Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that the entire point of tenure was so that professors who have proven their worth have the freedom to do the (perhaps controversial) research that they want to without fear of retribution from their employer.
Edit: And now that I think about it, the point is also to prevent "dead weight" from being fired. Because it'd be easy to classify a professor as dead weight who is simply working on something unpopular, or contrary to consensus.
That was back then, when science was the humanities (remember: when Theodor Mommsen solicited research funding, saying "If there is big industry there must be big science" it was for the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae), and professors were public intellectuals.
Today research costs money, and often a substantial part of a professor's salary comes from external funding. I feel that tenure has become something of an anachronism, and when you see tenured professors who haven't had a grant in ten years sit in a circle, each one giving an easy job to the person on their right, and dropping the rest of the work on the untenured faculty it becomes very difficult to defend the practice.
Yes, that was definitely the original intent of tenure. However, times have changed. I believe most professors just want good pay and benefits. I'm sure most would be willing to exchange tenure protections for this along with better job mobility and latitude. However, that's just conjecture.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that the entire point of tenure was so that professors who have proven their worth have the freedom to do the (perhaps controversial) research that they want to without fear of retribution from their employer.
Edit: And now that I think about it, the point is also to prevent "dead weight" from being fired. Because it'd be easy to classify a professor as dead weight who is simply working on something unpopular, or contrary to consensus.