Tenure allowed me to speak out against evils of apartheid. Truth depends on it. | Opinion

If the purpose of universities is ideas and truth, tenure for professors matters. Let’s consider an example known to all since childhood of suppressing ideas and truth of Italian inventor Galileo Galilei. In 1615 Galileo was brought before the Catholic Church’s Inquisition. Why? His findings supported the 16th century work Nicholas Copernicus. Copernicus, who held a doctorate, deemed the earth was not the center of the universe, but instead orbited the sun.

Fortunately for Copernicus, this “heliocentric” view of the solar system was not then at odds with Catholic Church orthodoxy (although the newly emerged Protestants found it heretical). Galileo advanced his ideas at the wrong time. Instead of being celebrated as one of the greatest scientists of his time, he was put under house arrest for life at the behest of the Catholic Church whose position migrated to heliocentrism being heretical.

Yet intellectuals have not only been punished for taking the wrong side of scientific disputes, but also over politics.

During Red Scare, professors lost jobs over Sen. Joe McCarthy's antics

Growing up I observed limits to speech and politics in the household of my grandfather, Dantes Bellegarde, in Haiti. My grandfather was an intellectual and diplomat of note. A Minister of Education and its ambassador at points to France, the United States, the Vatican, and Haiti’s representative to the League of Nations among other offices. Yet in the Cold War the United States frequently privileged the rule of dictators in the Western Hemisphere and Haiti was no exception.

Under the rule of the Duvalier family, expression of thought became an exercise in carefully threading a needle, which if got wrong, could lead to deadly outcomes. This was even the case in our honored household. Meanwhile, the United States was not immune to smothering undesirable thought. Over a hundred professors lost their livelihoods during the Red Scare along with countless writers, actors, and public servants over their political views during the years of Wisconsin’s Senator Joseph McCarthy’s tenure in the U.S. Senate.

I entered the U.S. through its possession of the Virgin Islands at the age of 16 in 1964 where I began my college education. My white working-class father was an American from Idaho. I then transferred to Syracuse University and after earning my bachelor’s degree, took my PhD in International Relations at American University in Washington, DC in 1977. Along the way, I served 6 years in the United States Army Reserve.

Tenure allowed me to speak out against evils of apartheid

I took my first academic post at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, in 1978. This proved consequential given the outsized footprint of Peoria’s biggest business, the multinational corporation, Caterpillar. The 1980s saw an international movement led by college campuses to defund South Africa’s then apartheid regime. For younger readers unfamiliar with it, apartheid South Africa was a system of legal and cultural oppression anchored in racism. Upon gaining freedom from the UK in 1948, the less than 10% of South Africa’s white population imposed its rule on the country’s 80% Black inhabitants.

The above did not occur without Black resistance. In South Africa, it was led by the African National Congress with Nelson Mandela at its head. The United States often celebrates heads of liberation movements as heroes after their deaths, but not during their lives. Today, Martin Luther King is upheld as an exemplar of non-violent resistance, whose image graces schools and street names across the country. Just prior to his assassination, however, he was viewed by 70% of Americans as a distrusted trouble-maker.

Similarly, in the 1980s Nelson Mandela, then already over 20 years into a life-sentence in South Africa for treason, was viewed by the Reagan administration in the United States as a terrorist who should remain jailed. In 1983, however, Peoria’s mayor returned from a goodwill tour sponsored by South Africa’s apartheid government designed to engender continued US support for the regime. Peoria was considered safe terrain given South Africa’s vast mining industry was a big customer of Caterpillar’s heavy equipment.

I was a young professor of 35 years of age but determined to address Peoria’s City Council regarding why it should oppose South Africa’s regime and protest the rosy portrait of its government presented by Peoria’s mayor. This placed me at odds with both official U.S. policy but also against Caterpillar. Fortunately, a week prior to my remarks, I gained tenure.

Tenure is under fire. Democracy will suffer if truth censored.

Tenure is a rigorous process by which one’s academic publications are reviewed by the country’s (and often even world’s) top experts in one’s field of research. The tenure process is undertaken after completing 6 years of work and can take up to a year to assemble and review materials. Many do not make the cut and leave the profession or seek work at lower-ranked institutions. The purpose of tenure is to ensure once professors demonstrate exemplary scholarship they are permitted to voice their insights without fear of termination. Benefits to society are obvious enough. Experts must be permitted to share their ideas without holding back for fear of retribution.

As it stands, when I confronted power in opposition to apartheid in 1983, I was told Bradley University’s Provost inquired if I had tenure. My removal by a provost of ill intent would have been facilitated by lack of tenure. Moreover, a provost seeking protection of speech could also use tenure-protections to thwart a major university funder, such as Caterpillar was with Bradley University, from pulling its cash with a retort, "Not much we can do, he has tenure.”

In short, tenure permitted a junior professor living on $12,000 a year to take on South African apartheid, Caterpillar International and the Reagan Administration’s support of South Africa. I am grateful for that protection and hope future scholars will enjoy these same rights while seeking to advance truth.

Quashing free speech would be as disastrous as budget reductions

I eventually departed Bradley University for UW-Milwaukee in 1986. It was an exciting time when Wisconsin’s government was committed to building a nationally recognized research university somewhat akin to what UCLA was to the University of California. I eventually retired in 2010 as a full professor. This came just before the devastating funding cuts to UW-Milwaukee this past decade with a reduction of over 200 professors, many of whom went to other top ranked universities. Most disturbingly, however, is not just the economic opportunity and brain drain lost from reversing the building a top research university with a national reputation in Milwaukee, but voices calling for a dilution if not elimination of tenure in the Badger State. 

Tenure protected speech will not always be used wisely. And threats to speech can come from the left, right, and the all too neglected source of censorship, the “center.” As with any person, professors’ remarks should be held to scrutiny, but not censorship. I am a dozen years retired and can speak freely, but tenure must continue to permit future 35-year-old professors to confront struggles against the apartheids of their times without fear.

Just as Founding Father Benjamin Franklin intoned if the U.S. had a republic or monarchy with, “A republic, if you can keep it. Our responsibility is to keep it.” Let’s ensure the Badger State always keeps tenure protected speech and upholds the ideals of its Wisconsin Idea and seeking truth. Our mission and purpose demands we keep it.

Patrick Bellegarde-Smith is a professor emeritus in the Department of African & African Diaspora Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.