Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed: Professors Are Too Old, by Samuel Moyn (Yale; Author, Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth―and What to Do About It (2026)):

I work at Yale Law School. Its faculty was dramatically transformed by the elimination of retirement coupled with the extension of lifespans. In the 1930s, the regular faculty averaged just under 43 years old; a half-century later, in the 1980s, that number had barely risen, to just over 45. Yet by the 2010s, it had leapt by more than a decade, nearing 57. Even more strikingly, almost a third of the faculty were over 65 and 15 percent were over 70.

The aging of the professoriate is an international phenomenon. Still, some countries or universities have kept a mandatory retirement age — at Cambridge and Oxford, it was recently raised from 67.5 to 69 years. At American universities, unfortunately, those toward the end of their time are at their maximum power — not just to reap the highest salaries, but also to lighten their own teaching and service obligations, shunting them to their junior colleagues. (Trust me on this.) …

After 1993, according to one study of law schools, the “uncapping” of retirement limits by itself led the number of faculty members 70 and older to go up tenfold. Almost 40 percent of the faculty who would otherwise have had to retire stayed into their 70s instead. The number of faculty over 60 skyrocketed to be a fourth or even third of the overall teaching staff at many leading institutions. The damage that the financial crisis of 2008 did to faculty retirement accounts reinforced the emerging trend, even though the consequences were far graver for younger people who saw their prospects smashed. Asked, more than half of the crusty old professors biding their time said they were staying for financial reasons. …

In my mid-50s myself, I hope enlightened new policies force me out at 70. If not, I pledge to not set both innovation and justice back by overstaying my welcome. I hope my peers join me.

New York Times Op-Ed: Older Americans Are Hoarding America’s Potential, by Samuel Moyn (Yale; Author, Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth―and What to Do About It (2026)):

“Ageism” identifies an enduring phenomenon: the mistreatment of older people for no reason other than being older. Americans in middle age and beyond are routinely passed over for opportunities because of the irrelevant fact of a number on paper or how they act and look after getting older.

In today’s world, the unfair discrimination they cite coexists with a different kind of unfairness: a gerontocratic society in which the old control ever more power and wealth, leading to overrepresentation in political life and unequal power in social life.

It is not ageist to ask whether older people should be required to give more to younger Americans and national priorities — it is critical to the future of our democracy and society. America needs to confront gerontocracy before the system collapses under the weight of its inequality and injustice.

Older Americans deserve a say over the future even when they might not live to see it. But they do not deserve the stranglehold over it they currently enjoy through overrepresentation in elections, which produces too many regressive policies and too many seniors in the highest offices.

Matt Taibbi, New York Times: Old People Suck and We Should Take Their Stuff

Chronicle of Higher Education, Should Professors Have to Hang It Up?:

Tenure’s job protections have long sparked concern that faculty members might keep their jobs too long. “Faculty tend to teach what they understand. They understand best what they learned when they were young,” Gerhard Casper, provost of the University of Chicago, and Saunders Mac Lane, an emeritus professor at the university, warned in 1990.

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