Meritocracy Shmeritocracy

This recent blog post -Recipe # 150: How to Lay Claim to Dignity.- from Kiese Laymon of Vassar on his tenure case was brought to my attention via Twitter and I think it is important to share with readers of this blog – http://kieselaymon.com/?p=1697.

The following quote is from his post – ” The burden of proof [regarding his contract with his publisher] here seems incredibly invasive, but the request by the Chair of FASC to edit out what s/he deems as “personal information” is more than infantilizing. Though I am your junior colleague, I am not a child.” I thank him for writing this post and forcing a level of transparency on the complete unprofessionalism he has experienced during his tenure review.

Point by point, I am going through the hazing you describe in your article. So much so, and with such specificity, it’s as though you interviewed me. I deleted my first response in this comment section for fear of retaliation should my identity be discovered. That, in itself, proves the validity of your words.
Thank you.

The author’s “radical overhaul of the process” describes exactly what’s done in my department at a comprehensive state university in the Southeastern U.S. Nothing seems radical about it to us.

While much of the tenure process is indeed stupid and unreasonable, this post is rife with naivete. As several comments point out (intentionally or not) there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ definition of adequacy, and most of use would probably agree with that. (There have been some mighty brilliant, very brief dissertations, and I don’t think our humanist colleagues would like to be held to bench science publication standards.) And laying out specific requirements for tenure success leaves the unit and institution open to an obligation to retain someone who is not suitable – even reprehensible – for non-metric reasons. We need a way to divest ourselves of intolerable colleagues. While the system needs overhaul (especially to account for collaborative work), the issues reaised here may not be the most important or even solvable.

Tenure is indeed hazing, but there is another level here that the discussion has not directly addressed. Sometimes it is not the department that is a problem, but school personnel committees, which take it upon themselves to overturn departmental decisions and are not accountable to anyone except to their own sometimes idiosyncratic definitions of academic eminence.

I think these comments how just how pernicious tenure has become. Like (male) athletes on a team, hazing is a ritual that must be endured by all, never questioned, and then inflicted on the next generation out of tradition and habit. And when hazing (or initiations) come under fire, we point to culprits and say, it’s not US, it’s THEM. There’s nothing wrong with the SYSTEM, but the people implementing it. I made it through, so should you, quit your whining, and suck it up.

If a system is so easily abused and the source of abuse, the problem is clearly systematic rather than a few bad apples spoiling it for the rest of us. We are so blinded by our devotion to “tenure” and what it stands for (never mind that 75% of faculty won’t ever even have the opportunity to earn tenure) that we refuse to admit that it needs changing. Tenure doesn’t need to be “easier” to get, but it would benefit from increased transparency. Part of the problem is knowing that if you chuck one out, there are sometimes hundreds more just waiting desperately to take their place. We know we can get away with abusing the process because there is such a huge class of desperate, scared PhDs who are willing to put up with any sort of dehumanizing abuse for even the hope of a tenure-track job, let alone tenure.

Lest you think I am being hyperbolic, read the essays Mary links to. Go over to insidehiered.com or adjunctnation.com and read about the stories. And then remember that most people on the tenure-track or hoping to one day get a tenure-track position are too scared to write their stories lest their be any form of retaliation. That is the greatest abuse: the silence that is demanded of the non-tenured faculty. The only voices that are allowed to be heard are those who “made it” and often they have little sympathy for those who don’t.

I have used this stat before, but there is something wrong with a system that has a 75% failure rate (non-tenured faculty member). The problem is no longer those who are failing but the tests we are expected to take. Some of you accuse Mary of being naive. I say that that is the post calling the kettle black. Keep hiding your head in the sand saying tenure works just fine.

Are all junior faculty demoralized? Bitter and jaded? Do none of them receive mentoring? Though there is certainly some ambiguity in the tenure process, the alternative would a rigid “bean counting” system that would almost certainly lead to demoralized, bitter and jaded junior faculty. I was reviewed annually by my department head as an assistant professor with “grades” provided on different aspects of my performance. On an annual basis my progress toward tenure was reviewed by my tenure committee, the department head, and briefly by all tenured faculty in the department. My third year review package was reviewed at all levels. Using that feedback as well as my own initiative and insight, I directed my efforts accordingly.

7738373863: I agree — extensive mentoring may not be able to convey to a person just what is expected of him/her. A clear set of written standards, however, would make it very easy for a person to, as you say, “get it”.

I recently survived the tenure process at our seminary but not without battle scars. Because of a freeze on tenure till their could be a review of the policy there was a backlog of those qualified. So–to further brutalize the process, the President influenced the Board to “prioritize” and give tenure over a roughly 3.5 year period in the name of Presidential flexibility. In the final analysis, I made the first cut but not without feeling alienated from my also-deserving colleagues. The damage to our seminary community is nearly irreparable.

Dear Churchill,

Your article = Yes.

I cannot thank you enough for helping to fight this hideous gutter trash stuck at the top of the ivory tower’s spire.

Gomawoyo.

I am sorry to hear that this sort of “hazing” continues into professional, postdoc life.  I have made a rather non-traditional journey through the academy myself–working outside the university environment and as an adjunct lecturer in between degrees.  Because of this, I am a bit older than many of my fellows at the dissertation stage of their PhD programs.  Also because of this, I find myself ever more appalled at the level of pure bull**** in which smart professionals must engage just to keep food on the table.  This seems to be a colossal waste of intellect and academic talent.

I have used the exact term “hazing” to describe the PhD process to people (particular those who do not work in the academy) many times.  The rules are arbitrary and ever-changing, and the committee, so supportive and encouraging during one’s coursework, suddenly become a brigade of petty gatekeepers just when candidates reach the end of their studies.  The tenure process you describe sounds very similar–I imagine these candidates are enthusiastically hired, in a really tight job market, and feel they’ve really gotten somewhere.  Then the rules change.  The whole process of bureaucratic hoop-jumping, departmental politics, and writing towards an ever-shifting objective becomes a labyrinthine exercise in futility.

The dissertation process, of which I am finally nearing the end, has sapped the joy of intellectual inquiry and turned it into a mundane beating that I look forward to being free of.  And for all this, I suppose, the ultimate reward will be to continue to go through the same stuff endlessly, that is, if one is lucky enough to get a tenure track position anywhere.  I have just been hired as a full-time, salaried lecturer at a liberal arts university, the same job I held before I started my doctorate.  Even though this type of job is not glamorous, it does not require a perpetual adolescence/apprenticeship with an ambiguous reward at the end.  As an older student, I’m not interested in spending my whole professional life in limbo.  I realize that as a married person with a stable second income, I do have the luxury of choice that many students, young and indebted, will not have.  The whole situation seems sad and contrary to the ideals of education and academic studies.