The "post-tenure" review, currently under discussion at ISU, represents dangerous micro-management and would pulverize academic freedom. This review would transform traditional tenure into "new tenure." Traditional tenure means that one "holds or possesses" one's job continuously. Traditional tenure is thus continuous tenure. This continuity is not absolute; a holder of traditional tenure can be dismissed for "adequate cause," which includes incompetence and moral turpitude or degeneration. Under traditional tenure the burden of proof to dismiss is on the institution, not on the faculty person. It has to prove that the faculty member is unworthy to continue.

The core of new tenure is that it is not continuous. New tenure creates in effect a series of five-year contracts, renewable at the discretion of the institution. New. tenure also places the burden of proving worthiness to continue on the faculty person. New tenure abolishes traditional tenure and will breach contracts with traditionally tenured faculty.

Under the present system an academic in a tenure-track position may receive continuous tenure after a probationary period that can last six years. During this time he or she will undergo a number of pre-tenure reviews. The achievement of continuous tenure does not mean the end of personnel reviews. To the contrary, those with traditional tenure are evaluated annually by their departmental executive officers and in cases of promotion the reviews are more farreaching. It is not the principle of regular reviews for those with traditional tenure that is objectionable. Regular reviews done constructively can benefit all involved. Rather, it is the design and implications of the proposed "post-tenure" review that are so disturbing. The present proposal is characterized by a stunning vagueness as to what standards can be employed in those five-year evaluations and by whom and with what exact effect.

Proponents of new tenure have three main arguments. They claim traditional tenure thwarts accountability, gives unique job protection to one group, and is not necessary. Let us scrutinize each claim in turn.

Accountability. Faculty are already "answerable" and "responsible" in the numerous ways explained in the Faculty Handbook. Faculty are now also answerable to the national and in some cases international standards of their respective disciplines in tenure, promotion and dismissal procedures. The call for even 'higher standards" of accountability masks an insatiable bureaucratic drive to micromanage faculty activities. The "new accountability" means "responsibility" or "answerability" to a particular agenda that details specific activities. The "new accountability" poses a grave threat to the free-spirited inquiry that is the essence of the true university.

Uniqueness. No other group in the United States has, some say, such comparable job protection as traditionally tenured academics. This argument is also wrong. Other groups have substantial job protection. Federal judges, according to Article III, Section I of the United States Constitution " ... shall hold their offices during good Behavior ... " This proviso in effect grants them traditional tenure, but they can be dismissed by the Congress. Senior partners in some law firms have the equivalent of traditional tenure. And owners of their own husinesses might be viewed as self-tenured, subject to the "good behavior" or survival of their businesses. So to target traditional academic tenure as conferring something unique and now disquieting is grossly misleading.

Necessity. Traditional tenure, some say, is not needed because the First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects free speech: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech. . . " New tenure proponents seem to equate free speech and academic freedom. This is their most fatal fallacy. Academic freedom is more than free speech. Integral to academic freedom is the high but not absolute level of job protection that "continuous tenure" entrenches. Traditional academic tenure provides an appropriate level of protection against reprisals, including dismissal for political reasons that may sometimes be fueled by discrimination. A crucial element in providing that protection pivots on where the burden of proof in any dismissal case now rests. It resides, as noted, with the institution, not thefaculty person. New tenure, with its "post-tenure" review, places the burden of proof in a dismissal case on the faculty person. This reversal destroys the bedrock of academic freedom. And without academic freedom there can be no real university.

Faculty carry the major burden for generating the intellectual merit necessary to make Iowa State the best land-grant university in the nation. In all our academic activities—but especially published scholarship and student training on every level we either create or help create that requisite intellectual merit. Administrators can greatly assist our endeavors, but not by mindless micro-management and suffocating over-bureaucratization.

I conclude that faculty may have only one recourse and that is to unionize.