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 b

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.