Academic tenure is poised to be a new battleground of academic freedom after legislators in Texas and Florida became the first states to take strides to reform the practice during the 2023 legislative session.

Academic tenure, an employment protection that makes it quite difficult to fire faculty members, is typically granted to a professor after a trial employment period. The purpose of the practice, which is widespread at private and public universities alike, is to alleviate the pressure of at-will employment from professors who are engaged in academic research and study, especially if they espouse beliefs that are considered to be controversial.

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The practice has endured at institutions of higher education for many decades with little controversy — that is until Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) backed an effort to require tenured professors to face post-tenure performance reviews every five years. At the same time, Texas GOP Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick pushed a bill that would have ended the practice entirely at state universities.

The two officials argued that the tenure was being used by far-left faculty to push concepts such as critical race theory without any accountability.

When the issue came before state lawmakers, DeSantis’s effort sailed through the Republican-controlled legislature in Florida, while Patrick’s effort in Texas faltered, and legislators passed a different bill that solidified tenure into state law but created new mechanisms to revoke it.

But the effort may have had its intended effect. A recent survey found that the efforts to target tenure in Texas have led to more than 25% of professors in the state looking for new positions elsewhere. Meanwhile, 46% of Florida professors indicated they intend to look for positions in other states.

A spokesperson for DeSantis’s office pointed the Washington Examiner to a statement the governor previously made on the bill, which also included expanded requirements for curriculum transparency.

“Florida’s public college and university system is No. 1 in the country because we put students first,” DeSantis said of the bill he signed earlier this year. “Florida’s students deserve a quality, affordable education and don’t need ideological activists and political organizations determining what they should learn. By ushering in strong curriculum transparency requirements and providing accountability for tenured faculty, Florida is standing with students and parents across our state.”

But academic tenure also raises questions about who gets it and why. Tyler Coward, a Senior Legislative Counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit free speech organization, told the Washington Examiner that the organization has long been concerned that schools are using political litmus tests in hires but that tenure can provide some protections.

“While tenure is not the only way to protect academic freedom, it provides important protections for faculty members against censorship attempts and threats to academic freedom,” Coward said. “Tenure has been a helpful tool [for] protecting faculty from being fired for expressing or teaching disfavored views.”

Cherise Trump, the executive director of Speech First, likewise said that tenure can provide valuable protections for conservative professors who are often the targets of cancellation efforts, but she noted that the path to a tenured position is plagued with self-censorship.

“There is a lot of pressure to conform in order to achieve tenure on campuses,” Trump, who is not related to the former president, said. “Faculty oftentimes will not speak their minds fully, or they’ll be hesitant to publish certain things that are more conservative or more divergent from whatever the social, cultural, or political dogma is on campus.”

Trump noted that many schools have required prospective faculty to submit diversity, equity, and inclusion statements.

“If you come out against DEI, have fun getting tenure,” she said.

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Despite the challenges, Trump said that tenure can still be helpful to conservative faculty members, who are often few and far between at overwhelmingly liberal college campuses, and she noted that efforts to ban tenure could negatively affect those professors.

“[Banning tenure] can hurt certain faculty and it can help others,” she said. “There’s not a magic bullet solution that I’m aware of at this point.”