No Tenure for You, Says Baylor U.

The buzz in the blogosphere continues to focus on tenure, with special attention this week going to an unsettling story by the Baptist Press about the startling increase in the number of faculty members — most of them given the nod by their departments and the universitywide tenure committee — rejected for tenure by Baylor University’s administration (see recent posts at Tenured Radical, Lumpenprofessoriat, and Uncertain Principles).

According to the Baptist Press:

Forty percent of the 30 faculty up for tenure this year were denied, contrasted with 14 percent in 2007 and 11 percent in 2006, according to William Dembski, a former Baylor professor who now is research professor in philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

More significant than the spike in tenure denials is the fact that nine of the 12 faculty refused tenure by Baylor President John Mark Lilley had been approved by their departments and by the universitywide faculty tenure committee, Dembski said.

“In past years, with the rarest exceptions, every professor who was approved for tenure by his/her department and by the Baylor Tenure Review Committee was signed off by the administration/president and actually got tenure,” Dembski told the Baptist Press. “This year, nine people who were passed for tenure upstream ended up being denied by the president. This level of tenure denial is unheard of even at top institutions.”

The case bears a striking similarity to a 2004 battle at the University of North Texas, where 12 professors denied tenure cried foul, claiming the administration had raised its tenure requirements without telling them. The provost said the university had to raise its standards.