A bill that would have eliminated tenure-track positions at Tennessee public universities is no longer moving forward in the state legislature.
Tennessee State Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) introduced the bill in the Senate in late January, and state Rep. Justin Lafferty (R-Knoxville) introduced the same bill in the House at the beginning of February. On Wednesday, when the House Higher Education Subcommittee was set to hear and vote on the legislation, the bill’s sponsor removed it from the agenda.
“We can have state employees that we pay with our tax dollars — mock might not be the right word — but can certainly be very insensitive towards the death of another human being,” Lafferty said when explaining on Wednesday why the bill was originally written. “I’m not comfortable with the fact that that person cannot be removed from a job.”
He referred to the professors at universities across the state who were fired after posting comments on conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death in September 2025. One professor at Austin Peay State University received a $500,000 settlement from the school and was reinstated on Dec. 30, 2025.
Lafferty thanked those who supported the bill, but later said he did not expect such a large and quick change to tenure happening this year, according to Chris Davis at News Channel 5.
Though the bill will not return during this legislative session, many MTSU professors and administrators came together to oppose it in support of tenure.
“Abolishing the tenure system would fundamentally change the university,” said Michael Federici, the MTSU Faculty Senate president and political science professor.
Losing tenure could result in a “brain drain” for the state, Federici said, making qualified professors less inclined to come to Tennessee universities. This so-called “brain drain” would also affect professors’ work ethic, Federici said, as they would be less motivated to participate in research, teaching and service, the three things that professors must show for tenure.
“Tenure makes people work harder,” Federici said. “It’s the opposite of what most people say, but the reality is tenure and promotion, which are both incentives for faculty, make them work harder. Not less hard.”
Federici said that various faculty members had emailed him since they learned about the bill, asking what would happen and what they could do about it. All faculty members and administrators that Federici interacted with agreed that tenure is “important to the university,” he said.
Ken Paulson, the director of the MTSU Free Speech Center and former dean of the Scott Borchetta College of Media and Entertainment, said that bills to remove tenure, like this one, have been proposed across the country before.
“This legislation is not likely to ever become law,” Paulson said. “Legislatures come to their senses and understand what a terrible impact this would have on a state university system.”
Paulson and Federici said the bill is likely meant to protect professors with more conservative viewpoints from being fired for speaking about their political beliefs, but the result would likely have the opposite effect.
“If the legislation is intended to take away tenure so that professors no longer have protection for controversial political statements, that would very likely be a violation of the First Amendment,” Paulson said. “Regardless of tenure, the government cannot punish people for expressing their political views.”
The bill is also unconstitutional under Article 1, Section 10, Federici said. This section guarantees the integrity of contracts. When faculty are hired into a tenure-track position, the university enters into a contract with them stating that they are on a path to tenure.
But the bill would have removed the ability to grant tenure to faculty members after July 1, 2026. Tenure typically takes six to seven years to obtain, so anyone in the middle of their tenure process would have their contracts negated by this legislation, Federici said.
Currently, 159 faculty members are assistant professors, meaning they are on the tenure track, according to the MTSU employee salary database. There are 213 associate professors, or faculty members with tenure, and 303 professors, who are tenured, promoted and given a pay raise.
Other legislatures introduced similar bills, with three other states having anti-tenure legislation this session. No measures to remove tenure in any state have passed, though.
“In a way, I think a good, robust, open and civil debate about the importance of tenure on campuses would be a healthy thing, so that not only members of state legislatures, but their constituents, would get a better understanding of what purpose tenure serves,” Federici said.
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