Clearly, the public is saying that you don't need tenure. There's the First Amendment, the courts, case law, and due process. Freedom of speech is so ingrained in academic life that we don't need tenure to protect it. Taking away tenure will put no one at risk on this issue, unless a person is lying and cheating, and even then, you simply cannot fire them without at least nine months of documentation. But the federal courts protect freedom of speech, and the state courts protect against wrongful dismissal.
Employees have a lot of protection.
And at both public and private institutions, we can write further protection for academic freedom right into the contract. Every college or university president I have spoken with off the record has agreed that academic freedom does not require tenure. Senator Arnold, with a slightly different view, believes that academic freedom protections go too far in allowing faculty members to overextend the boundaries of the subject matter at hand and put personal agendas over institutional ones. I was an adult when I attended college, in my thirties, and I was appalled by what I witnessed in the classroom. And they say whatever they please, regardless of its association with the subject matter being taught.