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face of perceived new needs.
If, for example, the tenured faculty of a particular institution contains too many historians and literary scholars on the one hand and too few computer specialists on the other, how is the institution going to meet the growing demand for instructional courses in computer science? The abrogation of tenure makes it much easier for a chancellor or president to reduce the number of humanists and add more computer scientists to the faculty.
Furthermore, tenure is expensive, and a university administrator might well believe that by eliminating this right he or she could reduce the size of the faculty, or at least be in a position to hire junior faculty at lower cost.
Responsible members of the academic community recognize that if there are too many humanists and too few scientists or if a university is faced with inadequate funding or declining enrollments, changes or reductions must be made. But the power given by the Community College Board in 1972 to the chancellor
and the presidents of the colleges to determine contractual arrangements with instructors and staff without an effective check jeopardizes free speech and due process on campus, as the events at Thomas Nelson Community College make clear.
Virginians should be deeply concerned about the Community College Board’s failure to restore tenure to our community colleges. As citizens and as taxpayers we have the right to expect a vibrant and challenging system of higher education. Yet, the lack of tenure at our community college system, which each year serves the educational needs of more than 200,000 Virginians, discourages the brightest and most intellectually aggressive instructors from becoming members of the faculty.
Thomas Jefferson, who founded one of this state’s institutions of higher learning, asserted that we need not be afraid of any idea or concept as long as truth is free to combat it. Any educational institution that discourages free speech inhibits the constructive exchange of ideas at our schools and universities envisioned by Jefferson.
Chancellor Hamel may well have thought that the decision to abrogate tenure moved the community college system closer to the 21st century. In fact, the decision moved the system backward to the darker and more repressive eras of the past.
Dr. Sedgvrick is dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia.
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