Tenure

Tenure surfaces in The Death of Expertise as the academic job-protection system, and it is a point where Kyle pushes back in his marginalia. The book notes the popular belief that university researchers and teachers cannot be fired is “not entirely a baseless belief, because firing a tenured professor is in fact quite difficult.” Kyle’s notes argue twice that job protection regardless of performance is damaging — “Teacher tenure or other systems for keeping people in jobs regardless of how good they are seems damaging,” tied to a larger view that “we have to allow for failure” — and he flags a personal “story from Cambridge about tenure” to connect. The theme links protected employment to the erosion of accountability and quality that the book diagnoses in the broader expert class.

Context: Tenure is a status in academia (and some other professions) granting a permanent appointment that can be ended only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances. Its stated purpose is to protect academic freedom and long-horizon research; critics argue it can also shield underperformance and slow institutional renewal.

Where this appears

• The Death of Expertise — tenure as hard-to-revoke academic job protection, which Kyle’s notes argue is damaging when it keeps people employed regardless of quality (with a flagged Cambridge story to connect).