Bravo to Richard Henry Morgan for his suggestion that Prof. Johnson decamp for greener pastures if he receives tenure, and that the Brooklyn College history department be put into receivership and then cleaned up. Unfortunately, CUNY, being a taxpayer-financed institution, cannot be cleaned up simply because the resources that support it (taxes) are by definition money stolen from taxpayers. Therefore the receivership that matters here is the collegiate equivalent of a Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceeding, in which a bankrupt firm is shut down and the assets distributed to creditors/shareholders. As a nonacademic, taxpaying member of the private sector and resident of New York City, nothing would gladden the cockles of my card-carrying libertarian heart more than to see the parasitic and mostly leftwing faculty/administration of CUNY have to find a real job, i.e. work in the private sector. I hear that Columbia and NYU have some openings.
Another point to bring up here is that the institution of tenure is inherently corrupt and should be abolished. In the real world of the private sector, there is no such thing as tenure and you either produce or leave. I believe that there is a professor at Columbia who refuses to accept tenure for this very reason. Somehow he has retained his job anyway.
by William J. Stepp on November 26, 2002 at 4:50 PM