall, 5.14.1961)
Exactly what is the import of academia upon the United States of America? If it is the case that colleges only exist to put more of the population into debt, why shouldn’t a tenured faculty be a target? That’s the problem with the case you’re making: if someone can make the case that higher education is a blight, inasmuch as all it churns out are self-satisfied liberals and conservatives who are materialistic at best, then isn’t attacking the state of the faculty justified, esp. as it is a weak link?
Ok,Jenkins,you’re not a misguided “leftist professor.” You’re a misguided conservative professor. The left keeps conservatives from getting tenture. Tenture is political to the left; remember the left says everything is political? Answer that.
1. Why, professor, do I suspect that your experience is limited to one or maybe two universities?
2. You talk about conservatives being able to get tenure, but you also say that the universities are predominately liberal and leftist controlled, so just how are conservatives supposed to get this tenure?
3. I will not disagree with the idea that professors work hard, but I disagree that their hard work is in the proper direction, teaching students how to think, bot what to think. When a professor does not allow any critical or creative thinking (and with my three degrees I have run into some of them), they should be fired – immediately. When they insist it’s “my way or the highway”, they should be fired. I am not denying the right of the professors to tell their students whatever they want to, but am denying their right to enforce what they say when the responses do not fit with their narrow minded view of the world.
What you are saying is that if a professor wants to tell his classes that socialism is a fine system, and anyone who contradicts than on an exam fails, his tenure should not be affected. By implying this, you have made a good case against tenure. I second asok’s points.
It’s possible to build in job protections that focus on academic freedom and provide for some kind of due process within the context of long term contracts, without tenure. The current system has at least the following devastating effects that a gradual increase in job security with much more clearly established job requirements would minimize: 1) the 6 year hazing period during which the new professor is completely at the will of those who will decide whether to give him/her tenure–everyone knows that genuine independence and free thinking is career suicide during this period, and once you get in the habit of surrendering those things it’s not so easy to pick them up again–and the odds are good you’ll treat the next initiate as you were; 2) the absolute split between tenured faculty and part timers–tenured faculty fight tooth and nail against any attempt to create non-tenured full time positions that might give universities some flexibility in hiring, preferring a mass of highly exploited adjunct faculty with aboslutely no power or rights. Not only are these consequences of tenure destructive in themselves, but they further make the tenured faculty hostile to innovation, arbitrary and tyrannical. And I think your claims that most tenured professors work very hard and are excellent teachers will provoke a great deal of laughter.
Then why do conservative speakers get shouted and hounded off of campus? Why are conservative newspapers stolen, conservative students harrassed and accused of racism, sexism, and of every possible crime against political correctness? Who teaches them to behave like this? Who shows them the words to use, and trains them in what passes for thinking on the Left? If not professors, who?
The entire concept of tenure is socialist in nature. This is the problem with the country now…everything has been turned on it’s head, and laws and policies aren’t created to protect the common good, but to benefit a specific group of people at the expense of everone else. Socialism. Legal plundering. “It’s too late to work within the system, but it’s too early to shoot the bastards”.
I’ve taught, as an adjunct, at both a large, research-oriented university and a smaller state university. So, admittedly, I have less experience than Dr. Jenkins. But, having read this, I still find myself wondering where he has been for those 25 years.
If we were adressing the problems of an academy of, say, 50 or even 30 years ago, I would agree wholeheartedly that, because of the need for faculty to responsibly determine curricula in their respective fields and because of the need to speak out against the often misguided policy directions of administrators and/or politicians, tenure should be preserved. But as it is, most of the scenarios that you argue that preservation of tenure would guard against have already come to pass, all while the tenure system is firmly in place.
However, any honest assessment of the academic state of affairs has to admit that faculty members have largely shirked their responsibility to responsibly determine the curriculum. At least in the humanities departments, the criteria used for determining the focus of courses and the selection of “texts” is determined either by a desire to politically indoctrinate undergrads or by a desire on the part of the professor to further his career.
As for guarding against the misguided decisions of university administrators, most of the administrative decisions that affect curricula or teaching policies I’ve seen come down in my experience could have been dictated by the faculty. The politically charged books that all entering freshmen are required to read, the growing reliance on underpaid and completely unprotected non-tenure-track faculty to do most of the heavy lifting in teaching undergraduates, the silly, stupid and self-defeating “diversity” diktats: What would the faculty do differently? In my experience, not one thing.
Maybe Georgia Perimeter’s campuses are havens of reasonable objectivity, but I find that very hard to believe, given that the default position of faculty on every other campus I’ve encountered is decidedly Marxian (and certainly not “center-left”), anti-intellectual, careerist and totalitarian. That atmosphere did not start with administrators (who will go with whatever makes their jobs easier and whatever is least likely to end in official complaints or lawsuits) and it didn’t start with state legislators or other politicians (who, though they’re not really responsible for the problem, will probably concoct a solution that will make the problem worse). It started with faculty. They’ve created the insulated and thoroughly corrupt world they inhabit. The backlash I warned my classmates about in grad school is long overdue, and I’m more convinced now than I was then that it is called for.
The author claims that tenure protects conservative ideas on campus? Apparently not as we know that the leftists have ruled academia for decades. I don’t think the situation could really get any worse at this point. Job security should be based on performance, end of story.
Should truck drivers get tenure? Should surgeons? Should emergency room nurses? Should police? Should bureaucrats? Should Starbucks workers? Should the government force every public or private company and institution to have a tenure program?
No.
Tenure is a great idea to honor the very rare and few of exceptional talent and dedication in any endeavor. The Sui Generis. Many established institutions have members of Emeritus status — typically it takes close to twenty years of excellent service to achieve. It is similar to Tenure.
Tenure is a cheap coin today, it is way too common, and it is no longer a mark of truly exceptional.
Our US colleges show the result, the poisonous and destructive immoral social chaos in college live, the abysmal level of real knowledge of most college graduates.
It almost seems there are no true Emeritus old hoary wise heads in Academia today — they have been hunted down, eaten or driven away by packs of tenure jackals.
This is fascinating. I never knew until now that there are lots of conservatives opposed to the concept of academic tenure. It’s always seemed like a common-sense idea to me–a good way to protect free thought and intellectual diversity at universities. So maybe there’s not enough of that. But does anybody seriously think that getting rid of tenure will make things better? At least with tenure, the few conservative or libertarian academics out there are protected from the whims of their left-wing colleagues or superiors. Whatever’s wrong with higher education, tenure ain’t it.
You write:
“But if we ever do succeed in increasing the number of conservatives in full-time teaching positions, what then? Departments, colleges, entire universities, and systems will still be run by liberals. How will those conservative professors survive without tenure to protect them as they promote their values in the classroom and speak their minds during faculty meetings? Isn’t that what we want — outspoken conservatives firmly ensconced in the academy? That will never happen if we jettison the tenure system now just because the left happens to be in control.”
Conservatives will not attain an increase in the number of conservatives in tenured positions in universities or colleges in the United States. The reason is as plain as the nose on your face: the criteria that are applied at the door, prior to hiring, are identical to the criteria that are used to abuse conservatives who have managed to attain tenure. As you acknowledge, conservatives need tenure to protect themselves from the abuse they suffer from colleagues. But they cannot get that tenure when the abusive standards are appled at the door, for God’s sake.
You live down there in sweet, little ole Gwinnett County where most of my large, extended family has lived since at least 1960. Sir, your neighbors have no concept of “tenured radical feminist professor.” In their wildest nightmares, they could not imagine that such a thing exists in the United States. Now answer me true, Sir: could some Ph.D. who is starting a career find employment in a department of Women’s Studies? Only if they have established credentials as a radical feminist, usually through their teachers. See, Sir, the hiring decision is as close as conservatives will get to a tenure decision. In the universities and colleges, the tenure system has become the primary tool for creating ideological uniformity in departments.
Permit me to anticipate an objection. There is work that Leftists won’t do. Engineering is an excellent example. As you know, the Left has wreaked havoc in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Medicine, Law, and some additional fields. As I write, the President of Harvard is a feminist who rose through the academic ranks. To me, all her career tells us about her abilities is that she has never been challenged. Academia does not permit challenges to Leftist professors.
Professor Jenkins,
Thank you for this article, although I believe you are wasting your time with the PJM crowd. Most of the readers and posters on this site will tout the typical cliches of the conservative right without admitting that there may be some grain of truth inherent in the opposite viewpoint. The cynicism is palpable–but that is the reason this country is so divided and in such a mess. Both right and left cling to their cliches without seeing a common-sense middle.
But back to the issue of tenure: Fact is, most people have absolutely no clue what a university professor does on a daily basis. Most don’t know what it takes to actually get tenure, much less the Ph.D. No, professors don’t just teach two classes and then go home. They don’t have the summers off. Many work 60+ hours/week–yes, even in the humanities too. Most care about their students. Most are interested in conveying the basic information and not indoctrinating. Yes, there is liberal bias in the academy (heck, I don’t tell my colleagues who I voted for–don’t want to start that discussion), and this needs to change–but most classrooms are balanced and well-rounded. But the issue of tenure is another issue all together.
I think the misconception is that tenure equals “job for life, regardless of performance.” In fact, professors must go through subsequent reviews to move up through the ranks from Assistant Professor, to Associate, to full Professor. These reviews are based on publication record, teaching evalutions, service to the community, and other such things. I believe that inherent in the award of “tenure” is the assumption that the university is investing in and supporting an individual who will, in turn, devote his/her life to teaching and scholarship in a particular sub-field. I have known plenty of professors who were denied tenure, or who lost tenure as an Associate or a Full, or who were encouraged to take an early retirement.
No, bvw is wrong–tenure is NOT “way too common” today. In fact, it is becoming more and more difficult to get tenure. And, in order to save money, universities are hiring fewer full-time faculty in favor of part-time adjuncts (who are paid poorly and therefore have less loyalty to the institution, and who often have less knowledge, experience, or real-time education in the fields they are teaching). I think that “conservatives” should be more concerned about this trend. This “contracting out” of courses to part-time adjuncts has the possibility of reducing the quality of education a student receives.
I think Dr. Jenkins’s main point was: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. That is, conservatives could potentially use the tenure system to their advantage as, once they have tenure, they can feel free to share their views. The problem is getting conservative young people interested in the academy. It seems that conservatives either pride themselves on being anti-intellectual and ridicule the life of the mind, or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, they take their educations and go into more lucrative careers in law, medicine, and finance.
“…the reasons, I believe, have less to do with any left-wing conspiracy than with the fact that conservatives abandoned teaching as a profession a generation ago because it doesn’t pay well enough”
Are you kidding me? Is this what passes for critical thinking at Georgia Perimeter College? First, Professor Jenkins, the word “fact” is used, when in reality you are expressing your opinion. Second, despite claiming to be a conservative, your opinion is clearly based on the rather simple-minded prejudice that conservatives are motivated solely by money.
Sorry, Professor, if you want to convince me that your job is so much more important than mine that you should never be fired, you’ll have to do better than this.
Rob, you seem to live in a fantasy faculty. You have rank. My experience is opposite yours.
In my department, the faculty is vicious. I never talk about politics, except for one time with one guy I considered a friend and that was off campus having pizza. But during the last election, I could hear the other faculty in my corridor tneured and non-tenured, talking up Obama and hating up Palin, soliciting interest etc. — but they never came by my office to talk politics. Marked.
And even if I were a “progressive” I would be ashamed to apply for tenure. What I see these other guys go through and do to other people and the crap they use to qualify for tenure puts me in a position like Groucho Marx: why would I want to apply for inclusion in that rank? Not sure I’s want to be a member of that club.
My chair tries to build up the junior non-tenured faculty but “they” get the dean to cut down anything my dept. chair tries to do for me. Everyday stuff. I find out about some of it months later from office staff or colleagues in other departments. It is embarrassing to see my chair get stampeded like that.
You seem a nice guy, and admittedly, my department has a nationwide reputation for its pathology, but you seem oblivious to some of the really horrible rank-related behavior that goes around. I love teaching but I detest rank.
Lots of high brow honking still don’t explain to this ol’ boy why some folks get to spout off incredible $hit on the job because they’ve got tenure while us folks who pay the bills for all of this stuff would get our big mouthed a$$es bounced out the door for doing the same thing?
I reckon I’m just an ig’nert ol’ anti-innaleckshul …
You make some interesting points and some valid… but your anologies are lacking comparing the lack of freedom to express views in the adacemic arena are hurtful to everyone and not in the corportae environment. The deffinition or purpose of a corporation is to create shareholder value. The CEO that terminates an outspoken critic is the loss of a critic that may well have been contributing to the purpose (creating shareholder value) of the corporation. While it is true that it takes a lot of work to earn advanced degrees to become a professor, it is not that much different then an engineer that needs to be published or a physician that needs to keep current with CEU’s, etc. etc. Personally I have known professors/physicians,etc. that although they have the credentials that simply are misplaced. It is true in every profession. I suspect it is true in the academic world… interesting that you haven’t met any bad ones.
Paul from Hamburg states: “Sorry, Professor, if you want to convince me that your job is so much more important than mine that you should never be fired, you’ll have to do better than this.”
Professor Jenkins never wrote anything of the sort. He did say that tenure would have the effect of protecting conservative speech in the academy. Mike Adams is a great example of this. He’s going full bore and his leftist administration can’t do a thing about it, though they’ve tried.
The university is the cultural high ground. Conservatives need to take it back from the liberal-left progressives who currently hold it, especially in the humanities. Tenure can be an important part of doing this. Further, Paul from Hamburg’s final sentence validates what Professor Jenkins wrote. Most conseravatives don’t know what a professor does, or what tenure actually means.
Terbreugghen writes:
“Mike Adams is a great example of this.”
You have cited the example that proves the rule. Mike Adams and his ilk should be commonplace on university campuses. Yet the fact is that he has attained fame as a columnist through simple and obvious criticisms of the gross corruption that exists on campus. In other words, he is one big white elephant in the vast sea of academia. By the way, his department is criminal justice. That kind of work can be highly mathematical and Leftists don’t do it.
Georgia Perimeter College?
My children’s experience has been that far too many professors use tensure as a shield to protect them from needing to keep up with changes in their field and provide a useful education to their students. Imagine engineering professors who teach skills years out of date. Where will their students find jobs?
Conservatives choose professions outside of academia not because the pay is lower as you suggest…but because they don’t want to have to hang around and socialize with a bunch of lefty professors who look down on anything Christian or conservative with distain.
Whenever someone defends tenure, I am forced to ask “how much did it cost Colorado University to get rid of Ward Churchill?” Academia has several problems and perhaps tenure is not the worst of them but it contributes to the politicalization of education and to the retention of marginal faculty that are not worth what they’re paid but are not worth the trouble to get rid of. I must disagree with you on this. The lynchmob of 88 at Duke were mostly tenured and nearly destroyed several innocent lives without fear because they and their supporters were free of worry about job security.
I think higher education would benefit from the elimination of tenure.
Why is tenure the only way to keep a college professor from being fired for the reasons the author cites? How about just adding those reasons to the current list of reasons a college professor can’t be fired (you know: race, creed, color, sexual preference…)? After all, keeping professors from being fired for their repugnant political views is not even close to being the biggest ‘problem’ that tenure creates.
Tenure is the extension of a simple union concept called “seniority.” It seeks to justify the protection of the hierarchy on the basis of “A has been continuously employed longer than B,C ,D etc.
In terms of the righteous justification inherent in retaining employees because they have “been here longer”no evidence exists. It is simply an attempt to guarantee a measure of loyalty to the Union since it is something that can be attained through employment longevity.
Attaining tenure is dressed up in all kinds of earned or reviewed processes to give it the aura of legitimacy.
It’s still a self serving ‘me first ” program that protects academics and encourages them to thumb their collective noses at authority.
The author , being part of this process disguises his self serving nature by insuring us he is a conservative and we should give up our narrow mindedness regarding tenure.
I’m not buying it.
I agree that tenure protects the small number of conservatives (at least in the humanities and social sciences) who teach. I also agree that most faculty are left of center, but hardly leftists. The leftists end up dominating many universities not because of their numbers, but their willingness to play hardball–like the attempt at the University of Texas to get any member of the National Association of Scholars removed from tenure committees.
Where I strongly disagree with Professor Jenkins is the claim that conservatives abandoned teaching because of pay. Yes, poor pay is a discouragement. But also seeing that there is no way that a conservative can ever hope to achieve tenure except by pretending to be something else causes some of us to say, “Why bother?” When I was completing my BA in History, my second book had just been published (since cited as authority in a Rhode Island Supreme Court decision), and I had some referred journal articles published (although not in history, but in communications). And yet, there was apparently some argument within the faculty about whether it was proper to add “with distinction” to my degree, because that second book was a scholarly history of how the courts have interpreted the right to keep bear arms provisions of the federal and state constitutions.
One flaw in the professor’s argument is his premise that those outside his field are incompetent to evaluate his scholarly or pedagogical work. This attitude promotes an inbred, arrogant and insular culture in the academy. This result is dangerous to the academy, to students and to society.
Let us be clear: tenure is not a guarantee of job security by any means– only lockstep ideological adherence to the Powers That Be can guarantee that. It is, however, the only reliable way to keep a full-time job in academia for more than three or four years. And in many cases, having tenure is the only thing that protects many centrist or conservative professors from outright politically motivated dismissal, though as with all modern academic institutions it of course benefits leftists more than anyone else. However, I doubt Prof. Jenkins is in any danger of such trouble, given his rank and institution– far more conservative positions are tolerated at smaller schools than larger ones, and far more in red states than blue states. Had this article been written by an actual high-ranked conservative at a top-20 school, it would have far more authority.
A poster boy for maintaining at-will employment for professors and teachers.
It’s easy to see, and for that matter, form opinions based on black and white “reasoning” as it seems to be the sport for a lot of conservative pundits with an axe to gring, that is when they don’t find other uses for their hands (Craig, Vitter, McCain, etc..) But all properly educated persons can smell the mendacity from a block away. To them I say, do not go gently into that night, rage, rage against the dying of the light, common sense, and several questionable Emails, not to mention those suspicious return missives that no longer come because certain “pundits” may have scared the future of your party by intimating that somehow all may be troubled in a nice way whence posting epistles of questionable taste, and lets be honest here, not the greatest content. Something perhaps pertaining to the ancient art of tattooing and the perplexing utilization of a single cup by two comely but naked young ladies, or the true nature of those “chemicals” used for the tanning of skins savagely ripped like bodices, all in the name of imitating the Fonz. Yea, though I travel through the valley of pinheads and those of conservative family “values”, I will fear (probably) no censorship, for the lard and all the other naughty bits are my shield and the only non-narcotic defense against the forces that would have me wear a red sweater and NOT try to get to third base with Jeanie Falkowski.
No, it is tis wiser to build your castle upwind from the ever blustering right wing pinheads than to cast yon pearls of dubious wisdom like a fountain of verbose spit up, as well as that great cosmic salt filled pancake that you dream about, than to emit a shower of sparks whilst shifting on yon sanitary pedestals, as those that would obfuscate the actual vital issues that impact all of us layeth in that land for a long time, like worms out of a hot cheese log. They say the wise man does not build his sandwich from the sands, but I digress; I don’t know much about art but I know what I like and I like but one butt, or two, but I’ll take my chances with the charging yak of serendipity if it gives me only a few cherished seconds of opaque meaning to what is becoming a miserable trudge in my journey to find some plateau of relief from all this physically painful para-diddle and highly regarded though hastily flung dank invective inherent in that kind of pointless chatter – like what you read on this site!
Come back little Sheba and your big sister with the pendulous appendages, and the good Doctor Robert (where are you!) as well, as all is forgiven, although no trespasses were filed against you on my behalf. We’ll empty flagon after flagon of high alcohol content ale and curse the moon until the inevitable shoe comes whizzing by, and whence the sun rises as yet another cock crows, we’ll greet the morning with elbows up, even as we remain pitched high up on our sanitary pedestals in the land of reversible cups. To you conservatives: It’s scary standing on the edge contemplating the void, or even perched atop the sloping shoulders of the lead guitar player for U2, but it’s even more of a vacuous gaping maw to behold when you observe the daily pratfalls and missed synapses on your local 24 hour “news” mauler, as well as your spokespersons on Faux, which regales in full stoopid bloom now that all talking heads vie for frontsies in their insane migration and the eating of logs. I try to avoid getting involved in any of it, as a typical content usually produces extreme aural discomfort from too much ear rolling, increased non-soluble fiber from the many cast off chicken items, but oddly enough my garden benefits from increased yields due to increased loam fortification, along with the usual stiffness that you dream about, even in your waking hours.
#17: “Professor Jenkins never wrote anything of the sort.” Yes, he did: “But the college professor must be treated differently.” Jenkins is clearly saying that every tenured professor has a job that is more important than my job. That is the fundamental premise of the tenure system: University faculty are more important than private sector workers. It is a premise that I believe to be false.
Yeah, systems of nobility, feudalism, and oligarchy are what we should all support and celebrate.
Indeed, individual tenure doesn’t go far enough. Clearly the professor’s chair should descend to his heirs, the university position should always remain in the family. If the job is the professor’s “property,” why not?
But the college professor must be treated differently.
He’s better than you peasants, damn it!! He is more special than you! He deserves special protection!
Won’t someone please throw this elitist putz out on his ear?
The Ward Churchill case at U of C Boulder was a text book case on the need to modify and limit tenure. I proven liar, plagiarist, and Marxist who is still drawing pay and teaching non credit courses at a State socialist leaning University.
Churchill introduced the American public to the incredible protection and benefit a professor undeservedly receives. Any one indulging their hatred at your expense is a societal parasite not a valued academic.
The problem with the whole idea of tenure is that most men and women make their biggest creative contributions to society while they are in the early part of their lives. Giving people tenure after 10 years in professorial servitude is not going to allow for much creativity, and doesn’t. How many tenured professors actually contribute anything original? Sorry Rob, but I don’t buy your premise that most tenured professors are highly productive individuals. I don’t buy your other premise that people need protected professorships in order to have intellectual freedom. Intellectual freedom exists for anyone who has the guts to pursue their own ideas. The problem is that you fear the collectivist control of your environment, and that is a legitimate fear. But you don’t fix that problem by hiding behind your tenure. Fact is, if you teach almost anywhere in the USA these days, you are either indebted to government for your salary or you work directly for government. Government control of education, tenure or not, is the real problem.
I remain largely unconvinced that the tenure system is valid, but I’m fairly critical of the higher education industry as a whole. As a system, it has become remarkably inefficient. We let too many into college, those we admit are often unprepared, too few graduate at all, many of those who do with degrees that prepare them for nothing, all at ruinous expense. Any manufacturing company that did so poorly would be bankrupt. Tenure is not the major problem, it merely makes it more difficult to fix the problem.
At the primary and secondary school levels, tenure is a ridiculous joke, as are the teachers unions and educational certifications. Good teachers are usually underpaid and woefully undersupported by the school administrators. Tenure and unions make it nearly impossible to get rid of the bad and incompetent ones.
There’s no question that tenure ends up protecting a few far leftists, the infamous “tenured radicals….”
Tenure and the concept of Academic Freedom also protect conservative faculty (or those “foolish” enough to do consulting for Republican administrations). See “The Torture Memos and Academic Freedom” http://www.law.berkeley.edu/news/2008/edley041008.html
“But in my experience, most faculty members are closer to the center than to the far left — classical liberals rather than neo-Marxists.”
This may be true, but as a University administrator unprotected by tenure, I have seen first-hand what happens to staff whose socio-political opinions are not in alignment with the prevailing Democrat party line. They get shunned, demoted (or never promoted), and some are attacked outright.
“But if we ever do succeed in increasing the number of conservatives in full-time teaching positions, what then? Departments, colleges, entire universities, and systems will still be run by liberals.”
There is little chance of conservatives being hired into tenured positions because of the way professors are hired. Current faculty have great say in who gets selected. Part of the interview “dance” is finding out whether the candidate will “fit” in the department–pedagogically and socially. Liberal leftists want to hire candidates who are liberal leftists–people who talk and walk and act just like they do. Mike Adams is a good example: he successfully started his academic life because he was a liberal at the time, he became conservative later. Conservatives need to develop and mentor stealth faculty candidates; obstructionary techniques like filibusters will get conservatives about as far as a filibuster in the current Congress.
In years past, people doing same job as this “professor” were known as instructors at county junior colleges – a small step above a high school teacher. Georgia Perimeter College is a combination of a bunch of those former junior or community colleges.
I have been an adjunct professfor for several years, I’m finishing a second MA and plan on teaching full-time. As a conservative, I know that I am going to be walking into an environment very hostile to my values and world view.
Tenure doesn’t protect those that toe the leftist line – toeing the leftist line does. If you’re willing to participate in the liberal fairytale that passes for an agenda, and go along with the liberal program, you are very secure, even without tenure.
I see the argument that tenure can be a boon to conservative professors who manage to keep their head down and mouth shut for a few years until they get it. Remember, prior to the 1960s, colleges and universities were fairly conservative institutions. Liberal, activist professors managed to permeate them by getting in under the radar, attaining tenure, and then starting to shape the direction of the curricula (which then shapes hiring policies for new professors).
There is no reason why conservatives cannot retake these institutions using the same methods the liberals and activists used to take them away from us. Indeed, as I look toward how I will be able to keep my job and still look myself in the mirror every morning, the centerpiece is increasingly the tenure that would protect me from reprecussions over “unpopular” ideas like American exceptionalism, personal responsibility and limited powers for our government.
Tenure may have been the tool by which leftists changed the landscape of our educational institutions, but there is no reason why we cannot use the same tool in the reconquista…
I’ve also taught, and/or been closely involved as a student, with high schools both parochial and public, community colleges, and state and private universities (this has been a long trek for me involving three degrees and teaching every grade from preK through college sophomore. Most “tenure abuse” is on the township level, but even that is exaggerated quite frequently. Tenured professors are still subject to student evaulations, performace reviews by superiors and the “publish or perish” mentality in administration. One will always be able to find a few bad apples when looking for extreme examples, but I know of three tenured professors in my time as a student who had been fired due to poor student and/or performance reviews…and those are just the ones I’d had and got to know about. Tenure is not the “bullet-proof vest” it is frequently made out to be.
Count me as another conservative for tenure. I am a professor in a “non-political” discipline who was granted tenure this past spring. I have previous experience at a national lab, a large state university, an ivy league school, and a small liberal arts university (where I now work).
In short, while I see the worries and concerns about tenure, I also see it’s benefits both historically and currently. I’d like to point out a few things:
1) Not every faculty member can apply for tenure. Many colleges use adjuncts and professors on “extended term contracts” who are not eligible for tenure. Some schools have no tenured faculty whatsoever. These are wholly cost-cutting measures. Without tenure, many senior faculty would be fired not for performance, but because they have higher salaries. Hire the cheap graduate and fire the old guy just before he gets a raise.
2) Tenure takes years and significant achievement to attain. My tenure took 7 years and went through 9 levels of review over 5 months, including review by professors outside my university in my discipline. It’s not merely a gold star awarded for being a good boy or looking good on paper. And I could have been denied tenure even if my entire department had voted for me. It’s hard to fake it for that long.
3) Those pushing the edges of their field need the comfort zone of tenure. Abolish tenure and one of the first results is that few will questions things like anthropogenic global warming or the latest education theory. And good luck finding a poli sci or economics professor at a state college willing to publicly contradict the state politicians who control their salaries.
4) Tenure does help you feel comfortable giving push-back on topics like the general education curriculum and questionable programs on campus. And that’s pushing back at the state legislature as much as at the administration. And without tenured faculty to speak up, heaven help the university where the money and notoriety of sports seem more important to the administration and the public than classes and curricula.
The best suggestion for compromise I have heard is to grant tenure for a limited time, say 25 years. After that, renew professors for set contracts (say 3 years). That will allow you to slough those who are going through the motions or not performing but still protect those in the prime of their ability to contribute.
“The problem with the whole idea of tenure is that most men and women make their biggest creative contributions to society while they are in the early part of their lives. Giving people tenure after 10 years in professorial servitude is not going to allow for much creativity, and doesn’t. How many tenured professors actually contribute anything original?”
It depends on the field. In math and physical sciences, yes, much of the biggest creative work is done by people in their 20s and 30s. But there is still much to be contributed even by those who are no longer at the peak of their powers, especially in the area of teaching. (Remember H.L. Mencken’s famous observation that a university is what a college becomes when it loses interest in its students.)
In social sciences and humanities, however, there is often much that older academics contribute, where brilliance is sometimes less important than a lifetime of study. And in the area of history, yes, there are major creative contributions coming from older, tenured faculty.
I do agree with those who are concerned that the higher education system in this country is hopelessly broken. We do have too many people entering college who are simply not prepared, and the standards seem to have fallen substantially since I graduated from high school. I was shocked at how utterly unprepared my Constitutional History students were to write research papers–and this was an upper division class. Tenure isn’t the problem.
There is no reason why conservatives cannot retake these institutions using the same methods the liberals and activists used to take them away from us.
Except that we aren’t prepared to use the left’s tactics of intimidation and personal destruction.
Antaine wries:
“There is no reason why conservatives cannot retake these institutions using the same methods the liberals and activists used to take them away from us. Indeed, as I look toward how I will be able to keep my job and still look myself in the mirror every morning, the centerpiece is increasingly the tenure that would protect me from reprecussions over “unpopular” ideas like American exceptionalism, personal responsibility and limited powers for our government.”
You forget that the teachers and professors are different. Under conservative professors in the decade of the sixties, students who showed liberal or conservative leanings were treated equally well. Not so now. Today, liberal professors work against their undergraduate students who are conservative. My favorite example is the case of radical feminists who will teach a courss on the concept of maleness and explain that maleness is the root of all evil. Do you really believe that conservatives or non-self-hating-males can do well in that course. If you do, try it. Take one. See what happens.
And, please, do not console yourself by saying that the radical feminists are an exception. The burden of shame goes the other way. The radical feminists are performing, in broad daylight, the moral equivalent of forced sterilization on non-consenting minors. Someday, they will be regarded as occupying the same rung on the ladder as Nazi eugenicists. University administrators, including faculty, who have some moral self-regard should pounce on these practices as if the practitioners were Nazi eugenicists.
Many colleges use adjuncts and professors on “extended term contracts” who are not eligible for tenure. Some schools have no tenured faculty whatsoever. These are wholly cost-cutting measures.
And most of those adjuncts are carefully kept at part-time status so that they can’t get benefits. You can see why the screeching from the leftist faculty about how abusive Wal-Mart is of its employees starts to ring a little hollow, when you realize that almost every institution of higher learning in this country pulls this stunt. (And often, they don’t even pay adjuncts any better than Wal-Mart.)
Something perhaps pertaining to the ancient art of tattooing and the perplexing utilization of a single cup by two comely but naked young ladies, or the true nature of those “chemicals” used for the tanning of skins savagely ripped like bodices, all in the name of imitating the Fonz
Hello? Care to explain that? On second thought – please don’t.
Carl – proof that the 3 martini lunch lives.
Ding, ding, ding! Carl wins the award for writing the most pretentious and yet utterly nonsensical dog piddle of a post I’ve seen at PJM this week. It’s easy to see he’s been to grad school, though – he’s completely nuts, but he knows not to type in all caps and he doesn’t use seven exclamation points after each sentence.
the fact that I’m a tenured professor probably has something to do with [my support for tenure]
Probably the truest sentence in this essay. I would surely agree with you if I agreed with all your specific assumptions, priorities and values. But I don’t so I find this unpersuasive. Something about a choir and preaching.
I say, I say, Georgia Perimeter College! In the spirit of the anniversery of the lunar landing, where the hell is this august academic institution?
Just FYI: Around 28% of all academics in higher education have tenure or are tenure track. In the for-profit sector of higher ed it is 0%.
I work at a non-tenure granting 4 year college (I have worked at 5 universities and community colleges in my 20 year career) and I can say that it appears that not having tenure facilitates the dismissal of those with “unconventional” political views, is extremely detrimental to students because of higher faculty turnover, and very much limits the free speech of my colleagues on both sides of the political spectrum. More than this, however, it is a barrier to faculty speaking out against some of the insane policies of the administration.
To clarify:
I do not think that eliminating tenure will solve the problems of higher education.
But the argument that the tenure system should be left alone so that today’s professoriate can use it to fight corruption of higher education strikes me as a proposal that makes good sense…for 1960.
Maybe it’s just because I studied and taught in English departments (but then again, so does Dr. Jenkins), which tend to be extremely dysfunctional and left-wing. I’m just not seeing all these center-left, fair-minded professors.
#44 Donna V. wrote:
Something perhaps pertaining to the ancient art of tattooing and the perplexing utilization of a single cup by two comely but naked young ladies, or the true nature of those “chemicals” used for the tanning of skins savagely ripped like bodices, all in the name of imitating the Fonz
Hello? Care to explain that? On second thought – please don’t.
Carl – proof that the 3 martini lunch lives.
More like the 3 crack rock lunch in his case.
tensure was intended to protect revered academics, or at the very least, provide job security for professors faithfully doing their jobs. Like welfare for the truly needy, or pensions for an old timer, it had pretty general support. For some truly valuable profs, it kept them from leaving.
But it’s been distorted beyond that its original intention. Moving outside hard sciences and traditional liberal arts departments, tenure was granted like water to “professors” in every type of “studies” department that timid academic deans have been bullied into creating since 1969. Like noble titles or indulgences for sale, the entire system has been degraded.
The “professors” of the Duke 88 group are a perfect example of the type of odd-balls and their classes that demean any university that has them. Ward Churchill (formerly at at U Colorado) is another. Hundreds of less prominent professors of no meritorious scholarship or benefit infest almost every university. Half these people could not conduct a rational discussion with anyone in the real world.
Taxpayers–many far better educated than the professors involved-never supported this unwarranted extension of tenure to these flaky professors. less educated people don’t like it either.
The solution: public involvement of some type in the tenure process. We pay the bills: we ought to have a say.
I know Rob, and he’s no elitist.
Ladies and Gents,
First, invoking Al Haig and using caveat as a verb, let me state for the record that I know Rob Jenkins, having taught at the same institution–albeit a different campus–for seven years. And contra Ernie (#32), he is neither elitist nor putzian; furthermore, Ernie (#37), there is a world of difference between education in GA high schools and even community colleges. Are you under the impression that 1) community colleges lack Ph.Ds, and/or 2) only folks with Ph.Ds are capable of teaching in college? Neither is true. (I taught at GPC and I have a doctorate in Islamic, World and African history.)
I wil add, however, that a number of you brought up a point that in the future I would like to see Professor Jenkins address: how to get conservatives INTO college teaching when so many of the gate-keepers are closed-minded Leftists (and I speak from experience).
I’m surprised to see that Glenn Reynolds or Victor David Hasselhoff didn’t write this post.
“Victor David Hasselhoff”
Oh, my, Blarty, how long did it take you to think that one up? I can see you coming up with your Wildean master stroke and waiting, waiting, waiting, for just the right moment, the appropriate thread to drop your devestating piece of – snark. Careful, Blarty, such devotion to the cause of sprinkling your little nose-droppings at PJM might cause you to reach too far inside your head one day and jam a finger straight through your brain.
why do conservatives hate their own?
No tenure, what a sorry mass of protoplasm. Maybe if reparations are paid and conservatives occupy 99% of those postitions over the next 60 years. I personally have found other targets for charitable contributions other than academia.
The overall sentiment here is anti-tenure. I agree it’s anti-capitalist and should be done away with.
Tenure is something the elitists have over the people paying the bills. If you lose your job because of what you say, the campus will become more leftist. People are realizing they need to look at the bias in the educational institutions and conservatives will be clamoring for more of what they believe. This is the free market at work. The institutions are free to fail, just like the media may. I knew someone who cleaned up a college and he told us all about how the professors did nothing but let the assistants handle the classes and students after they developed the curriculum. When they were told they had to perform, they were irate, as though they were too important to work. I heard of a similar story about a corporation who had staff jogging around the track all day and couldn’t produce anything that showed they were working.
The real solution is ultimately a downsizing and diversification of universities. Too many people go to college because college has become, for no good reason, a prerequisite for all kinds of jobs that would better involve the employer doing the vetting and the training. So, more and more people have to go to college, many of whom can’t afford it, so the government has to step in with grants and loans, which allows for universities to charge exorbitant tuition. Having more tenured faculty is required for accreditation and rankings that colleges depend upon to bring in students and draw upon federal funds. It’s a racket, and the Left has moved in, as they do whenever vague criteria and an absence of measurements of productivity allows them to define themselves into power. If employers were once again permitted to use their own exams to determine their employees’ qualifications, colleges would have to provide actual, identifiable skills; they would then have to compete with each other on those terms. They would want talented faculty, but they would also want to be able to fire them once they get unproductive. So, they would negotiate contracts that pay more money and provide job security and a congenial intellectual setting for a certain time, to be reviewed periodically. If more students went to such schools, other colleges would follow suit. Tenure would simply wither away–perhaps the Ivies and a few other big name schools would keep it for as long as their reputation allows them to transcend market conditions. But we could live with that.
42. Good luck. Truth is, you can’t even get academia to condemn eugenics. The University of Michigan still has buildings named after known eugenicists.
As for tenure, I agree that you shouldn’t be able to fire teachers for a difference of opinion or other frivolous reasons. At the same time, it should not be absurdly difficult to terminate faculty who commit ethics violations or criminal offenses.
All I know is that I’m glad that UAW workers have the equivilent of tenure. It sure has worked wonders for Government Motors and Chrysler. And it is now working wonders for the taxpayers.
And I’m glad that Congress has the equivilent of tenure. Can you imagine how bad things would be if they did not have such job security? Why, unemployment might zoom up to 9 percent and we might run up deficits as high as $500 billion and we might get the government trying to take over every aspect of the private sector.
We should all be thankful to have such protections for our elite intelligensia.
The argument made here could be made to apply to a good many professions, including nursing. I am an RN and have seen more than a few nurses fired for nothing more than trying to get patients the appropriate care, trying to ensure physicians adhere to guidelines for care, as well as refusing to allow a hospital or nursing home to hide incidents that occurred that directly led to poor care, including the death of patients.
But do you see nurses with something that approaches tenure. Quite obviously not. Most people have no real understanding of what nurses do day in and day out either, what makes your profession so special. Real nursing is not ER, and most certainly not Hawthorne.
Personally I think speaking out for human lives is much more important than speaking out regarding political viewpoints. And I’ll say this, nurses do it day in and day out, put up with some of the most obnoxious behavior from physicians and learn to get around some of the most asinine administrative rules meant to make some agency happy who doesn’t get your job either and we do it all without any guarantee of being able to keep that job. I guess that means nurses have more guts than the average professor. Most states don’t even have whistle blower protection.
I was taught by a strong father to stand up, stand up, stand up for what you believe in. If a person is willing to do so only when they have nothing to lose just what does that really mean to the person your trying to teach? You teach that it’s only worth speaking out when your totally comfortable and not fearful at all, and thus you teach others to have the same amount of courage. None.
I’m going to up the ante by adding that conservatives are similarly wrong to come down hard on teachers unions and teacher tenure.
Similar to the point the author makes, most school principals are liberals and would give negative evaluations to those who questioned bilingual education and other fads.
Public schools are regulated monopolies, where unions make sense because there’s so few private schools around that teachers have no leverage; you can’t threaten to quit and take your chalkoard to the private school across the street.
Instead of writing their weekly exposes as to how teachers unions protect – duh! – teachers, conservatives would be much better off raising money to keep and expand Catholic schools and electing pro-Charter School board members.
dailyraphirmations.com
Grace #63—speaking of obnoxious–that is you. You sound like Obama discussing his pay as you go administration!! How about this— a little knowledge is a dangerous thing– nurses.
The author’s experience must be based on a study of Liberty University, Bob Jones University, and maybe one other such University that is also a clear exception. The average state university and all of its state wide campuses are not granting tenure to conservatives, and they have no intention of starting to do so.
Tenure is an outdated way of handling the problem it was intended to solve. In addition, it leads to little of the diversity the university claims it loves and promotes. On that basis alone there should be a major overhaul of the tenure system if it isn’t eliminated outright. I personally know of several situations where UNC refused tenure to an individual, but then worked very hard to have them continue teaching their courses as something other than a tenured professor. That makes no sense at all until you find out that in those situations the professor in question wasn’t a liberal but rather someone who openly disagreed with much of the prevailing “wisdom” of the left.
I agree that the best solution would be to work hard at providing alternatives to the government run universities that now pass for independent institutions of higher learning. Government funding insures that there will be a bland brew that meets the expectations of those passing out the funding rather than meeting the needs of either honest academics or their students. Never fear, though, Fievel is bankrupting his adopted home so fast that the funding of state run universities could well evaporate. The one thing the teachers unions and university thought police didn’t plan on was a political class that places higher priorities on something other than their beloved edjumikation system.
Have a nice day
This country and the American culture works best in a climate of competition, where merit and ability trumps the natural tendancy of individuals to protect themselves from being assayed for their performance.
The concept of tenure is a very formidable construct, intended to insulate the mediocre from the depredations of the brilliant performer. In the unionized public school system especially, it protects individuals who should otherwise not be teaching.
Tenure is a conservative concept?
Tenure is the refuge of the left, the progressive, and the second rater.
moron, apt name by the way, I can only guess you are a physician or an administrator or work for Joint Commission. I am not arguing for tenure for nurses, the point is that if you are so unwilling to stand on your principles that you are not willing to stand up and speak up unless you have job security than the doing so means little. I’ll put you in the category of that large percentage that have no idea of what I really do or the abuse taken in order to do, abuse from people just like you moron.
55 Donna V
“Victor David Hasselhoff”
Oh, my, Blarty, how long did it take you to think that one up?
Three weeks. Overlord Soros rewarded me with five thousand SorosBux.
The average state university and all of its state wide campuses are not granting tenure to conservatives, and they have no intention of starting to do so.
This is simply not true. I know conservatives with tenure. Not many, but it does happen (usually not in social sciences or humanities, however).
The concept of tenure is a very formidable construct, intended to insulate the mediocre from the depredations of the brilliant performer. In the unionized public school system especially, it protects individuals who should otherwise not be teaching.
Universities adopted tenure originally to protect professors who were engaged in unpopular political activity outside the university. It was not originally intended to protect a professor who was teaching bizarre or crazy stuff in the classroom. Tenure has suffered mission creep, largely because the crazy left has become dominant in influence, although not necessarily in numbers.
Ouch, there, Professor Bob.
That must have left a welt.
Galileo was a professor of mathematics but he did not have tenure.
Thomas Aquinas was a professor of philosophy but he did not have tenure.
Sir Isaac Newton was a professor of natural philosophy, but he did not have tenure.
The free market argument against prejudice is that it hurts the institution engaging in it and competing institutions will be able to hire the excluded at lower rates and out compete them. I see no reason why this should not hold true in the field of higher education.
These corrupted institutions are high cost and oversell their value. Why not rethink the institution of university, provide a place for honest academics, and steal away the best talent that has grown tired of toeing political lines, and make a place that improves the education of our children and the academic research capability of our nation.
Beat the tar out of these intellectual posers who refuse to have an honest debate. That’s the real solution. Tenure is just a side issue.
TMLutas (74)
“Beat the tar out of these intellectual posers who refuse to have an honest debate. That’s the real solution. Tenure is just a side issue.”
We’d still be paying for the existing rotten system because, just like GM, the current system is, “too big to fail”. If the union autoworkers end up owning GM, I guess the professors would end up owning the universities and it’d be time to outlaw anything except public institutions. As long as there are clowns in charge of the money, you can’t simply outperform the numbskulls and think that will solve the problem.
Regards
I am a conservative teaching world history, economics, and government at a public high school.
It amazes me how the structure of pay in public education incentivizes poor performance because counselors and administrators will not direct high-achieving, nor students with disabilities to poor performing teachers because both groups require an enormous amount of effort and quality teaching.
In effect, many teachers are rewarded with general education students, whose interest is mediocre, and will tolerate the same type of instruction.
If there is a conservative case for tenure, it is to prevent hard working teachers who challenge their students with heavy work loads and the potential of lower student grades from administrators and counselors who simply want to prevent angry parent communications (via e-mail and voice mail).
It’s much easier to ‘go with the flow’, and collect your pay check with recycled worksheets than truly work at it, and get ‘rewarded’ with advanced students, general ed students, and students with disabilities.
Selective tenure may be the answer, but it still relies on administrators being competent, which is a big stretch for people who hated the classroom, but were attracted by the high pay, and minimal take-home work.
These corrupted institutions are high cost and oversell their value. Why not rethink the institution of university, provide a place for honest academics, and steal away the best talent that has grown tired of toeing political lines, and make a place that improves the education of our children and the academic research capability of our nation.
Let me know when you get this going. I’m ready to teach history.
I am a conservative teaching world history, economics, and government at a public high school.
I think you’re my brother-in-law.
Conservatives are for tenure?
Phew! Just one more reason I’m glad I’m not a conservative!
I’m seeing a lot of these points in this thread:
1. Conservatives can take advantage of tenure to get some balance in Universities
2. Conservatives get tenure enough that the above is feasible
Obviously, I think claim 1 depends on claim 2, and claim 2 is unsustainable. No less than Larry Summers – guess what administration he works for, guys? – has noted that affirmative action for conservatives might be necessary in the academy nowadays.
Tenure: The Law of Unintended consequences has struck again. The Lefties will always find a way to exploit any loopholes. Cheating is in the nature of the radicals. Tenure is a lodestone for the radicals. Any protected position is.
So, it was meant as a way for a few Conservatives to be able to safely speak out against the government? Well, it works for the Progressives, as well. It’s a lousy sword that doesn’t cut both ways. This is what happens when Conservatives try to use radicals’ tactics.
Conservatism requires the courage of one’s convictions. Nothing else will suffice. Any sinecure is an illusion for us, but is a reality for the Progressives, because they will use the dirty tricks necessary to make it work for them, and will co-opt the system. Tenure is like alcohol: false courage.
Marc,
So I said but, as usual, without the eloquence. Thanks.