Tenure, job security, and academic freedom

Recently, loads of people inside and outside of academia have been calling for an end to tenure, saying essentially that is it outmoded job security that no one else has, so why should professors? The common counters to that include that tenure is part of the compensation package (true), that it keeps academic salaries down compared to scientists elsewhere (maybe, but I don't think so), that it is needed for shared governance to function via preventing administrative retaliation (probably). Many people ignore or downplay the academic freedom part, or associate it with teaching or with research in social science, arts, or the humanities rather than science or engineering.

I never bought this argument, especially in light of what happened with climate research. In the late 80's and early 90's, climate science was not controversial. Scientists did their thing, and no one got really upset (or even noticed much) about the results. But then climate change became news (and more obvious as lived experience), climate change denial became a thing, and more importantly, a thing associated with one of the parties in our two party system. Suddenly, people like Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli were investigating climate scientists like Michael Mann for fraud. And suddenly tenure meant something, at least for climate scientists.

There have always been political attempts to control research (I was even mentioned in one!) And now as per DrugMonkey we are here on day 4 of the Trump administration, which has now gagged EPA scientists and frozen EPA research grants, stopped USDA researchers from communicating with the public, and told HHS staff to stop external communications. The Trump administration is neither the first nor the last to actively interfere in the research enterprise, which makes the academic freedom guaranteed by tenure all the more important. We got complacent. Now we need to be vigilant.