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April 20, 2007
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Red herring?
The tenure process is eminently abusable--and personal issues such as a candidate's popularity or politics can and do play a big role in the process, especially in the softer disciplines where subjective assessment is the norm. But academic administrators never admit to this--or, if they do, they admit to it only as a hypothetical that just never comes true on their watch.
A piece in the Daily Princetonian marks a jawdropping exception to this rule--so much so that I wonder if the quote was taken out of context, and I would not be surprised if the dean quoted denies saying what the paper reports him as saying. The article is devoted to the Norman Finkelstein tenure debacle at DePaul, wherein questions of ideology and professional quality have become hopelessly entangled. And it contains this remarkable passage:
Despite its heated rhetoric, the DePaul controversy is not unique in academia. At many schools, administrators and senior faculty have difficulty in deciding whether to draw a line between scholarship and political views when evaluating candidates for tenure.Princeton does take into consideration professors' politics in making its tenure decisions, Dean of the Faculty David Dobkin said. "We do allow a candidate's political views to influence our opinions," he said in an email.
If that's true in the way the article suggests, then Princeton has got itself a very big problem -- not because it is behaving less ethically than other institutions, but because it is being honest about something that colleges and universities cannot afford to admit.
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Comments:
The from Dobkin has been corrected.
The original version of this article quoted an e-mail from Dean of the Faculty David Dobkin saying that the University takes professors' political views into account during the tenure process. Dobkin actually meant to write that the University does not consider political views.
Dr. O'Connor,
Dr. Finkelstein was awarded his doctoral degree in 1988. I suspect very few aspirant professors remain salable for tenured positions after nineteen years of visiting and adjunct positions (and if I am not mistaken, Dr. Finkelstein has been denied tenure or dismissed from more than one institution). One has to consider the possibility that he may have been hired because of his politics. Also, his signature is slapping the label 'hoax' and 'fraud' on the work and person of academicians and journalists who have published research and theses not to his liking. That other faculty might not wish to be lashed to such a person until he retires (and to subject students or miscellaneous college employees to him) is a defensible reason to unload him. One also has to consider that DePaul is a residually Catholic institution and may retain some semblance of an architectonic mission to which they are willing to admit and which they persue. How would Dr. Finkelstein's employment advance such a mission?
Art,
I am not defending Finkelstein. I am marveling at Princeton -- and, it now seems, I was correct to doubt the accuracy of the student reporter.
"One also has to consider that DePaul is a residually Catholic institution and may retain some semblance of an architectonic mission to which they are willing to admit and which they p[u]rsue."
I think "nominally" would be more accurate than "residually." There might be individual professors who have that sense of mission, but as for the overall direction of the school, you might be giving DePaul more credit than its entitled to.
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