Welcome back to “The Academic Worker,” where we explore the academic workplace through a legal lens.
Let’s pick up last month’s discussion of tenure. I promise that every column won’t focus on academia’s most infamous employment practice, but tenure’s notoriety triggers confusion and misconceptions about what it is. There’s a lot to set straight.
Many professors might know that tenure is a type of just-cause contract. They might even know that just-cause contracts represent a carve-out from the default rule of at-will employment—that a just-cause employee (such as a tenured professor) can only be fired for a good reason.
But what counts as a good reason? What type or level of cause justifies termination? These questions bring us right back to the heart of the controversy perpetually surrounding tenure: Does it go too far in protecting faculty?
Defining just cause isn’t just a matter for academics. It’s also important outside academia because so many nonfaculty workers are also employed under just-cause contracts. All employees want to know how to avoid termination and the negative consequences it brings (income loss, career damage, emotional hardship). Meanwhile, employers want to know when and why they can terminate a relationship without inviting litigation.
Surprisingly, despite how important it is to both employees and their bosses, there is no single understanding of just cause.
We’re not totally in the dark, though. Across sectors, arbitrations of...
Every couple of years, the same false stories come back. A claim that an election was rigged before a single vote was cast. An old video of violence, stripped of its date and place, presented as b...