A Kansas House bill filed last Friday aims to alter tenure for faculty in the state’s post-secondary institutions. 

Opponents, including faculty members at Wichita State University, say it would weaken protections for tenured faculty’s employment and has potential to limit protections for academic freedom. 

“(The bill) would effectively end the conferral of tenure for faculty members at state universities in Kansas,” said Chase Billingham, a WSU associate professor of sociology and faculty senator, at a Faculty Senate meeting Monday.  “It would strip tenure protections and seriously undermine job security for all professors in the state.” 

What is tenure?

Tenure refers to a permanent teaching position for professors, which only allows termination under specific conditions. 

At Wichita State, tenure is awarded based on a faculty member’s “demonstrated excellence in scholarship, teaching/librarianship, and community and professional service,” according to the university’s policy. All probationary faculty undergo a tenure review during their sixth year at WSU with a few exceptions. 

“The award tenure is the result of years of hard work and productive contributions to knowledge by our diligent faculty,”  Billingham said. “It is not given out lightly.”

After being awarded tenure, faculty can only be terminated “for adequate cause” or under “extraordinary” financial circumstances, according to the WSU’s official guidelines of tenure and promotion.

Currently, the university’s Faculty Senate reserves the right to serve as the initiating authority when it comes to awarding tenure and promotion.

Tenure bill

If passed, House Bill No. 2348 would leave tenure to the discretion of a university, but it wouldn’t grant teachers the guaranteed protections of employment previously offered.

While the bill still permits tenured faculty members to “confer certain benefits, processes or preferences,” it would become a discretionary and conditional process that would not create entitlement, right or property interest.

The bill was introduced by Rep. Steven Howe at the request of Emporia State University’s General Counsel Steven Lovett.

In a hearing on Tuesday, Lovett said he was pushing for the bill as a private citizen, not at the request of Emporia State.

Since 2022, ESU has been the center of several state and federal court battles due to the decision to fire 30 tenured or tenure-track professors. Lovett is currently a defendant in the federal case regarding ESU’s decision to terminate the faculty members. His involvement in the bill poses a potential conflict of interest, according to the Kansas Reflector.

Committee hearing

During Tuesday’s Kansas House Committee on Judiciary meeting, Lovett spoke in favor of the bill before the committee. He called tenure, as it currently is, an “employment liability,” arguing that tenure restricts universities from terminating faculty due to financial constraints, and the process required to remove tenured faculty is too lengthy.

“The property right of tenure as it is currently characterized in the state of Kansas impedes or restricts the needed change of higher education in our state,” Lovett said. 

Faculty from several Kansas universities, and George Burdick, the study body president at Washburn University, spoke against the bill. So did Blake Flanders, the president and CEO of the Kansas Board of Regents (KBOR), Kansas’ governing body for higher education. 

Flanders said KBOR opposes the bill because it would harm recruitment of faculty at the state’s public universities. He also expressed surprise at the rate at which the issue was brought to the legislature.

“We do have a very robust process where individuals bring non-budgetary legislation to the board,” Flanders said. “If improvements are needed in the current structure, I want to say the board wants to be engaged and looks forward to meeting with you.”

Reactions at Wichita State

The proposal of the bill has left many Wichita State faculty members feeling nervous, including Billingham. During the Faculty Senate meeting, he spoke of how this could threaten faculty’s ability to conduct research.

“(Tenure) allows researchers in all disciplines to pursue promising research without fear that their investigations will be viewed as too esoteric or too abstract or too controversial,” Billingham said. “As such, it is essential to the creation of new knowledge.”

Senators discussed the bill extensively during their Monday meeting. Sen. Aaron Bowen, an instruction and research services librarian, said he found the news deeply troubling. 

“Every state-run university across the entire state — this is going to be a significant problem for them,” Bowen said, “(The bill) I think is a deeply concerning problem that does not make me want to work in Kansas.”

Senators also surmised that, if passed, the bill would make it “very difficult, if not impossible” to support educational initiatives like the Wichita Biomedical Campus and obtaining R1 status.

Wichita State is currently an R2 university. To become R1, schools need very high research activity. Along with national recognition, R1 status would grant more opportunities for federal funding.

“The university’s stated goal is to try and attain R1 status; that is not going to happen if this legislation passes,” Bowen said. “Obviously, we will have no chance of gaining R1 status under these conditions, nor will any other university in Kansas.”

Others, like Sen. Susan Sterrett, a philosophy professor, worried that the bill’s intent is simply to prevent  faculty from criticizing or holding collegiate institutions accountable.

“You get a sense that there’s people who just want us to feel scared, just want us to feel that our jobs are contingent,” Sterrett said. “Not because they really want to take them away, but because they just want to … make us feel fearful of criticizing (universities).”

In response to the faculty’s concerns, Chief of Staff and Executive Director of Government Relations Zach Gearhart shared that he and other leaders at Wichita State had spent “most of the weekend analyzing its (the bill’s) contents, impact on faculty and the university.” He said WSU President Richard Muma did not support and “does not believe (the bill) is remotely necessary” for Wichita State.

“I can tell you now (that) the president is very committed to continue to support our faculty, as we’ve always done,” Gearhart said.

By the conclusion of Monday’s meeting, Faculty Senate President Mathew Meuther said he would meet with other Faculty Senate executives to determine if an emergency meeting could be held. 

As of Tuesday evening, the Faculty Senate has not called for an emergency meeting. But Gearthart said he’ll continue to work with Muether, Muma, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly and KBOR to “identify a strategy and a way to make our opinion and our views on this known.”