By Matt for the TIB Network:
Stephen Green has a very interesting perspective on tenure in the hallowed halls.
Twenty years ago, my Grandfather Green had a problem with the Teamsters.
Preston M. Green owned a small steel service plant, Southwest Steel, and one of the shop guys was trouble. He refused to work. He showed up drunk. He started fights. Grandpa had been trying to get rid of the guy for months, if not years. If you've ever seen a steel shear or a pickling plant in action, you understand why you don't want drunks or fights anywhere near them.
Then the guy showed up drunk again one day - with a pistol.
Now, this wasn't Preston's first run-in with a Teamster. He'd been through strikes, he'd been through slowdowns, he'd been through every kind of union trouble you can imagine. Grandpa, however, wasn't anti-union. As he told me years ago, "The way management used to run roughshod over the workers way back when, it was criminal. Unions were necessary."
But this guy... this drunk, gun-waving guy... well, he was too much.
After the gun incident, the shop foreman went to Preston's office and said, "You have to get rid of him."
"I can't," Grandpa replied. "All your goddamn rules have my hands tied. He's your problem."
Stephen uses this story to illustrate what's wrong with the Ward Churchill problem at the University of Colorado, but I think this analogy works for all tenured professors. The ones who deserve it would get it by default, the ones that don't are dragging the whole thing down...at least that's my opinion. Your mileage may vary...
Islamofascism Delenda Est!
