COLLOQUY

This may be the single toughest issue at the governing-board level. Board members are frequently pragmatists, fully imbued with the real-life experiences of a business world hell-bent on the bottom line. They work and survive without tenure, and they work and fail without tenure. They too are not always free to express their deepest thoughts and convictions. Many board members, despite years of association and sensitivity training with faculty, still find it difficult to argue with their constituencies about the value of tenure. The clear perception is that tenure is a job-security issue and not an issue of academic freedom, if those two are in fact different or exclusive, nor an education issue. Right now, it seems to most of us that tenure-seeking faculty do not exercise their full academic-freedom rights and are constrained to speak the department line for fear of getting nixed in the seven-year process.

Montana, perhaps different from some states, has strong legislation prohibiting any employer from arbitrarily dismissing full-time, non-probationary employees. Some here argue that the law is strong enough and that tenure is unnecessary as a job-security tool. My problem with it all is that faculty members seem to typically discuss this issue as an academic lecture or research topic, instead of on a level where we ordinary folks can clearly see and find educational value in it. Until faculty members can step up the public-relations campaign on this issue, it will continue to haunt them and governing boards across the country, much to the detriment of dealing with student learning in the next century.

--Jim Kaze, Montana Board of Regents, Havre, Mont. (posted 2/27, 11:30 a.m., E.S.T.)