Emporia State University fires tenure-track faculty, commits a queen sacrifice

Emporia State University has just fired a group of faculty members, including those on the tenure track. It’s the latest example of what I’ve called a queen sacrifice.

(This occurs when a college or university cuts tenure-track faculty members. The source of the phrase is chess, where queens are the most powerful piece, as tenure-track faculty are, in theory, the most powerful members of an academic community. In the game giving up the queen is a desperate move, often an attempt to wrest victory from a very bad situation, and so it seems to be for colleges and universities axing people in those positions.)

This is an emerging story. Emporia’s news site doesn’t have an official statement so far. The official Twitter account is silent. So I’ll summarize what I’ve been able to learn from other sources.

Emporia State University president Ken Hush submitted a plan to cut certain faculty to the state board of regents. KBOR, which had granted that power to its campuses last year, approved the plan on Wednesday, and Hush then issued a series of firings.

The regents’ policy is fairly broad. The Chronicle summarizes it like so:

According to the approved framework, the university can “suspend, dismiss, or terminate”…