In Kansas, it just got easier to fire tenured professors at public universities.
Illustration by The Chronicle
This week we got a new president and vice president. While you were distracted by the presidential inauguration, or giggling at the storm of memes of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, something else happened.
On Wednesday, the Kansas Board of Regents voted to create a process through which the state s six public universities can quickly fire and suspend workers, including tenured faculty members.
Why? Regent Shane Bangerter said the extreme process is imperative, given how the coronavirus pandemic has wrecked the state s higher-education finances. It s a temporary move with a December 2022 end date.
Universities face pressure to vet ex-Trump officials before hiring them Marisa Iati, Lauren Lumpkin Richard Grenell, a former Trump administration official, speaks to reporters at the White House in September. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post) There is a long tradition of political appointees moving into academia former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice returned to Stanford University as a professor, ex-CIA director Robert Gates was a dean and then president at Texas A&M University, and former secretary of health and human services Sylvia Mathews Burwell is president of American University. But in recent months, some students and faculty have argued colleges should apply more scrutiny to former Trump officials looking to make similar transitions.
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Giving just one day’s notice to the faculty governance chairs at its universities, the Kansas Board of Regents voted this week to allow for emergency employee terminations and suspensions. Tenured professors are no exception.
All nine voting regents approved the temporary policy, which takes effect immediately and expires at the end of 2022.
“In light of the extreme financial pressures placed on the state universities due to the COVID-19 pandemic, decreased program and university enrollment, and state fiscal issues,” any employee including one with tenure “may be suspended, dismissed, or terminated from employment by their respective university,” the policy says.