Do Professors Have An Obligation To Retire??

Inside Higher Education issued an interesting July 21, 2008 story entitled A Moral Obligation to Retire? This article follows up on a posting Leiter Reports A Philosophy Blog who noted the poor job market for legal philosphers. A commentaor raised the spector of whether senior profs have an obligation to retire. As Inside Higher Education states:

One commenter on his blog responded with this question: “This raises serious ethical questions for tenured faculty. Since keeping one’s position and not retiring is likely to directly cause the unemployment/underemployment of young philosophers, is it wrong to postpone one’s retirement past a certain age? If so, at what age should one retire? I don’t have answers to these questions but would like to see them discussed on your blog.”

My own view is the there is NO obligation to retire. However, there is an obligation to produce. I do not believe universities have any obligation to keep dead wood around. Unfortunately, many do.

Mitchell H. Rubinstein