I’ve often thought that political correctness is linked to the tenure system. Tenure was designed to keep professors from being fired for speaking their mind, but also creates a situation where the cost of getting sacked, for most faculty, is extremely high. The result is, ironically, that norms like PC are more easily enforced because the enforcer wields a big stick.

I teach at two universities (Rice and Stanford) on an adjunct basis and I feel like I have more freedom to speak my mind because I don’t have tenure. If they fire me, I’ll be sad but my life will go on. My freedom of speech is protected by my freedom to leave. The cost, of course, is that they can fire me at will. Seems to me like a small cost to bear.

This state of affairs is analogous to defined-benefit pension plans. Employees who are 17 years into a 20 year vesting are trapped because it is too expensive for them to leave. Supervisors, knowing this, exert much more power over those employees and can push them around with impunity. Over time, the organization evolves into a pretty lousy place to work because adverse selection creates a cadre of lousy bosses, which makes the workplace more unattractive, which tends to select people who will become lousy bosses, etc. So, the original noble intention – funding retirement – becomes perverted into a system of imprisonment.

In other words, there is no free lunch.

L3