Tim Burke has an article in the latest minnesota review about academic freedom and in particular the way that tenure can work to stifle the very open debate it exists to protect.
In particular, the system of tenure, allegedly the cornerstone of academic freedom, often acts perversely in the opposite direction. The tenure system sometimes suppresses rather than enhances autonomy and freedom among graduate students and junior faculty during their most crucial period of professionalization. Moving outside of established consensus views of topics and methodologies as a junior scholar creates a very serious risk to an academic career. Junior scholars are encouraged to be original but often only within very narrow paradigmatic definitions of originality. While both academics and non-academics have heard tenure "horror stories" in which clearly qualified candidates have been punished for perceived non-conformity or unorthodoxy, the real problem is subtler. Senior scholars who break cover and exhibit open brutality towards junior faculty are at least slightly unusual. More important by far are the small, pervasive, and sometimes unconscious ways that tenured scholars are able to direct or channel the intellectual labor of untenured scholars.He may be right, but he'll get my imaginary tenure out of my cold, dead hands.
Via The Valve, where elsewhere Smurov presents the "Little Nell" school of criticism in all its glory:
1. Convene the PTA on the docks.
2. Call up to the clipper’s captain: “Does Little Nell yet live?"
3. If “yes,” deem the book acceptable. If “no,” start the bonfire.
Posts
|