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Dear Governor Beshear,
The American Historical Association strongly opposes House Bill 490, which would allow boards of regents, which include politically appointed members, to fire faculty at public colleges and universities for reasons unrelated to professional merit. The bill effectively guts tenure protections, threatening the academic quality and institutional independence that foster innovation at Kentucky’s world-class public institutions.
The provisions of HB 490 threaten to politicize faculty employment. Under the guise of financial necessity, the bill invests political appointees with broad discretionary power to fire faculty regardless of tenure. These provisions are redundant and thus unnecessary. Public colleges and universities already have policies that allow administrators, with the approval of regents, to reassign or dismiss tenured faculty when extraordinary financial circumstances make such actions unavoidable. The changes proposed in this bill would allow regents to circumvent existing procedures and instigate firings at will. HB 490 fails to establish any clear standard for financial exigency, instead inviting regents to decide for themselves when low enrollment or “misalignment of revenue and costs” rises to the level of “bona fide” financial need. These changes will make it easier for governors of either party and their appointees to surveil, threaten, and even terminate professors for purely political or ideological reasons.
No one will benefit if faculty hiring becomes a partisan political football, with ideological purges whenever a new party controls the governorship..
Due process protections for full-time instructional faculty, including academic tenure, reward intellectual rigor and foster innovation. In history departments, procedures that insulate hiring from political pressure encourage faculty to continue challenging themselves and their students, pushing beyond easy answers or politically convenient ideas to consider new perspectives. Tenure exists to protect the pursuit of knowledge, guaranteeing freedom of thought necessary to assure both integrity and creativity of historical inquiry on campus. Through research, teaching, and service, tenure-track and tenured historians help fuel the intellectual ferment that inspires students and can lead to original ideas and bold conclusions.
Weakening tenure will not make public higher education any more efficient or affordable. Faculty pay is not responsible for budgetary woes at colleges and universities. Tuition for undergraduate degrees in Kentucky has been rising at a significantly higher rate than instructional expenses. There are much more effective ways to reduce the burden on Kentucky students and families.
Tenure is earned. Faculty work for years or decades to earn this distinction and the academic protections it affords. Whether in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, humanities, or social sciences, a tenure-track faculty member must go through several stages of rigorous performance review during a probationary period that usually spans several years. Applications for tenure in history departments often include hundreds or thousands of pages of documentation to demonstrate excellence in research, teaching, and professional service both within and beyond the institution where they work.
Tenure does not just protect faculty employment. It also protects the entrepreneurial spirit in which students and faculty take risks, challenge assumptions, and explore questions whose utility few others may grasp. In doing so, faculty tenure also protects the freedom of students to learn and dare to innovate. And in this way historians—yes, historians—fuel economic growth and inspire future leaders.
Attacks on tenure erode the value of public higher education and severely reduce the return on investment for both public funds and tuition dollars. Employers rely on well-trained graduates with the skills and knowledge to succeed in the 21st-century workforce. Our nation needs graduates who can assess new ideas, learn new material, and understand the context of their world. Learning to assess and respond to new evidence is part of learning with experts. Challenges to intellectual freedom and due process for faculty instantly and irrevocably depreciate the value of these investments in higher learning.
The American Historical Association urges you to veto HB 490 and consider alternative pathways that are far likelier to strengthen the integrity, reputation, and quality of education at the public colleges and universities in Kentucky.
Founded in 1884 and chartered by Congress in 1889 for the promotion of historical studies, the American Historical Association is the largest membership association of professional historians in the world.
Sincerely,
Sarah Weicksel
Executive Director