THE MORNING RANT: Red State Legislatures Take Aim at Tenure; You Tube’s Banning of “Climate Skeptic” Video Results in Massive Viewing of It on Rumble (with an assist from AOSHQ)

Abolishing or modifying university tenure is among the agenda items for the Texas legislature, which has begun its biennial session this week. Lt. Governor Dan Patrick controls the agenda, and he has committed to “reforming” tenure.

Patrick also revisited his controversial push to “reform” tenure in higher education. In February, Patrick was more blunt, saying he would end tenure in public universities and colleges to combat the teaching of critical race theory. University administrators have said this would make it difficult to recruit and retain world-class faculty.

The media is responding as you would expect.

Conservatives Take Aim at Tenure For University Professors [AP – 01/08/2023]

Tenure advocates are bracing for the possibility of new threats as lawmakers return to statehouses around the country. The trend reflects how conservative scrutiny of instruction related to race, gender and sexuality has extended from schools to higher education.

Dan Patrick’s Plan to Abolish Tenure Would Hurt Texas Universities [Dallas Morning News – 12/07/2022]

Patrick’s notion that tenure is a state-sponsored gift to leftist professors who indoctrinate gullible students is an exaggeration. And even if it were as bad as he thinks it is, attacking tenure is the wrong way to go.

If tenure once served a purpose (and I’d be glad to have a “Chesterton’s Fence” discussion about it), those days are past, and it is time for tenure to be abolished. Reasons include:

1) It may deter current professors from engaging in left wing classroom advocacy.
2) It may deter other radicals from even taking jobs with public universities.
3) Conservatives are effectively boxed out of university hiring now anyway, so conservatives who don’t pretend to be leftists have little chance of ever attaining tenure at all.

…and most importantly

4) Tenure effectively no longer even exists for conservatives and non-woke professors, so leftist professors should not be protected by tenure either.

Like so much of the dual justice system in America, which protects those on the left and persecutes those on the right, tenure no longer protects the job security of professors when the woke mob comes after them. Here are a few examples:

Princeton’s Joshua Katz criticized the university’s proposal to make up for historical racism by giving black professors higher salaries and longer sabbaticals than white professors. He also condemned campus activists in a Quillette piece, referring to them as “a small local terrorist organization that made life miserable for the students (including the many black students) who did not agree with its members’ demands.”

This language outraged some on the campus left, and Professor Katz’s article, titled “A Declaration of Independence by a Princeton Professor,” was condemned by Princeton’s president, Christopher Eisgruber.

A university spokesman—not the president—went further by suggesting that Professor Katz might be subjected to some sort of investigation for his words.

Indeed, Princeton investigated Katz, and despite his tenure, he was fired for a consensual relationship that occurred 15 years earlier with a (legally adult) student. I’m not defending that relationship, but the sequence of events was a solid warning to other tenured professors at Princeton, reminding them that disallowed ideas will be punished with punitive investigations in search of fireable wrongdoing.

There are plenty more cases…

A tenured professor at Central Michigan University was reading a 1995 case about speech codes, and he didn’t use a euphemism for a certain word (which starts with the letter “n”) when directly quoting the Judge’s opinion in the speech code case. He was fired for using that word in a classroom. Tenured Professor Fired for Accurately Quoting Leading Campus Speech Code Case [Reason – Eugene Volokh – 9/03/2020]

Then there’s Berea College in Kentucky, which fired a tenured professor to placate the woke mob. The reason to justify his dismissal was “incompetence.” Apparently, only an incompetent would dare to upset the social justice warriors, thus his tenure did not protect him. A Christian College Fires a Dedicated, Tenured Professor — Why? [National Review – 7/09/2021]

There’s more, but university tenure is already dead for conservatives and free thinkers at American colleges. Let’s reward the left for their attacks on conservative speech by denying them the protection of tenure too.

”Climate Realism” Video That Was Banned By You Tube Has Explosion of Rumble Viewers After AOSHQ Feature

[I have no affiliation with nor connection to the Heartland Institute. I’m just extremely passionate about the threat to civilization from the Sustainable Organic Church of the Carbon Apocalypse. Heartland’s “Climate Realism” operation is a scientific goldmine of information to counter the climate panic, and I have found it very useful for my writing and advocacy. - Buck]

Here is something that is personally fulfilling, but it also speaks to the strength of Ace of Spades HQ and its well informed army of “morons.” We successfully punched back just a little against Monster Tech and their censorship of unapproved viewpoints.

My post four days ago was about YouTube shutting down the Heartland Institute's channel just minutes before they were going live with prominent "climate realist" Judith Curry, a scientist who rejects the draconian solutions demanded by the climate mafia. Heartland Institute’s Anthony Watts (www.wattsupwiththat.com) was the host. Moments before airtime You Tube shut down Heartland’s channel.

In that post, I embedded a Rumble video of the banned live stream.

Jim Lakely of Heartland notified me later that the Rumble video was at only 4k views the morning of my post. It increased to over 50k views by the end of that day. In his words, “Amazing!” It’s now at 146k views.

In gratitude to the horde, he asked me to pass along a promo especially for AOS readers for The Heartland Institute's Climate Realism conference in Orlando on Feb 23 – 25. He says the code “MORON” will save $250 off of the $500 price, which also includes six meals. This is the link.

I’ll be there because I am very excited to hear (and meet) Steve Milloy and Anthony Watts, among many other great scientists pushing back against the climate hoax and fighting the scam that global elites are trying to pull. I’d love to meet any Ace of Spades readers who attend.

(buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com)

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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