In 1986 my institution made no provision for pregnant professors. So the semester my daughter was due, I took a leave without pay. Because I was on leave, my institution stopped paying my benefits. The money from my six weeks' disability pay did not even cover the cost of my health insurance. And I paid in other ways too: The semester did not count toward the time I had to accrue on the job in order to earn a sabbatical, although I wrote a law review article during my leave that resulted in visiting offers from Harvard and two other top-ranked universities.
My daughter is now 15, and campus policies toward new parents have changed some -- but not enough. They could change a lot more if colleges and universities would follow the new "Statement of Principles on Family Responsibilities and Academic Work," adopted in November by the American Association of University Professors -- the AAUP's first major foray into work/life issues in more than a quarter of a century.
The news coverage of the new policy focused largely on its recommendation for stopping the tenure clock. While that's important, arguably it's less important than the innovative "active service/modified duties" proposal, which thus far has received little or no attention. I'll discuss both, and then talk about the important issue of actually putting these measures into practice.
Stopping the clock
The new AAUP policy extends the association's 1974 recommendation that professors, at their option, should be able to put the tenure process on hold. Now, for the first time, the association has recommended that even parents who do not take a leave of absence should be able to stop the tenure clock for up to one year for each child "if the faculty member (male or female) is a primary or coequal caregiver of newborn or newly adopted children."
My own history shows why it's important not to require parents to take a leave -- it may mean losing all work-related benefits, from health insurance to sabbatical credit. But The Chronicle's recent Colloquy discussion about the AAUP policy shows why stopping the tenure clock can be important. One mother wrote that when she adopted a child, she asked for a postponement of her tenure case and "was told by the chair that the university had not worked out all the details yet but that it was possible." During her semester leave, she published an article and submitted two others that were later accepted for publication. Still, she wrote, she was denied tenure. "The reason cited was that my research history was not consistent and that my submitted publications would not count. If I had been given a one-semester extension, I would have had no problems."
Academics get understandably apprehensive about the prospect of extending the probationary period, but the stop-the-clock provision is carefully delimited. It can be used only by a primary or coequal caregiver of a newborn or newly adopted child -- and can be used only twice. This is not a slippery slope, but a thoughtful proposal that abandons the stereotype that the ideal academic is someone who commands immunity from child care.
Martha West, a professor of law at the University of California at Davis and chairwoman of the AAUP subcommittee that developed the new policy, provided more evidence of the limited nature of stop-the-clock provision. At her institution, she noted, many moremothers preserve their option to stop the tenure clock than ultimately decide to do so. What's important is the option. At institutions that adopt the full panoply of AAUP suggestions, I suspect many caregivers ultimately will not have to stop the tenure clock because they will avail themselves of another AAUP proposal called "active service/modified duties."
Active service/modified duties
This marks the chief innovation of the AAUP's new policy. Modeled after a similarprovision at the University of California system, the modified-duties measure would provide faculty members with full or partial relief from teaching with no pay cut if requested by a faculty member who has "substantial responsibility" for care of a newborn or newly adopted child under the age of 5.
Ms. West brought the idea to the attention of the AAUP subcommittee. "I brought it up because I realized that virtually all mothers take advantage of active service/modified duties, but that very few end up stopping the clock," she said. "In the UC system, it's important to keep going because we don't get any merit raises unless we do scholarship. We can interrupt our teaching without losing progress towards our next merit raise. But not scholarship."
In other words, the UC system makes official what we all know: Scholarship is the coin of the realm at research institutions and those that aspire to that status. That's why active service/modified duties is so important.
"I believe reducing the workload is much more promising than stopping the clock," said Robert Drago, professor of labor and women's studies at Pennsylvania State University. "I've never seen anyone turned down for tenure because they've done less teaching. But less research will get you turned down every time." Continuing one's research is particularly important in the sciences, where it is often impractical to shut down alab. But even outside the sciences, cutting back on research is often impractical. Maybe research should not be the coin of the realm. But it is. And so long as it remains so, active service/modified duties is vitally important.
Putting policies into practice
As good as the AAUP recommendations are, they are not self-executing. Institutions must avoid the problem faced by many employers who attempt to implement "family-friendly" policies: good intentions abound, but the policies never translate into practice. Here are some tips for bridging the gap.
If an institution tells a candidate that it is stopping the tenure clock, it has the responsibility -- ethically and perhaps legally -- to make sure the clock is, in fact, stopped. Department heads must be trained to ensure that someone who took eight years to complete a seven-year tenure track because she stopped the clock for a year is judged by the standards normally applied to a seventh-year candidate.
Why? When people stop the clock to care round-the-clock for an infant they already have a job: caring for the infant. They cannot be expected to do another job, i.e. research; if they are, then professors with infants are required to do two jobs whereas professors without infants are required to do only one. This is not only unfair; given the demography of infant care, in some circumstances it may also be sex discrimination.
Stories abound about situations where outside reviewers judge candidates who have stopped the tenure clock as if the clock had never stopped. This is not only unethical, it is unwise from a legal standpoint, for it represents a situation where a job candidate has been misled. To avoid unintentional misrepresentation requires both training of department heads, and clear communication to outside reviewers that failure to use a proper standard may present legal problems for the university that hasrequested their help in evaluating a candidate.
Now let me turn to the active service/modified duties proposal. Here's a fact: Allowing someone to cut back on teaching by requiring someone else in the department to teach those courses at no additional pay will not work. That's not the way to implement this idea, it's the way to subvert it.
A very simple management principle is this: Do not require anyone to work for free. Instituting a modified-duties policy is not free. The price tag is the cost of an adjunct to cover the teaching duties of the new parent, who can continue to supervisegraduate students and perhaps do some committee work. So the department, if it hires an adjunct, will not have to place a new parent in the situation of triggering resentment by exploiting her colleagues. To make this work will require financial support from the central administration for the hiring of temporary instructors.
If implemented correctly, the AAUP policy could be a first step toward broader policies that cover not only child care, but also other family responsibilities such as the care of aging parents and seriously ill partners. The statement of principles is an important first step in acknowledging that, for a limited number of the 20 or 30 years oftheir careers, serious academics may also have serious familial responsibilities.
