Academic freedom is not a gift. It is a structure long protected by tenure, a contract with no expiration date that guarantees procedural protections to professors.
Tenure granted professors at American colleges and universities the right to peer review, deliberate in committee, and present evidence and witnesses before being fired. These protections, including the right to appeal, exist not as a bureaucratic formality, but as the architecture that makes free inquiry possible in practice.
These hard-won protections are now under threat in several states. Dismantle them and declarations of academic freedom become language without substance.
Under aproposed billNow awaiting Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s signature, tenured faculty at the state’s public colleges and universities could lose their jobs due to the decision of a single official, with no contractual protections. If signed, the mandate changes would take effect July 1.
Oklahoma Republican Governor Kevin Stitt signed adecreeeliminating tenure at regional universities and community colleges across the state in February. And Oklahoma lawmakers are currently proposing a bill to expand that ban to research universities.
North Dakota land protections have been under sustained legislative attack for years, lawmakersadvance invoices repeatedlyconcentrate termination power in the hands of directors and remove committee review from the process.
In late March, the Kentucky Senateadopted a billit would allow university boards of trustees to lay off tenured faculty due to low enrollment or “misalignment of revenue and costs” with as little as 30 days’ notice.
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This is not a coincidence. This is a coordinated attack on the foundations of academic freedom.
Tenure gives professors the freedom to follow the evidence, question dominant assumptions, and teach without carefully aligning each conclusion with those that those in power have decided to authorize.
The Tennessee bill has an unusually explicit mechanism: A faculty member facing termination is entitled only to written notice and a hearing before the departing administrator.
This word “only” does not constitute a procedural basis establishing minimum protections. This is a statutory cap that actively suppresses peer review and any other institutional policies, contractual provisions, or professional standards that would otherwise apply.
The bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Adam Lowe, said the legislation “is aimed at those who might use tenure to guard against harmful actions.”to the brandand code of conduct for the college.
That word “brand” does a lot of work. Academic freedom was designed specifically to protect professors from institutional pressures to align scholarship, teaching, and public discourse with what administrators find practical or comfortable.
A misconduct process that can be triggered to protect brand reputation isnota neutral accountability mechanism.
The Faculty Senate of Pellissippi State Community College of Tennessee,where I teachvoted to oppose the bill – not in a partisan way, but unanimously – as faculty united around a common understanding of what peer review protects.
This is important for reasons that go well beyond job security.
Tennessee’s Divisional Concepts Act expanded to higher education in 2023; professors across the state began evaluating their curricula, seminar discussions, and public statements against a law threatening to file charges, investigate, and take unspecified corrective action.
No termination was necessary. The threat was enough. Now, teachers across the country who cannot rely on due process can calibrate their professional conduct in the same way.
A professor who knows that a single administrator can end his or her career for undefined “misconduct,” without having to meet a standard of proof, may hesitate before publishing research, questioning the direction of the institution, or speaking out on issues of public interest.
This is the structural logic of the chilling effect. Possibility does the work.
Tennessee’s own record makes its contradiction stark. A state that defended free speech is now removing the protections that make it possible. THECampus Free Speech Actof 2017 established that the free exchange of “offensive, reckless, immoral, indecent, distasteful, conservative, liberal, traditional, radical or misguided” ideas is the essential goal of its public campuses. The new bill ensures that a professor’s exercise of this free trade can constitute grounds for termination at an executive’s discretion, without any meaningful procedural oversight to determine whether the motivation was ideological.
Academic freedom that exists at the cost of the suffering of those in power is not academic freedom at all.
What the laws in force in these states share is a common direction: executive power concentrated, accountability to peers removed, institutional structures that distribute authority and require deliberation gradually eroded.
However, those responsible for faculty governance should know that the fight does not end when a bill is signed.
In Tennessee, the bill’s actual text provides unexpected leverage to combat efforts to strip away procedural protections. Its preamble states that “academic tenure constitutes an important guarantee of academic freedom, the advancement of knowledge and the protection of intellectual independence.” It codifies that tenure must remain categorically distinct from disciplinary procedures. The bill also leaves key terms “cause,” “fault” and “professional standards” undefined. Tennessee boards are currently drafting a policy with a July 1 deadline. The definitions they write will determine how far the law goes.
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And the bill’s own constitutional safeguards – due process, public sector employee free speech protections, and long-recognized academic court free speech protections – can be used as leverage at the political table.
The students who fill our classrooms are building their futures. They are owed teachers who can follow the evidence, ask honest questions, and teach without measuring every conclusion by what the state has decided to allow.
This class deserves to be defended. It is at the political table that our defense currently takes place.
Grant A. Mincy is an associate professor at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he is President-elect of the Senate. He writes on ecology, the place of Appalachia and university governance.
This story on tenure in higher education was produced by The Hechinger reportan independent, nonprofit news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Register with Hechinger weekly newsletter.
Contact the opinion editor atopinion@hechingerreport.org.
The article OPINION: Tenure is under attack nationwide, threatening academic freedom and sending shivers down the spine of professors, appeared first on The Hechinger Report.
