Steven M. Walt discusses tenure and its practical implications in Foreign Policy, including his list of 10 things to do to achieve a tenured position.
For academics, a tenured position is the Holy Grail. And not without reason: promotion to tenure means you don’t have to look for a new job when your term as an assistant professor is up, and tenure provides a degree of ironclad job security that most professions lack. The raison d’être of tenure is not to let senior faculty coast until they retire, however; its purpose is to enable scholars to pursue lines of research that might not have an immediate payoff, and to let them write or say controversial things without worrying that doing so might cost them their jobs. If you believe in academic freedom and the importance of wide-ranging discourse, then the institution of tenure makes good sense…
Click here to read the whole article.
Note: the Foreign Policy website may require a free registration for complete access.