Academic tenure was formalized to protect professors from being fired for what they thought.
In 1940, the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Colleges jointly published the Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, the document that established the modern tenure system in American higher education.1 The statement declared that after a probationary period not exceeding seven years, a faculty member should receive permanent employment that could only be terminated for cause, financial exigency, or discontinuation of a program.
The 1940 statement built on an earlier 1915 Declaration of Principles drafted by the AAUP's founding members, who were responding to a series of high-profile dismissals of professors whose research or public statements had offended university donors and administrators.2
Among the catalysts for the 1915 declaration was the firing of Edward Ross from Stanford University in 1900 after he publicly criticized railroad monopolies and Chinese immigration policies that conflicted with the interests of Jane Stanford, the university's co-founder.2
The principle behind tenure was that knowledge could not advance if scholars feared losing their livelihoods for reaching unpopular conclusions. Tenure was conceived as a protection for inquiry, not a reward for seniority.
The 1940 statement was endorsed by more than 250 scholarly and educational organizations and became the de facto standard for tenure policies at colleges and universities across the United States.1
The system created a sharp divide within academic labor. Tenure-track positions offered job security and academic freedom. Non-tenure-track positions, including adjunct faculty, offered neither. By the twenty-first century, the majority of college courses in the United States were taught by contingent faculty who had no path to tenure.3
The Teacher (as credentialed profession) formalized who could teach. The tenure system formalized who could keep teaching. Both inventions converted a human relationship, the passing of knowledge, into an administrative status governed by institutional rules.