Former UA dean defends tenure system

"Academic freedom is the bedrock upon which tenure is founded," said Annette Kolodny, a former University of Arizona dean of humanities, during a lecture to kick off Friday and Saturday's Eighth Annual New Directions in Critical Theory Conference, sponsored by graduate students in the UA's English Department.

Kolodny, who based her speech on a chapter of her recently published book, Failing the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century, picked apart a November 1994 report that aired on CBS's "60 Minutes" news show.

The television segment, a portion of which was taped at the UA, characterized tenure as a safe haven for unproductive faculty and relied on popular misconceptions about tenured professors, Kolodny said.

She said some administrators and legislators would like to do away with tenure, a system that guarantees qualified faculty a position at the university, unless they are found unfit to perform their jobs.

Critics of tenure say it provides a free ride to burnt-out faculty who no longer contribute to the university, Kolodny said.

But this argument, she said, only hides the real reasons to eliminate tenure - to control research and curriculum and save money.

"Doing away with tenure would take away the only means of protection for risk-taking and innovation in research," Kolodny said. "It has little to do with academic freedom and everything to do with economics."

For the 1994 "60 Minutes" segment, journalist Leslie Stahl interviewed Keith Lehrer, a tenured UA Regents Professor of philosophy.

Kolodny said Lehrer recorded the 90-minute interview and allowed Kolodny to use the tape while writing her book, in which she attacked Stahl's news-gathering methods.

Kolodny said Stahl repeatedly badgered Lehrer about tenure on the tape, asking the same questions over and over in an attempt to coerce him to talk negatively about tenure.

"She is like a dog with a bone - she just won't let up," Kolodny said.

In the end, Stahl didn't use any portion of the interview because Lehrer's responses didn't match her "preconceived notions about tenure," Kolodny said.

Conference coordinators chose Kolodny to be the conference's keynote speaker because she is a dedicated UA educator, said Randy Accetta, the conference's event coordinator.

"Annette (Kolodny) is one of the most committed faculty to her students and to issues of higher education," said Accetta, a graduate student in the English Department.