The AHA sent a letter to Governor Kevin Stitt urging him to rescind an executive order encouraging the Oklahoma State Regents of Higher Education to gut existing tenure protections at state research universities and eliminate tenure outright at regional universities and community colleges. “If adopted,” the letter reads, “these changes will undermine the quality of higher education at Oklahoma’s world-class public institutions, stifling innovation, narrowing opportunities for student learning, and producing less employable college graduates.”
Governor J. Kevin Stitt
Oklahoma State Capitol
Oklahoma City, OK 73105
Dear Governor Stitt,
The American Historical Association urges you to rescind your recent Executive Order 2026-07, which encourages the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education to gut existing faculty tenure protections at Oklahoma’s research universities and abolish tenure outright at regional universities and community colleges. If adopted, these changes will undermine the quality of higher education at Oklahoma’s world-class public institutions, stifling innovation, narrowing opportunities for student learning, and producing less employable college graduates.
Abolishing tenure at some institutions and weakening its protections at others contradicts each of the goals articulated in your order: supporting “innovation, workforce alignment, fiscal responsibility, and student success while maintaining academic excellence and institutional stability.”
Academic tenure rewards intellectual rigor and fosters innovation. In history departments, the protections it affords 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.
Abolishing tenure at Oklahoma’s 11 community colleges and regional universities will not make these institutions any more efficient or affordable. The elimination of intellectual freedom will mark these colleges and universities as second-class institutions, severely restricting their ability to attract and retain faculty. Future students will lose out on opportunities to participate in independent research under the mentorship of leading researchers or take courses with scholars who are involved in the creation of new knowledge. Students at community colleges and regional universities deserve these opportunities. Under current conditions the ability to offer these experiences to students allows the full range of public institutions in Oklahoma to fulfill their often very different missions. If the executive order’s proposed changes are enacted, these public community colleges and universities will become the employer of last choice among the most talented, knowledgeable, and qualified candidates.
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 teach.
The proposed mechanisms for post-tenure review at public research universities threaten to politicize faculty hiring. At best, these measures will prove redundant. Oklahoma universities already evaluate the performance of tenured faculty and have clearly articulated standards of behavior, the violation of which is grounds for dismissal. But these changes also make it easier for elected officials, university administrators, and appointed boards of regents from either party to fire professors for purely political or ideological reasons.
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.
Ending tenure would 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 faculty tenure instantly and irrevocably depreciate the value of these investments in higher learning.
The American Historical Association urges you to rescind Executive Order 2026-07 in the interest of maintaining the integrity, reputation, and quality of education at the public colleges and universities in Oklahoma.
With more than 10,000 members 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