The common story of how tenure came to be the norm in American universities begins in 1900 when Stanford University forced the resignation of economist Edward A. Ross, whose public activism angered the university’s sole trustee, Jane Stanford. The Ross affair is usually credited with inspiring Ross’ colleague Arthur Lovejoy to quit Stanford, move to Johns Hopkins, and co-found the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).
For several decades afterward, the AAUP worked to establish itself and develop best practices for faculty employment.
Then, in 1940, the organization released its Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which argued for the importance of its two headline concepts. This short document—under 10 pages altogether—remains the definitive guide for university tenure practices today.
The 1940 Statement is undoubtedly an important reason why tenure became an industry norm in the decades after World War II. But tenure did not just appear in 1940, and it did not become an industry standard solely due to the AAUP’s Statement.
To begin with, the 1940 Statement merely built on the direction in which higher education was already moving. Indefinite employment terminable only for cause had existed as early as the founding of Harvard College in 1650. Academic employment practices would change considerably over the next two and half centuries, first moving away from this concept, and then back toward it. In the decade before the AAUP statement, universities had begun to adopt something resembling modern tenure.
In 1935, President Edgar Lovett of Rice University had contacted dozens of his fellow leaders to ask how their institutions approached the issue of job security for professors. Among the 78 universities that responded to Lovett’s inquiry, 48% had already instituted formal tenure policies and another 37% had an informal “custom of tenure.”
The 1940 Statement formalized this system after a period of fluctuation and gave it teeth by requiring universities to give faculty due process before termination.
Not only does the traditional narrative of tenure skew the timeline, it also oversimplifies the causes of the change.
Academic freedom wasn’t the only thing pushing universities in the direction of tenure. Most of the university presidents who replied to Lovett justified tenure on economic, not academic, grounds. The chancellor of NYU “pointed specifically to the volatility of the economy and the meager financial rewards received by faculty members as justifications for tenure.” President James Conant of Harvard wrote that “our only hope of recruiting men for this important service is to guarantee the permanency of their tenure when they have reached a certain age and attained to a certain eminence.” In short, tenure made good sense to these administrators because it was necessary to recruit and retain accomplished faculty.