Wisconsin was one of the safest places for college professors to work. The right to be tenured was part of state law. However, in 2015, the state got rid of it, sending dozens of educators running for the nearest exit. Most who left were people of color or queer.
Unfortunately, as some college professors have realized, “there’s nowhere to run.”
“When it comes to higher education, I don’t know if there are any safe places,” one professor said. “If they can come after Wisconsin, they can come after anywhere.”
The same thing is happening in Texas, where they’re also slowly chipping away at diversity, equity, and faculty tenure. State Sen. Brandon Creighton, a Republican in Houston, is responsible for the Texas laws banning diversity, equity, and inclusion offices at Texas colleges and universities.
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College professors now worry about what institutions in states like these will look like after the exit of good instructors. According to surveys of 4,250 instructors in Texas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina, two-thirds don’t recommend their state as a desirable place for academic work.
Also, a third are already planning job interviews in other states, and another third don’t intend to remain in academia long-term. Salary was the chief reason for their dissatisfaction. However, more than half of the respondents cited political climate and academic freedom.
One professor has urged Texans to prepare for profound workforce changes that could negatively affect the state’s economy. Non-tenured instructors help keep universities running, but many plan to leave their current workplaces.
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“It’s hard because you don’t know how things will be applied, and you may not want to stick around to find out.” A mass migration of instructors from states attacking academic freedom is looking more probable by the day now.
University of Wisconsin campuses have experienced anger and sadness following the 2015 tenure changes. By 2017, the number of faculty members leaving the University of Wisconsin’s flagship campus in Madison rose by over 50%.
Sadly, college professors are not the only ones feeling the heat. Students are as well. They now face professors who worry about students invoking the new state laws.
“They’ve dropped their discussions of those topics,” one student says. “They don’t want the hassle of dealing with that.”
The next few months will be critical for the higher education landscape and its future. It could be a rude awakening for top universities traditionally recognized as destinations for star professors.
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“The hard thing is they’re afraid of us for good reason,” an instructor said. “We tell the truth about American society; we tell the truth about power. And we do it in factual ways that are hard to argue against.”
Wisconsin is just one of the many states that seem to be attacking its educational system. And it will not be the last.
Indeed, there may be nowhere to run for instructors.
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