Last week I entered the sacred space of “tenured faculty.” Needless to say, I’m thrilled. Who wouldn’t be? My colleagues and I giddily toasted “job security for life,” but we all swallowed our vodka with the cynical knowledge that the ideal and the reality of tenure are not one and the same.
According to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), tenure is
an arrangement whereby faculty members, after successful completion of a period of probationary service, can be dismissed only for adequate cause or other possible circumstances and only after a hearing before a faculty committee.
Because tenure prevents professors from being dismissed without cause, it is the best and primary mechanism “to protect academic freedom.”
Obviously we need academic freedom. During the course of my career I have witnessed historical moments when it was dangerous to question the logic of preemptive invasion, torture, and religiously-motivated wars. At other historical moments, communist and/or homosexual tendencies were enough to get you thrown out of academe. Protecting professors, allowing them to speak out against the prevailing ideologies of our time, is a necessary part of democracy. Not unlike having an independent press, something which the corporate control of media has diminished considerably in the past three decades.
Sadly tenure is going the way of investigative journalism. Only one fourth of university professors have tenure with another ten percent on tenure track. That is, your chances of getting a tenure line upon completion of your Ph.D. are now pretty slim and your chances of eventually getting tenure are now slim to none.
The increasing scarcity of tenure means that the standards for getting it are getting more and more difficult to meet. At Middlebury, it is not unusual for older faculty to have received tenure without a single book, while those of us undergoing review now often have two books at the point of tenure.
Many professors and administrations are increasingly skeptical of tenure, as is the general public, for whom “job security for life” is a sign of institutional insanity, not commitment to democracy. But we shouldn’t throw the tenure baby out with the bath water of the tenure process. Tenure remains the best way to ensure that professors can publish and teach what they want and not be afraid of the consequences. The problem with tenure isn’t the end result, but a process that teaches junior faculty to be afraid, very afraid.
Imagine a tenure-track faculty member standing up at a faculty meeting and saying what she or he really means. Imagine that faculty member is facing a pre-tenure review, where he or she can be fired for reasons as vague as “not a good fit”? Who in their right mind would risk “job security for life” in order to say they think the administration is wrong, or the chair is wrong, or even that torture and preemptive war are wrong?
Only an idiot. Or someone unlikely to get tenure in the end. Because if there is one thing the probationary process of tenure ensures, it is abject terror in its subjects. Be nice to everyone, never speak up, never do anything too controversial. If you screw up your tenure line, then what? Where do you go from there? To a non-tenured job? To contract after contract dragging your family with you? No benefits, no retirement, no security?
And there’s the problem. If what we really want is to create a group of professors who will speak out against injustice, within academe and without, then we need to change the way tenure happens. Pre-tenure and tenure reviews have to be codified: one book, good teaching evaluations, committee service equals tenure NO MATTER WHAT. No book, mediocre teaching, not much service does not equal tenure NO MATTER WHAT. Even if the committee likes you, you are a “good fit,” and you are “just like them.”
Once tenure reviews are codified to ensure that everyone is judged according to the same standards then that terror that gnaws in the pit of every junior faculty member’s stomach—that they can be fired no matter how good they are—will subside. Once tenure reviews are open, then charges of phallic reproduction—whereby old white boys tenure young white boys just like them—will diminish.
And once tenure reviews are transparent, then even loud-mouthed, opinionated sorts like me might qualify for it, not just at a place as fair as Middlebury College, but all over the country. And a loud-mouthed, opinionated group of junior faculty members would be good for the academy and good for democracy.
16 Responses to Tenured
sherbygirl - December 15, 2010 at 1:20 pm
What about actually expanding how many people have the opportunity to earn tenure? You completely miss that elephant in the room, although you allude to it, mentioning the life of the untenured professor. The fear comes from the knowledge of what life is like without tenure. If more professors had access to the tenure-track, the process would become more humane, fairer, and diverse.
I’m happy you got tenure, despite your “loud-mouth” tendencies. Most of us don’t even have the opportunity to keep our mouths shut for tenure. We have to keep out mouths shut so we might get another class next semester.
rightwingprofessor - December 15, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Oh lovely you publish 2 books, each of which has a press run of 200 and is ready by half a dozen other scholars, all eagerly cranking out their own books. Whoop dee do!
goxewu - December 15, 2010 at 2:47 pm
On another thread, I said I was on my way out the commenting door until well into January, so this makes me a bit of a hypocrite. Or like Steve Martin leaving home in “The Jerk.” But, as part of my extended au revoir, two things about Professor Essig’s post:
1. It’s superb–common sense and limpid prose with a human touch (the vodka) about a tangled subject without oversimplifying it. And for those righties who are bound to chime in about Professor Essig’s leftist bias (yes, she has one): Just substitute a couple of the conservative notions that occasionally get candidates unfairly deprived of tenure (and I’ve seen it happen) for “communist and/or homosexual tendencies,” and her “NO MATTER WHAT” conclusion still stands. (Exception: The “old [straight] white boys” club now includes a lot of women, gays and minorities who also tend to find convenient reasons for tenuring their own. It’d be nice to know the composition of Professor Essig’s tenure committee.)
2. Although I don’t know of any surefire way to prevent the object of Professor Essig’s “NO MATTER WHAT” criterion, the infamous “collegiality” criterion, from being a tool of corruption, I don’t think that “collegiality” ought to be thrown out entirely. I’ve had colleagues who were good, even great, teachers, prolific publishers, and dedicated committee members who were also intolerable A-holes. They bullied untenured faculty members, voted weirdly and obstructed committee business thereby, ran roughshod over the staff, made personal comments about their colleagues’ perceived flaws, and backroom politicked in every hallway on campus. Keeping them on the faculty until, and into, their dotages did more harm to the department and its students as a whole than their virtues did good. There ought to be some way of getting rid of people like that. Ray of hope: Perhaps transparency could make “collegiality” a legitimate (although still third-tier) concern and relieve it of the automatic onus of being the concealed weapon of last resort.
opentosuggestion - December 15, 2010 at 3:33 pm
When I was in the US I sat for several years on our university’s promotion and tenure committee. During that time, the vast majority of tenure decisions were as mechanical as the process Essig suggests — to the extent that issues of quality (as opposed to sheer quantity) were rarely raised and, whenever they were, even when they were raised in external assessments, tended to be dismissed as too nebulous and subjective for the committee to react to neutrally. A better approach, in my view, is the one adopted by most countries outside the US, whereby every appointment is presumed permanent, and there is no tenured/non-tenured divide. It does in practice contribute to the kind of professional equality for fresh appointments that Essig rightly misses in the American system — and it certainly has no adverse affect on the quality or quantity of research (after all, everyone who enters university life at least wants to do good work). However, one shouldn’t overlook how many tools American universities have for dealing with tenured faculty: merit raises, teaching responsibilities, allocation of space and other such matters all come down, at least potentially, to personal administrative decisions not obviously unaffected by matters of so-called collegiality. In any case, Essig is right to highlight the irony of an institution that, although designed to preserve academic freedom, in practice denies it to candidates during the first several years of their careers.
trendisnotdestiny - December 15, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Dr. Essig,
Congratulations twice! Once for the receiving tenure and second for writing this article (your own version of transparency).
psel8105 - December 16, 2010 at 7:33 am
Get back to us in a few years when you’ve had to sit on tenure committees — “no matter what” is not as clearcut as you suggest. I’m sure it’s really fun having such a black/white few of the world, but so few tenure cases are so black/white, a small number of slam dunks either way notwithstanding.
Oh yeah — and who might those junior faculty denied tenure because of oppostion to torture, preemptive war, etc. be? The untenured are usually more afraid than they need to be and anyone who is willing to shut up and just take it for 6 years before being tenured is probably not going to change on receiving tenure. At that point, the notion that you can’t speak your mind or you won’t get promotion to full kicks in — as I’ve seen many times. Cowards and lazy louts remain that way even after tenure.
cleverclogs - December 16, 2010 at 8:12 am
I don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s acceptable for only half the faculty to have “academic freedom.” If we think something is important, if we think it leads to better courses and better teaching and possibly more productive scholarship, shouldn’t that something be a guarantee for all faculty the minute they step into the classroom?
It seems to me our collective energy could be better spent in defining not what constitutes a successful tenure bid but what constitutes wrongful termination at a university and then to apply that standard across the board.
baracoa - December 16, 2010 at 8:37 am
Universities are run by administrators, for administrators.
Even with union-based faculties, that is not likely to change.
The collegiality factor is the random variable in the regression model that can easily be the best predictor of tenure, regardless of what faculty handbooks say. Older unproductive associate and full professors (not to mention administrators who stopped engaging intellectually years back) are easily threatened by the outspoke jr. faculty.
As the author notes, such loud-mouth jr. faculty are a dying breed. Too bad, because they can illuminate and enrich the academy. We should celebrate them!
Faculty are easily threatened, which, alas, is a shame.
olmsted - December 16, 2010 at 10:34 am
I, too, have seen the reserved asst prof on probation continue on with that modus operandi after the Big Day occurs. Here’s to smart, savvy, productive tenure-track colleagues who, to borrow a phrase from a country song, ‘have a pair’. As an evil administrator (who apparently co-runs the university for him/herself), I value such folks. And I would add, I even watch for them to groom, as it were, as my replacement. Hey, if they can’t live on the edge and stand up for what’s right then I hope they don’t end up ‘administering’ my department.
As for rightwingprof, you sound like a faux-righty troll.
tappat - December 16, 2010 at 10:44 am
Stop with the supposed upping of meritorious achievement of tenure, as if conditions are identical today and 40 years ago, with only more of it demanded today. Living / being an ever advancing scholar in a small college town in the outskirts of Nowhere was a lot harder 40 years ago than it is today. Be that as it may, the important matter here is that so few professors are tenured. Tenure 85% of all faculty now. If you should not be tenured after teaching at your college for 6 years or 7 years or 10 years or 15 years, etc., you should not be teaching there anymore. I think most are worthy of tenure. Tenure them now. Stop pretending that there is any solution for problems associated with compromised academic freedom and intellectual vitality on our campuses other than tenure for a majority of the university faculty.
jkameron - December 16, 2010 at 11:33 am
Dr. Essig:
I can’t thank you enough for this piece. You are so on point. The current way the tenure process works at most institutions (the few exceptions prove the rule) is that it makes docile intellectuals. It is as process that breeds, in the worse ways, obedience.
I teach now at a R1 university and recently secured tenure. I speak out on issues regarding the future of my school and the discipline to which I contribute–because I care about both.
But I look around in faculty meetings (I’m thinking of the one we just had this past Monday) and note the utter submission that has been bred into my colleagues, including and especially the junior ones.
The junior or “young white boys” are silent because they are just glad to be there and the “older white boys” have their backs. They’re in line to become the “older white boys”. Many of them don’t speak because they’re interests are already represented and often vociferously argued for by “older white boys.”
But what of the other junior folks?
Well, I’m at a place where there are no junior people of color (I was the last loud-mouthed one before I was tenured, but I guess they said they don’t want another for fear s/he will be opinionated like me). But the junior white women, on their own admission to me, say that must be quite or they might not get reappointed (this has happened) or when they come up for tenure they will not get it (which has happened too).
In short Professor Essig, you’ve put your finger on something very important in this piece. Would that there were more wide-ranging conversations on these matters, conversations of the sort you’ve open up in this fine blog post.
I have but one concluding word to say: Thank you.
divalh - December 16, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Thank you from the strange land of Duke. Students really need to see their professors being brave. Courage is contagious, and so is fear. Organizing for GESO at Yale trained a good number of us to risk seemingly foolish solidarity. It was a game-changer. Here at Duke some of us are combining street theater with community organizing. These three quick and clean videos tell much of the story:
http://www.youtube.com/user/mgates333
fallen_angel - December 16, 2010 at 7:20 pm
In general, I agree with the arguments in this piece. However, I don’t think a “one book and you’re in” solution (or some other precise metric) is the answer. Shouldn’t quality be a determining factor? Academia has become too much of a numbers game. It’s responsible for the proliferation of scholarship, much of it of minimal value. All books and articles are not created equal, and they shouldn’t be treated as such come tenure review,
wdabc - December 17, 2010 at 4:15 am
Loud-mouthed, opinionated people would be good for the academy and good for democracy.
The era of “politically correct,” in my opinion, is damaging. It breeds secretive, hypocritical cowards who are capable of worse crimes than speaking their minds. A good administrator, etc. should welcome alternative solutions from faculty. Any administrator who surrounds him/herself with “yes” people should be fired.
Tenure is not worth the loss of your self respect!
jffoster - December 17, 2010 at 7:27 am
In general agreement with wdabc I am. However, there is a passage in the Professor Essig’s post original that keeps bothering me.
“If what we really want is to create a group of professors who will speak out against injustice, within academe and without, ….”
Is that what being a professor is primarily about? Is that what we really want? Or do we want them primarily to profess their disciplines, if they have one, and, as Stanley Fish has put it, “save the world on their own time”?
jffoster - June 21, 2011 at 10:35 pm
Heddiw Cymru, y byd yfory.