I think emeriti are not an inherent problem. (Even when having these dolts governing department policy is like having Flat Earthers in charge of the Geology Department or LaMarckians running bio.) Though again, people trained with the Victorian, or even the early mid-century, view of history are not necessarily an asset, given how racist, sexist and elitist the conventional wisdom was.
Here's the issue as it specifically pertains to my state university:
They got their negotiated tenure contracts in the early to mid 70s, when their life expectancy was 72 or 73. Their contracts cover pensions that kicked in when they were 65, plus they remain on full salary as long as they take one class or one research project per academic year. Full salary after 40 years is considerable. Their salaries are fully half of the departmental budget. (And there aren't that many of them. It's not the 1%ers, but the ratio of Senate to House is close.)
Now, they also feathered their nests in the 80s by failing to approve tenure for their rising colleagues coming out of the more proven and more reproducible behaviorist schools of thought, so there is a 10 year institutional knowledge gap right there. In the early 90s, the governing board started demanding they fill some of the positions with people with a scientific basis, but the money wasn't there for tenure (because universities work on a use it or lose it basis, and the philosophical fight over the Dirty Old Cokehead meant losing half of those tenured seats. Which the Freudians were fine with, because then they could keep up their scam of therapy only exists for the the white, upper class, worried well who are willing to commit to 104 appointments a year at $100 each. Also, they're still fighting a hot war (as 'iatrists) against the 'ologists and that's not helping). So for another decade, everyone came on as "tenure track" but at adjunct to associate funding, and didn't stay because they got better offers elsewhere. Another decade of knowledge lost. Part of it was state funding, the Reagan Administration and the 80s backlash against academia, but that wasn't the whole story.
We finally got tenure funding coming back in the early Oughts, but there's less than there should be, and it's not rising fast enough, and we've still got to pay those emeriti salaries.
I'm the oldest of the young'uns in my department, at 41. The next person above me is 62. That's the 21 year gap resulting from this small group's war on behaviorism. Guess who still controls our funding? It's not me. We young'uns have just accepted that we have to grub for grants, like every other scientist. It's fine. I have resisted the tenure track on purpose, because it's a bad model for neuropsych, and we need to stop drilling the very dry hole that was early 20th century psych. We cover the origins in 101 and 102. And that's where it must stop, because the model is bad, it's harmful, and it's ineffective. We need collaboration with mathematicians, statisticians, chemistry, pharmacology, neural imaging, and microbiology far more. But for us, we're going to have to wait for the emeriti to die, because they're still fighting the war against spreadsheets. And they can't be eased out or fired, while our contracts are toilet paper. That part is a direct result of the Reagan admin.
Yes, it's dysfunctional. That is clear. But this is what an adherence to preserving institutional knowledge is worth. Institutional knowledge can be wrong, and perpetuating objectively wrong science harms everyone.
Here's the thing -- if it was one department, fine. That's just a sick system. It's not. We've got this rot in multiple departments and across many public and private universities. There was a nasty backlash in the 80s, and the reverb is still smacking rising academics. I believe in tenure for the academic freedom of expression it engenders. That is incredibly valuable and I don't want any of us fired for stating an unpopular opinion. However, entrenchment isn't in science's best interest.
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