The dictionary defines tenure as “a status granted to a teacher after a trial period that gives protection from summary dismissal.” Full disclosure: I have been tenured most of my 30-year career in academia.
As a faculty member in a science-based program one might assume I would have few reasons to need tenure as protection against summary dismissal, certainly for reasons unrelated to performance. And indeed, I am probably at much less risk than many of my colleagues in the liberal arts and social sciences. That said, the areas within which I teach and conduct scholarship have tread some pretty controversial territory during my career.
So, has tenure protected me from being disciplined or dismissed for taking and defending positions with which some people – perhaps most people – strenuously disagree? Who knows? I’m still employed, so perhaps it has.
Regardless of whether it has helped me remain employed, tenure has given me the confidence to think, speak and write freely about things I believe to be true (or not). I believe my students have benefited from that freedom by being more informed on topics that will influence – and will hopefully be influenced by – their lives and careers.
I was thinking about this recently as I read an essay by a columnist for a highly regarded national newspaper that is known for its political leanings. The author is a gifted writer with whose positions I do not always agree but have always respected. This essay, however, was a dramatic departure from his previous position on the topic. Indeed, it was a complete about-face that lacked his typically solid reasoning and it had me saying to myself “You don’t believe that, I know you don’t!”
It immediately set me wondering if the writer had finally acquiesced to demands of his corporate overlords to fall in line with the newspaper’s ownership and its increasingly polarized readership. It also put me in mind of the Thomas Jefferson quote, “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Jefferson was arguing for a free press, and I suppose one could make an argument that the press in America is free. But how free is the press when those upon whom we rely to create its content are not allowed to say and write what they honestly believe to be true?
Don’t get me wrong, I like tenure. I have benefitted from tenure and would be loath to give it up. But with all due respect to my colleagues in academia, I believe today’s journalists are far more in need of the protections of tenure than are most academics. Moreover, I believe the inability or unwillingness of journalists to freely and fearlessly pursue and report the truth as they see it has the potential to cause much more harm to the social and political institutions we rely on for a free and democratic society – as our most recent presidential election has demonstrated in spades.
During the past several decades, every profession with which I am familiar has declared at one point or another that “we in [fill in the blank] are at a crossroads.” Certainly, the pharmacy profession has been at the crossroads so many times during my career that I have concluded we are hopelessly directionally challenged. Pick a road already!
For journalism, however, I think this hackneyed phrase is an apt description of the current reality. With news increasingly being considered entertainment and vice versa, I think I would be worried if I were a serious journalist. As an educator who requires the reading of a national newspaper in his courses, I am worried – very worried. Where will tomorrow’s Menckens, Murrows or Cronkites come from? Would such giants even be able to find work in today’s news media companies? Would they be able to tell it like it is or call them as they see them if an alternative spin might increase readers or viewers?
Over two millennia ago, my profession created an institution that was founded on a single, simple principle: to seek truth. It was called the Academy. Eventually, we recognized that fearlessly seeking truth wherever the evidence leads is sometimes not viewed as a virtue by one’s employer so we created tenure.
So here is a suggestion for whoever and whatever represents the future of journalism, be it the legacy news media companies, emerging social media platforms or something completely new: Let’s find a way to provide serious journalists with the same freedoms and protections we give qualified academics, and for the same reason.
I don’t need entertainment from my serious news sources. I don’t want entertainment from my serious news sources. I want honest, balanced, evidence-based reporting. You can call this new institution whatever you want: tenure, journalistic freedom, job security for scribes, I don’t care. What I do care about is that journalism continues to attract smart, talented and principled people who are encouraged to tell me what they think – what they really think – about the issues of the day that are, or should be, important to me.
Build that and I’m in. Fail to build it, and we all lose . . . bigly.