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Notes -
What is the saying? The constitution is not a suicide pact?
Tenure can be very important, but that's because it protects researchers with unpopular but tenable findings or conclusions, or who present those same ideas to students to consider and discuss. It's important that we have the capability to test unpopular ideas rather than just throwing them out at first glance. If it's not actually accomplishing that goal--if universities are not actually bastions of free speech, and tenure isn't even a protection--then why do we have tenure at all?
Similarly, the government should not be telling universities who to hire, what they can teach, etc. But to not do so for a government-funded university is kind of ridiculous! I thought we pretended to care about democracy? Are blue-collar workers required to fund an institution which does not benefit them, and which largely despises them, and that institution has infinite protection from any recourse, regardless of what it is actually doing?
The general point is this: Free speech has to go both ways, otherwise it isn't free speech. Unfortunately, these bills seem practically designed to fail to accomplish much. Removing tenure will just drive all of the up and coming academics to other states or to private universities (including any who might have opposed cancel culture), while bureaucrats, students, and existing professors continue to prevent any actual freedom of speech. Overly broad vague laws are likely to fail a 1st amendment test. Instead, why not push on freedom of speech directly, using money? Tie university funding to adopting and enforcing policies that promote freedom of speech. Deduct funding for failing to protect speakers, treating student groups differently based on point of view, etc. Maybe even a cap on the money that can be spent on administrative staff, although that's probably vulnerable to Washington Monument Syndrome nonsense. The mentioned SB16, prohibiting professors from compelling a student to profess a belief, seems fine to me; a government funded professor teaching a class is acting as an arm of the state and should not be compelling speech.
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