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Considering late-career academics as dead wood is rarely correct.

There is a diversity of productive roles and functions for late-career academics.

Searching for joyful and productive roles in late career is a key part of academic development.

As academics get older, their roles and functions at a research university evolve. Throughout the academic lifespan, there are diverse and changing ideas, conceptions, and goals concerning academic tasks and identity. The developmental trend tends to move from gaining a tenure-track position, chasing tenure and promotion to associate professor, maintaining a productive research lab, increasing administration and university governance responsibilities, promotion to full professor, a plateau phase, and (probably overdue) retirement. I once had sympathies with the anti-tenure crowd who argue that tenure protects professors of poor quality, those who have checked out of their responsibilities and do the minimal amount of work. Rooting out the deadwood old professors to replace them with younger, hungrier, and cheaper assistant professors is one goal of the folks wanting to get rid of tenure. I had an appreciation for the mandatory retirement age for professors that many nations use. I had complained that old professors are often not current on growing scientific literature, they have given the same lectures for the last 30 years, and their ideas are fossils dated from the time they were in graduate school. Now I am an old professor; do I still think this way? And what lessons are there for........

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