Kean University’s President is handing out a big lump of coal to many tenure-hopefuls this holiday season (hat-tip, Instapundit).

Kean University’s president will ask the institution’s board next month to reject two-thirds of the professors up for tenure this year, further antagonizing a faculty that has been at odds with the administration for years. Kean’s faculty union said this was the first time the president, Dawood Y. Farahi, had recommended that a majority of those seeking tenure—six of nine faculty members—be denied. All but one of those professors had received positive votes from their academic departments, the union said.

“A lifetime job in the state university system is not an entitlement, it has to be earned,” Mr. Farahi wrote in an email to The Chronicle. …

In October the university’s provost recommended that the university turn down all but one of the nine professors who made tenure bids this year. … In the recommendation the president is expected to make to the board, … Mr. Farahi will reverse two of those negative decisions.