Tenure, like socialism, sounds good in theory. But in practice, it is about as flawed and corrupt an institution as you can find. Dan Bauer, an assistant professor of English at Iowa's Simpson College, is a case in point. Bauer received a glowingly positive third-year review from his departmental chair last year (Simpson's personnel policies state that a positive third-year review may be read as a statement of intent to grant tenure). Eight months later, the same chair turned in such a negative evaluation of Bauer that the Faculty Personnel Committee voted unanimously to deny Bauer tenure for unprofessional conduct and failure to demonstrate adequate professional growth. Students and non-implicated faculty are up in arms; the English departmental chair, meanwhile, has coolly informed the student paper that it can "cast [her] as a villain" if it wants to.

In Bauer's third-year review, English department chair Nancy St. Clair wrote that "Dan is a hard-working, deeply committed teacher. ... In the two years he has been here the strong teaching skills he brought with him have become stronger yet. He cares deeply about Simpson and is committed to educating the whole student and partakes in all aspects of student life in order to do so. I see no reason why his progress toward tenure shouldn't continue on course." Eight months later, she was citing him for lack of "initiative" and for talking with students about how "other faculty members were grading their senior essays." One of the "other faculy members" in question was St. Clair herself. Bauer has refuted the one claim and clarified the other: as far as he is concerned, there is nothing to the rationale for firing him, but there is a great deal of personal animus against him on the part of his chairman.

Connoisseurs of corrupted promotion procedures will recognize in Bauer's case a pattern that has manifested itself at CUNY's Brooklyn College twice in the last several months: junior faculty who cross their departmental chairs stand a good chance of getting crucified come reappointment season, particularly when the chair is a woman and the assistant professor is male. At CUNY, history professor KC Johnson was denied tenure for "uncollegiality" after clashing with his department chair and other senior faculty about hiring ethics and pedagogical standards; philosophy professor Michael Cholbi was denied reappointment for no stated reason after he, too, had clashed with his departmental chair about hiring ethics. And now Bauer, who describes the English department atmosphere as "toxic," has lost his job after clashing with his chair about teaching philosophies. In case after case, we see the confidential tenure process, in which careers are made and destroyed at the will of colleagues who are often capricious and almost wholly unaccountable for their decisions, used not as a means of rewarding dedicated and accomplished teaching, scholarship, and service, but as a means of exorcising those whose presence is inconvenient to resident ideologues and incompetents.

As the original post notes, tenure sounds fine in theory. And indeed it has fairly noble theoretical origins: it arose in response to a repressive early twentieth century university climate that repeatedly saw professors dismissed for discussing, teaching, or studying topics that their local community or university administration deemed unacceptable. In 1900, for instance, Stanford president David Starr Jordan fired sociology professor E. A. Ross because Ross's anti-corporate speeches and his opposition to Japanese immigration embarrassed and offended university co-founder Jane Stanford. Responding to such controversies, a coalition of concerned academics founded the AAUP in 1915 and produced a Declaration of Principles -- this seminal statement on academic freedom provided for "freedom of inquiry and research; freedom of teaching within the university or college; and freedom of extra-mural utterance and action." This Declaration subsequently evolved into the AAUP's 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure; by the end of the 1940s, most institutions had incorporated the AAUP's recommendations into their policies and practices.

But Erin's comparison with socialism is apt. After 60+ years, we must realize that however noble the original intentions behind tenure, and however powerful the AAUP's defence of that institution, the tenure system (as distinct from tenure itself as a Platonic ideal) is corrupt beyond redemption. No matter what Rube-Goldbergian review system we devise, tenure still gets awarded to the wrong people for the wrong reasons: it rewards conformity instead of originality, demographics instead of excellence. Indeed, I know black female Ivy League English professors who (a) have tenure, and (b) have trouble producing coherent, grammatically correct sentences. But the greatest irony of all is how tenure review has become a golden opportunity to suppress academic freedom. Surely the case of KC Johnson, fired for suggesting that his department should hire the best available professors rather than the best available female professors, has much in common with the case of E. A. Ross 103 years earlier? Both Ross and Johnson made controversial political statements that upset powerful people. As a consequence, both Ross and Johnson were squelched -- Ross because he lived in an era prior to tenure; Johnson because the tenure system denies academic freedom to those who actually need it. As currently configured, tenure protects two main groups: an aging, mostly white male professoriate tenured before diversity and political correctness became central criteria for academic employment; and a younger demographically diverse generation tenured because of its subservience to "progressive" Marxist-feminist beliefs. The losers here are the KC Johnsons, the Michael Cholbis, and every other dissenting young scholar who refuses to make such subservience his primary pre-tenure intellectual and political goal.

It should be noted here that the impression that tenure is "about as flawed and corrupt an institution as you can find" seems to be based on a very problematic sampling scheme. Many tenure cases (perhaps most, from what I have seen) move forward with relatively little controversy, and without any indication of unprofessional wrong-doing on the part of any of those involved. Such cases, however, do not make the news, and hence do not provide fodder for blogger outrage. The outside observer winds up seeing only the most pathological cases, and therefore acquires a very misleading picture of how the system actually functions.

Tenure is a high-stakes game with a lot on the table, and naturally there are disagreements and disputes which arise during the process. I'm certainly not going to make the argument that the system is perfect (and I note that it varies a great deal from place to place), or that those involved in the system never make mistakes. Speaking as someone currently dealing with the system from both ends, however, I do not agree with the notion that tenure is merely some sort of corrupt political game. Believe it or not, some of us take a great deal of time to review our colleagues' work (and to prepare our own for review), and take that responsibility very seriously. Good departments work to facilitate this process. There are certainly some broken departments out there (and universities which encourage such things), but the terrain is far less bleak than you make it out to be.

-Carter

My own experience in a certain Ivy League English department also suggests that the majority of tenure cases move forward with relatively little controversy. However, a lack of controversy hardly implies a thorough, ethical, or fair review process! For a start, the department to which I refer does not hire non-leftist faculty as a matter of (unwritten) policy, so controversial ideological dissent rarely arises as an issue. The department also makes candidates' race and gender primary criteria in its internal review process, thus ensuring that women and minorities almost always get tenure while white men almost always do not. Such shady practices, and the dubious logic of reparation that underpins them, are completely acceptable and uncontroversial within the "progressive" confines of an English department. But here's the rub: because everyone knows from the outset who will and who will not get tenure, intradepartmental peer review is a joke. Faculty rarely consider each other's work in any significant detail -- in fact, the department chair once approached me on the eve of a tenure vote (I was then a graduate student) to ask if I'd read the candidate's scholarship, and if so, could I please give him something to say about it! When a white male assistant professor asked why his tenure vote was so overwhelmingly negative, his chairman, at a loss for anything resembling cogent scholarly critique, cited the candidate's "unprofessorial" attire as a major issue. Everyone knows the department works in this nod-nod, wink-wink way, and most people are entirely pleased with the status quo. Everything appears to work professionally, harmoniously, rigorously, and without controversy, yet the reality is as corrupt and petty as it could possibly be.

Consider, too, that a very long preselection process determines who comes up for tenure in the first place. Again, I offer the example of English. The preselection process starts in the undergraduate classroom, where conservative and/or male students quickly realize that professors find their opinions and perspectives abhorrent. Even if such students remain in the major, they certainly don't apply for graduate study; this produces a graduate application pool that is heavily skewed by gender and by ideological leaning. Demographic and political favoritism during the admissions process further ensures that English doctoral programs are overwhelmingly populated by white, left-wing feminist women, with a few Hispanics or blacks sprinkled here and there in the name of diversity. Openly biased hiring practices then ensure that liberal women and minorities with appropriately "radical" dissertations secure the vast bulk of jobs. These are the people who come up for tenure. Most receive it without controversy, not because their ideas are bold and original, but because they've spent 12+ years grooming themselves as perfect exemplars of a Marxist-feminist academic establishment.

I'm not claiming that English is a representative discipline (I understand that it's on the idiotarian fringe of most universities), nor that the department cited above is typical. My point is that "lack of controversy" can itself be evidence of corruption. A healthy degree of controversy is natural; a complete absence of controversy is rather suspect.

Erin: I read your blog - whatever you want to call it - a lot, and find it very interesting. I must say, you've convinced me that I'm glad I went to law school* instead of graduate school. (In the humanities, no less, arg!)

* Not that law school doesn't have tons of issues, but that's another story.

I'm starting to think that universities might want to re-think the idea of having tenure at all, at least for the average professor. I say, let's grandfather in everyone who already has tenure or who has already been given a tenure-track job, but make the job just like every other job for anyone else, except for the rare Einstein-types who are at the very top of their field and can't be be attracted any other way.

I'd love to have "tenure" at my job, but I'm under no illusion that it will ever happen. Still, I acknowledge that there may be a reason why academe should be different; if so I look forward to hearing it.

Xrlq,

See the Scots Sausage's first post (2/18, 3:50pm) for why tenure can be a valuable part of academic freedom.

The best idea I've heard is to make tenure less of an all-or-nothing, high-stakes game. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories has "rolling tenure" for its faculty. Tenure is granted for a period of time (three years?), then extended by annual renewal. Denial of tenure means that your contract terminates after a set time (two years?)

This system offers departments more flexibility and the prospect of more renewal, at the expense of some protection of academic freedom. Given the circumstances of those of us outside the Academy (eg, I am an at-will employee entitled to 2 weeks' severance pay), tenure of this sort still seems like a pretty good deal.

Universities might want to reconsider the notion of tenure?

Memo to faculty with their heads in the sand: Universities already _are_ reconsidering the notion of tenure.

I'm no "futurist," just a humble historian. But I will venture the following prediction: tenure as we know it will be abolished within the next twenty years.

Universities (ie university administrations, ie the ones who really run the show) face stiff opposition from tenured faculty. But while tenured faculty are quick to defend their own privileges, and love to talk in a high strain about such noble ideals as academic freedom, they have adopted a very short-sighted and ruinous policy of neglect and indifference concerning the growing use of contingent (ie, non-tenured and non-tenurable) academic labor. Tenure is being eliminated through attrition: tenure-track positions are slowly but surely being replaced by adjunct and limited term contracts.

And since the public now believe (wrongly, I think, but that's another matter) that tenure is a corrupt institution designed to harbor loony lefties and radicals, it won't be too difficult for state legislatures and university administrators to take the next step, which will be to abolish tenure outright. Thatcher did it in 1988. It could, and I think will, happen here.

Invisible--

From outside, it seems that the broader application of a diluted form of tenure could still protect academic freedom, and help the career prospects of large proportion of faculty. On both counts, this seems preferable to the current system, and to the abolition of the institution.

Tenure is a way of protecting academic freedom against threats from *outside* the university; however, it is totally ineffective at protecting academic freedom against threats originating from *inside the university itself*. Indeed, it may exacerbate those threats by creating an "old guard" with unchallengeable authority. In practice, it seems to operate in a manner similar to a medieval guild system in its blocking of innovation (although it does *not* seem to insure good standards of workmanship as the guilds did.)

I think David Foster is exactly right when he states that tenure protects against _outside_ but not against _inside_ threats to academic freedom.

I believe the tenure system breeds conformity and stifles originality and innovation. Or, since "originality" and "innovation" are the order of the day, I would suggest that it breeds conformity to a narrow model of just what constitutes originality and innovation. The premium on novelty, the emphasis on "theory," the intellectual faddishness that so many (mainly, though not exclusively conservative) critics decry...I think a good part of this has to do with the tenure system, with its research model and its imperative to "publish or perish."

In many humanities disciplines, there just isn't that much that is new under the sun. There's not enough substantive new material to supply meaningful _research_ projects for large numbers of scholars. But research is an important requirement for promotion and tenure. Hence the trend toward increasingly specialized and increasingly arcane "research" that claims to offer an "original" and "innovative" approach ("breathtakingly original," "genuinely innovative," and "a dizzying tour de force"...), but that is too often a reductive and paint-by-numbers application of the latest theoretical trend du jour. I am more and more inclined to think we should see ourselves as providing intelligent and educated commentary rather than engaging in new "research." But this would mean we would all have to cut back on the publication of articles and books that will only ever be read by a handful of specialists from within our own sub-fields, and of course the publication of such work is a central component of the peer review process.

Quality over quantity, in other words. If academics could publish less work, they could publish more work that had more lasting value. Of course this won't happen, because the quantitative measurement of publications (how many lines on the CV) has become one of the ways of making cuts in overcrowded fields.

Do I sound like a cranky conservative? I swear I am not. Just your basic liberal progressive feminist who is having a bad hair day (and who is increasingly disturbed and disgusted by the inadequate response of tenured faculty to what is surely a very real crisis in the humanities).

In any case, tenured faculty need to wake up and confront the fact that tenure is under attack. I believe tenure as we know it _will_ be abolished. But it may be possible to cut a new deal, perhaps some sort of limited tenure system of renewable 3- or 5-year terms.

I doubt that tenure will be abolished. First of all, if the majority of schools will start to offer less tenured positions, probably some schools/dept's will decide to offer *more* tenured positions to attract qualified applicants (who will always exist). Second, why will the legislature want to bother with smth as removed from the mainstream public as the issue of tenure?

My suggestion would be to go visit the national AAUP website.