The Hopkins political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg wrote
The Fall of the Faculty in 2011. "I hope to wake up the faculty," he told
Inside Higher Ed at the time. "We’re like the residents of a Japanese city living next to the ocean and thinking the tsunami won’t affect us."
Ten years later, is the tsunami here? The water is at least rising. Our Tom Bartlett and Jack Stripling report on the events at Linfield University, where Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, a tenured English professor, appears to have been summarily fired for criticizing the institution's president. This is just the latest in a string of similar incidents, including Garrett Felber's dismissal from the University of Mississippi for what many suspect are political reasons, and L.D. Burnett's from Collin College, where she seems to have been fired for tweets criticizing Republican politicians and her institution's administration. Felber was a tenure-track professor; Burnett was a contract employee.