Let's say your department hires an assistant professor. You and your colleagues are thrilled with your choice--Professor X promises to be a great addition to your group. She's an up and coming scholar, her research looks to be pathbreaking, and as a teacher she has much to offer students. You and your colleagues also just like her. The interview was such fun, and Professor X promises to show you all a good time, professionally speaking, at faculty meetings, dinner parties, and chance meetings at the photocopier. Let's say, then, that Professor X does not turn out to be all that you had dreamed she would be. Sure, her scholarship is sound and there is plenty of it. Sure, she's a good teacher. But still there is something not quite right about Professor X. Professor X isn't quite who you thought she'd be. Maybe she brags a bit about her grants and publications. Maybe she says "no" sometimes when asked to serve on committees. Maybe she doesn't throw dinner parties, do the coffee circuit, and generally lay herself out socially for you and your colleagues. Maybe she is no fun at all when she is waiting for the copier. In short, you just don't like Professor X after all. Professor X, you decide, is just not a very good colleague. You ask around, and discover that some of your colleagues feel the same way. Others start feeling that way the more the issue is discussed. And so, when Professor X comes up for tenure, you and your colleagues vote her down for not being collegial.

Stupid, crazy, impossible scenario, right? Responsible academics don't behave that way. Even if they are that petty, they can separate personal animus from professional issues, right? After all, the integrity of the tenure system depends on it. Wrong. Denying tenure for lack of collegiality is becoming more and more common these days. And so are the resulting lawsuits. At the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, for example, the biology department was so eager to deny tenure to Marcella McClure that the faculty actually invented collegiality criteria in order to use them against her. McClure is suing for breach of contract, wrongful termination, breach of fair dealing, and emotional distress, claiming that the university violated its own tenure procedures when it selectively redefined the rules in her case. The Faculty Senate agreed with McClure when she appealed and voted 3-2 in her favor. But McClure was not reinstated, and she has taken her case to the courts--which refuse to touch it on the grounds that the University and Community College System of Nevada is immune from lawsuits concerning tenure decisions. Just last Friday the Nevada Supreme Court tossed the case out. The gorey details of the McClure case are covered in the Chronicle of Higher Education's recent article "Do You Have To Be A Nice Person To Win Tenure?.

McClure's case demonstrates the dangerously subjective quality of "collegiality" as well as the curiously obtuse confidence of those who seek to use it as an evaluative criterion. A dean involved in McClure's case actually defended UNLV's decision with these words: "Collegiality is like beauty--you know it when you see it." The argument that "you know it when you see it" doesn't work with porn, and it doesn't work here. But enough people are starting to use such logic that the AAUP has gotten involved.

The AAUP is concerned enough about the use of collegiality as a fourth criterion in tenure cases (after research, teaching, and service) that in 1999 it issued a statement on collegiality as a criterion for faculty evaluation. Arguing that collegiality--or lack thereof--is manifest in the quality of an individual's research, teaching, and service, the AAUP statement goes on to point out the dangers inherent in attempting to isolate the quality of "collegiality" for purposes of evaluation. It's an excellent statement, noting that the ideal of "collegiality" too often masks a misguided desire for political and/or interpersonal homogeneity (i.e., it can be used to discount, silence, or even get rid of people who do not "fit"): "in the heat of important decisions regarding promotion or tenure, as well as other matters involving such traditional areas of faculty responsibility as curriculum or academic hiring, collegiality may be confused with the expectation that a faculty member display 'enthusiasm' or 'dedication,' evince 'a constructive attitude' that will 'foster harmony,' or display an excessive deference to administrative or faculty decisions where these may require reasoned discussion." It's an important point: collegiality is not the same thing as congeniality or conformity, but it is nonetheless frequently and disastrously equated with both.

Such pressure to conform and please, the AAUP notes, chills faculty debate and discussion, which in turn damages the department's reputation as well as its overall quality: "Criticism and opposition do not necessarily conflict with collegiality. Gadflies, critics of institutional practices or collegial norms, even the occasional malcontent, have all been known to play an invaluable and constructive role in the life of academic departments and institutions. They have sometimes proved collegial in the deepest and truest sense. Certainly a college or university replete with genial Babbitts is not the place to which society is likely to look for leadership. It is sometimes exceedingly difficult to distinguish the constructive engagement that characterizes true collegiality from an obstructiveness or truculence that inhibits collegiality. Yet the failure to do so may invite the suppression of dissent. The very real potential for a distinct criterion of 'collegiality' to cast a pall of stale uniformity places it in direct tension with the value of faculty diversity in all its contemporary manifestations." Pretty cool, no? Especially the part about genial Babbitts.

But the situation is ultimately not so simple as discouraging the use of collegiality criteria in tenure cases and encouraging those who find themselves on the wrong end of those criteria to sue. This is not just because an unenlightened or self-serving court can fail to see what's at stake in the case (Nevada being a prime example), but also because it is just so damned easy to use collegiality criteria in tenure cases without saying so. All you have to do, if you are thus inclined, is to make your assessment of the candidate's scholarship accord with your assessment of her personality. If you like Professor X, and Professor X has taught her courses and published her research and served her committees, you and your colleagues simply put together a glowing report. You emphasize the unique and groundbreaking qualities of the scholarship, the special touch Professor X has with students, the backbreaking labor Professor X devoted to various committees. Professor X will be your darling, and all that you write will be true. Conversely, if you dislike Professor X, you can destroy her simply by taking an entirely different approach to her file. You might play up the naivete of the work, or you might suggest that it is derivative or lackluster or even misguided and inept. You might point out that Professor X has received a few negative teaching evaluations, that Professor X does not have the range to teach effectively in the department, or that Professor X has an abrasive style that alienates students. And so on. As with the first scenario, all that you write will be true. The point is, tenure cases are all about spin. And how a case spins has a lot to do with whether the individual members of a given department--fallible and malleable all--want to keep Professor X around. The problem is not so much that a department can skew things at will--but that it's practically impossible not to.