If you think that conservatives are the only ones who are throwing hissy fits over tenure, think again. Here is somebody from the opposite end of the political spectrum trying to pleasure Scott Walker orally in a very dedicated manner:
Why not strip away protections professors have in their jobs, if I don’t have the same ones in mine?
If I can get fired for mouthing off to my boss why shouldn’t P. Louis Scholarly? If I can get fired for looking at my boss funny, for coming in five minutes late, for telling a customer to get bent, for being nearby while my boss has a bad day, why shouldn’t the very fine taxpayers of the state of Wisconsin and every other state be able to fire educators who are tasked with teaching the public? Why shouldn’t they be able to shitcan F. Poncey Publishable, if they don’t like the way he talks back?
It is useless to explain to somebody who is frothing at the mouth like this that tenure doesn’t protect people but the product they create.
Of course, people who have failed at life so massively and have not managed to make themselves valued as professionals at such an advanced age cannot be expected to have the intellectual wherewithal to get the difference. They want to be protected from life by mysterious external forces and fail to understand that the only real protection we can count on comes from the store of intellectual, professional, and psychological capital we have accumulated in the course of our lives.
Clarissa's Blog 
You may be mis-characterizing these people. Poor and middle income people tend to be most understanding of the concept of tenure — if you’ve been abused by the system, you don’t necessarily want others to share that experience. The fellow you quote is probably an attorney with some money put away who doesn’t want others to have anything more than he has.
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You are right, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the author of the post grew up in a big private house with a lawn and had expensive schooling. 🙂 They don’t get this spoiled any other way. 🙂
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Huh? The mouth-frothing diatribe you cite is the blogger’s set-up for making the opposite point (I followed your link). The next paragraph begins: “Here’s why,” and then explains why the people who say this sort of thing are misguided. Apparently you didn’t read far enough down the page.
Anyway, I love the monikers P. Louis Scholarly and F. Poncey Publishable.
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There is nothing in the post to suggest the author’s disagreement with these ideas. She says that they shouldn’t be used as an argument against tenure because this will not bring her “protection.” But there is no suggestion in the post that this desperate search for “protection” might be infantile.
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But there is no suggestion in the post that this desperate search for “protection” might be infantile.
I’m not reading protection the same way you are in this post, as some kind of psychological crutch. If I read it that way, then it follows it’s equally infantile for non-professors to care one way or the other about professors’ tenure and the only mature response is indifference.
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I agree that nobody should care about ptofessors’ protections. Instead, we should all care about the continued existence of scholarship.
As an ecample, I don’t give a toss about priests. However, I do care about the protections offered to the privacy of the confessional.
I don’t want the discussion of tenure to move into the field of the narratives of private suffering. That’s a space where every debate goes to die and no reasonable conversation is possible any longer.
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You’re right on this. The rest of the post is a demolition of the set-up. Not sure where the host here sees anything but sarcasm in that opening.
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So the post’s author does not believe that worthy, valuable workers are getting fired for “mouthing off” and because their bosses are in a bad mood on that particular day?
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