Wayne State Moves to Fire 5 Tenured Professors

Wayne State University is trying to fire faculty members for allegedly using tenure as a shield against productivity in research, scholarship or teaching, The Detroit News reported. The first of five professors in line for termination began hearings this week. All are within the medical school, but the university reportedly is considering dismissing some outside the medical school, as well. The university announced in August that 37 medical faculty members could lose their jobs through retirement or termination for underperformance, and some two dozen professors have already left.

President M. Roy Wilson told The Detroit News that the dismissal hearings are about excellence and accountability, and that the professors facing the hearings are “grossly underperforming” and “not doing anything” -- making it difficult to move the university toward its mission as a premier urban research institution. Charles Parrish, a professor of political science and president of the American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers faculty union at Wayne State, said the process may be about cutting costs more than anything else. “No other university that I know of in American history has launched an attack on tenure in this way, announcing that they were going to go after (nearly) 40 faculty members,” he said. “There have been attacks on tenure all over the country … but not from inside the university.”