A Tennessee lawmaker dropped a term-ending bill but said, “Maybe we’ll come back.”
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The chairman of the Tennessee House Higher Education Subcommittee withdrew a bill to end tenure at public universities after saying he “stumbled across some history” and “went a little deeper than I thought.”
“It got me thinking about the political lines, the pendulum, they’re always moving… I kind of feel the same way about tenure,” Republican Justin Lafferty said on his subcommittee on Wednesday, offering a brief but broad explanation for abandoning the bill.
Rafferty said he learned that tenure dates back to the 1600s or 1700s, “a time when there weren’t that many highly educated people,” so “it was important to retain the best and the brightest,” according to a video of the meeting posted on the state Legislature’s website.
Although he didn’t use the word “Academic freedom,” he echoed the argument for protecting academic freedom Often used by supporters of tenure. Referring to the Vietnam War era, Rafferty said: “In a contentious time, I kind of understand you want those protections in place so as not to lose the talent that you’ve acquired.”
But he He was also advised to file a bill against controversial teacher speeches. He didn’t mention Charlie Kirk, but he complained about the teacher’s remarks about someone’s death and “half a million” in damages. (Darren Michael, a tenured theater professor at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee, was fired for retweeting a headline about Kirk, but was later reinstated and paid $500,000.)
“Now with tenure, the pendulum has swung so far that we can use our tax dollars to pay state employees — ‘ridicule’ may not be the right word, but certainly very insensitive to the death of another human being,” Rafferty said. “As a Tennessean, I’m disturbed by the fact that that person can’t be fired from their job.”
Rafferty withdrew his bill, but his goals may not be over just yet. “Maybe we’ll come back,” he said during the meeting. NewsChannel 5 reported that Rafferty said the bill likely wouldn’t move forward this year. he didn’t come back Inside higher educationA request for comment was made Thursday.
