Succeeding Generations: On the Effects of Investments in Children

absence of mandatory retirement, post-tenure review, and the new criticisms of tenure, which have tended to come from the right. The Casefor Tenure is a wonderful book and its publication comes at a very opportune time. While as an economist I naturally resonate with the economic arguments in support of a tenure system, its more basic goal of protecting academic freedom and allowing scholarship on controversial subjects of inquiry to flourish should not be minimized. This point was brought home to me personally during the late 1970s when three trustees at the institution I now help lead tried to block my promotion to full professor because they thought testimony I had given in a regulatory case attacked a segment of our society that they represented. The president of my great university ruled them out of order, but the event left me with a profound appreciation of the importance of tenure.' Finkin makes far too many insightful points to summarize, but two are worthy of mention here. First, tenure does not guarantee lifetime employment. It merely shifts the "property right" to a position from the academic institution to the tenured faculty member. The faculty member may be dismissed for 'just cause," but only after a process that assures that the faculty member received due process and that judgments about performance involve faculty participation. Properly designed systems of posttenure review are fully consistent with the tenure system. Similarly, tenured faculty members can be dismissed if economic conditions ("financial exigency") warrant the closure of their school, program, or department, but only as a last resort and after all other responsible means of dealing with the problem have been exhausted. Second, although academic institutions as we know them go back hundreds of years, tenure as we know it only became a widespread academic practice with thejoint adoption of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure by the AAUP and the American Association of Colleges. One might wish to be able to turn to a long history to justify continuance of the tenure system; however, the argument must be based on a comparison of its