Dive Brief:
- University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank has taken fire for failing to publicly defend tenure from state legislators planning to significantly weaken its protections in state statute.
- Inside Higher Ed reports, however, that she is working behind the scenes to eliminate the most egregious changes — ones that would allow tenured faculty to be laid off simply because of program modifications — from final legislation.
- Blank doesn’t expect legislative changes to affect Madison when it comes to tenure or shared governance processes, even if the worst of the legislature’s proposals become law, but faculty are concerned the new language could negatively empower future leaders, according to the article.
Dive Insight:
According to Inside Higher Ed, Blank argues the current tenure protections in state law go beyond what any other state has. Removing them, she says, would only put the University of Wisconsin in line with its peers in having to clarify those protections in university policy. However, as the article points out, other states do not specifically allow for situations in which tenured professors in good standing can be fired, which the proposed legislation would do, making Wisconsin professors especially vulnerable. The proposed changes to state law come with $250 million in budget cuts to the university system over the next two years. None of the proposals will be final until the legislature approves a budget and Gov. Scott Walker signs it.