The quote below struck me as odd: "The emergence of it [tenure] in the US, in fact, helped place the US on good footing to compete at research with Europe, whi

The quote below struck me as odd: "The emergence of it [tenure] in the US, in fact, helped place the US on good footing to compete at research with Europe, which does not have that institution as much." because AFAIK many European universities had something like tenure already. In Germany (like today) professors were government employees that could not be fired. I think this had been the case since Humbold and was part of having academic freedom as a pilar of the system. I think both French and British universities had a similar concept. So it is weird that tenure is being painted as something special to the US.