Morning, all.

If anyone is interested in a short break from Libya and the Revelations, here is an interesting piece from the NYT discussing whether unions are appropriate at institutions of higher learning.

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

In it, two professors, one of whom had historically been opposed to faculty unions, discuss the current state of affairs.

Sample:

If academics opt for unions and “a belt-and-suspenders security,” Riley warns, we might “expect that even the laziest, most incompetent or radical professor won’t get fired.”

It is when I read a sentence like this one of Riley’s that I come to my senses and recognize what’s going on. “Lazy” and “incompetent” go together; they point to deficiencies we don’t want our teachers to display. But “radical” is a political judgment. What Riley fears is that if colleges and universities were unionized, teachers with far out, discomforting ideas couldn’t be fired. It’s hard to imagine a better argument for unions (and also for tenure). The autonomy and independence of the academy is perpetually threatened by efforts to impose an ideological test on hiring and firing decisions. The goal is always to create a faculty that has the right (pun intended) partisan hue. Riley makes no bones about it. Letting the unions get a foothold “could … make the environment more left leaning.” The message is clear: keep those unions out so that we can more easily get rid of the lefties.