UW-Madison professor Sara Goldrick-Rab announced Monday she will be leaving the university, pointedly criticizing recent changes in tenure and academic freedoms for faculty.
Goldrick-Rab said although her extensive research and questions surrounding public higher education were initially welcomed by UW-Madison leadership, the university has quickly become a place where faculty members are chastised for speaking out.
“Leadership continues to assert its commitments to tolerance,” Goldrick-Rab wrote in a post for the online forum Medium. “In other words, just chew your cud contently and keep your mouth shut.”
The professor gave a sharp critique of university leadership, saying the administration works to preserve status at any cost and places “a higher priority on prestige and Big Ten football than on access and affordability.”
Particularly concerning Goldrick-Rab is a recently proposed tenure policy created by the UW System, something she called “Fake Tenure.” The policy will come before the Board of Regents for a final vote Thursday.
She said tenure itself has been “vanquished” throughout the UW System, and the proposed “Fake Tenure” would make it easy for the university to fire her on the basis of program modification.
“Terrified sheep make lousy teachers, lousy scholars, and lousy colleagues,” Goldrick-Rab wrote. “And today at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, thanks to #FakeTenure, I’m surrounded by terrified sheep.”
Goldrick-Rab said although she had tried to “stick it out” at UW-Madison and “hope for a better tomorrow,” she will ultimately take a professorship at Temple University in Philadelphia, a place where she said the state and university administration take responsibility for preserving tenure.
