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[swann]

David Perlmutter's most recent article about professionalizing the P&T process contains one interesting observation about the "respect" factor.  Trying to meet the rising expectations for tenure, today's junior faculty find it difficult to have a healthy respect for those who are in a position of making a life-or-death decision on their career--"old guys—who couldn't get tenure today—judging me on whether I should get tenure."

I have little respect for my senior colleagues as scholars but I admire them as wonderful individuals.  This creates a sort of cognitive dissonance and I'm glad to see this to be discussed as a general problem in today's academy. 

I have two questions. 

1.To those who similarly experience this dissonance, I would like to ask how successfully they think they are concealing their disapproving assessment of their senior colleagues' scholarship (or non-existence thereof) and how they deal with long-term psychological impacts of this continual concealment on their mental health.  It's bad form to tell to a scholar's face that he isn't doing a good job, so decorum compels us to withhold our candid evaluations.  More obviously, it is politically suicidal to do so.  But, to have those whom we deem mediocre or much worse to pass judgment on our scholarship can be infuriating.  How do you sublimate your fury?

2. To those senior people who are aware that they wouldn't have gotten tenure by today's standards, how do they justify this ironic situation where the less qualified and less productive evaluate the more qualified and more productive?  What kind of rationalizing narratives do they construct to make sense of their ironic position?  Perlmutter supplies one possible line of justification: "had we been required to meet today's expectations in the 70s, we would have worked harder.  You are comparing apples with oranges."  I find this an interesting, and even convincing to some extent, argument.  Are there any other narratives these senior people commonly rely on?

Thanks!

[spyzowin]

Perlmutter supplies one possible line of justification: "had we been required to meet today's expectations in the 70s, we would have worked harder.  You are comparing apples with oranges."  I find this an interesting, and even convincing to some extent, argument. 

Perlmutter would be well advised to remember that apples and oranges are easily compared.

http://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume1/v1i3/air-1-3-apples.html

[oldfullprof]

I actually think my two senior colleagues are pretty good scholars -- well one of them is (OCD); the other is really smart but has been underproductive (I'm not including people in our department slightly senior to me.)  But they're both so friggen patronizing at times.  One of them is a sneak who likes to creep around at set stuff up behind the scenes.  The other is clinically OCD, and gets angry at anyone who does not appear to share his fears.  He believes the campus operates and should operate like it was 1975.  (It's changed.)  He also believes in some weird droit de siegneur where you're supposed to get stuff for him he hasn't merited.  He'll get angry if you don't.

The odd thing is that I can like each of them for months on end.  Then they'll do something I consider unacceptable or dishonorable.  I've often thought (and this pertains to everyone in the department) that I like 90 percent of who they are, and find the other 10 percent unacceptable.   

[barred_owl]

Interesting questions, swann.  You might wish to post a link to the original article, however, so that others may evaluate Perlmutter's position before they respond.

Based on the portion you've excerpted, however, one thing that stands out is that the scenario of "old guys" vs. "young'uns" is, perhaps, too extreme.  IMO, it's not that clear-cut.  Not every department consists of tenured deadwood reviewing more well-published junior faculty; in fact, I'd guess that most don't.  There may be a range of experiences among the tenured faculty, with some of the more recently tenured individuals possessing a mindset similar to that of those going up for tenure and only a few of the "old guys" weighing in.  Would you consider last year's successfully tenured associate prof to be one of those old guys?  Chances are that that new associate prof might very well be on the committee who is evaluating your record for tenure. 

I'll be interested to see what other forumites think about this statement from your original post:  "...those whom we deem mediocre..."  I guess my gut reaction, in answer to your question, is "Keep it to yourself."  You are the one being judged now, not your tenured colleagues, be they old guys, old gals, or freshly minted associate profs.  Just my two cents...

[oldfullprof]

Agree.  I'm chronologically the oldest person in the dept (I look 15 years younger than the two old guys) and the most published.  My academic writing career only dates back to 1996, however, when I was in grad school.  My guess is that, in our department, number of publications correlates positively with chronological age, more or less.  I've been at three campuses where it correlated negatively.

[scotia]

I have had several full chair colleagues who freely admit that they would probably not have been promoted to their chairs based on the current criteria. However, they also point to a very different environment now, with "a much greater rush to publish mentality" (the phrase is from a dean who gave a talk about successful academic careers at a conference I attended). So while my senior colleagues have fewer publications, at the time they were the leaders in their field. Each of their articles made a 'substantial' contribution (and yes, I have read some of them: while the methodology description would now be frowned upon, their work answered important questions and pointed to deficits in areas in which many are now carrying out research).

I hear young turks talking dismissively about the quantity, and sometimes quality, of publications from the past, and for researchers they are worryingly oblivious to contextual factors. Doubtless I am an oddity, but I find much of what is published now augments scholarship by an infinitesimally small step and is frankly often downright uninteresting, despite the elegant and rigorous methodology - the most frequent question I have when I read much of what is sent to me for review is "so what?".

[2much2do]

I was in a similar position - except that the tenured staff denied that the standards had changed.  So, those of us on TT would go to the tenure requirement meetings, and come back and say - "OMG, this is what we need to get tenure!"  But all the tenured staff, including the chair, would say - "No, that's not necessary"  It made it very difficult to argue for support, or fewer committee assignments. It worked out OK for the person who went up last year because she ignored the departmental advice, but the person going up next year has listened to the tenured faculty and believes that the department recommendation will be all that matters.  I fear it will be a disaster - supported by the department but shot down by the T&P committee.

[imawakenow]

You might wish to post a link to the original article, however, so that others may evaluate Perlmutter's position before they respond.

Here's the link:

http://chronicle.com/article/Professionalize-Promotion-a/64223/

[jackit]

...

The odd thing is that I can like each of them for months on end.  Then they'll do something I consider unacceptable or dishonorable.  I've often thought (and this pertains to everyone in the department) that I like 90 percent of who they are, and find the other 10 percent unacceptable.   

Ha!  I feel the same about many of my colleagues!

[scampster]

Swann, chances are, 25 years from now, that the new tenure track faculty will be saying the same thing about your productivity (if the upward trend in number of pubs, etc. continues). Gosh, how can you live with yourself! Being so... mediocre!

[sagit]

Why waste time and energy disapproving of colleagues or worrying about their lack of productivity? Focus on your own work, be polite to everyone (the golden rule doesn't change depending on tenure status and length of cv), and get tenure and respect in your field.

You make a good point, Lizzy.  But on the other hand, departments like 2much2do's department demonstrate why this might be a problem.  If senior faculty are not productive it may be a sign that they do not see productivity as a value for junior faculty either.  This then leads to poor mentoring at the least and outright falsehoods about tenure at the worst.  In my own department, I worry about the lack of protection from MAJOR service for the junior faculty by the senior faculty.  I am junior and feel that I have done an OK job at protecting myself (I at least avoid volunteering for committees in my department more often than some of the other junior faculty).  I also have the most publications of any of the junior faculty (I'm in my 4th year - I think I might have as many as the other 4 combined and 2 of them are ahead of me - I worry that they will get tenured).

[onion]

<snip>
 There may be a range of experiences among the tenured faculty, with some of the more recently tenured individuals possessing a mindset similar to that of those going up for tenure and only a few of the "old guys" weighing in.  Would you consider last year's successfully tenured associate prof to be one of those old guys?  Chances are that that new associate prof might very well be on the committee who is evaluating your record for tenure. 
<snip>

Because of earlier economic "crises" in my former state, hiring freezes had resulted in a really skewed department. There was one associate professor, and he had been tenured in the late 1980s.  There were 6 of us on the tenure track, and about 6 full professors (who had all been there about 30 years each).  Only one of the full professors had published anything more substantial than a book review.  And in this department, full profs had "earned" lower teaching loads and service obligations than the TT folks.  The T&P research expectations (which had been re-written in the 1980s, in the 1990s, and around 2002) were an "excellent" in research (which was defined as a book with a university press, another book project underway, and an "international scholarly reputation"), in addition to "excellent" in teaching and "very good" or "excellent" in service.  We were required to serve on 2 major and 1 minor departmental committee, 1 college committee, and 1 University committee--and that would only get you a rating of "satisfactory".  (Did I mention we had 4/4 teaching loads, and our survey courses were over 100 students and we had no TAs?) To earn an "excellent" in service you needed to serve one of our disciplinary associations as a board member or some-such. 

The full professors relished in wielding their power, writing scathing annual reports of the TT folks and regularly dumping people at mid-tenure review for a lack of research productivity and for failing to land board positions with the OAH (laughable, isn't it?). Then they'd offer them long-term, non-TT, renewable contract positions.  So, yeah, it was really hard for me to see how it could be fair for these guys to be reviewing me, as they had all pooled their power to make sure they didn't do the majority of the work (and then b*tched when they didn't like the way we'd handled something in a college curriculum committee meeting or at a faculty senate meeting. Seriously, then don't elect a first-year, TT prof to the fac. senate or the curriculum committee!).

When I was told (verbally, not in writing) in my second year that I was unlikely to get tenure because my book wasn't likely to have many *reviews* by the time I went up, I hit the market hard.

I'm now in a new place where I'm likely to get tenure, and have been reassured of this by senior people.  However, I wish that despite their confidence in me, that they'd do a bit more to protect junior people from service.  It's nice that they keep electing TT people to important department and college committees, but if one more person says to me "your book is already out, so the research portion of your tenure profile is set, so you have more time for service" I'm going to freak out.  I don't like feeling like I'm being punished for being productive, and there's more research I'd like to do.  I don't like serving on the curriculum committee, moderating the department's listserve, serving on the library committee, sitting on the university's classroom committee, sitting on an interdisciplinary grad program's curriculum committee, and serving on a union subcommittee in my first year.  I don't like that I'm doing way more than many of my senior colleagues (some of whom are younger than me, or very recently tenured--I feel like they're passing the buck as these are mostly elected positions and we're not allowed to say no to elected positions).  I don't feel like this is a good use of my time or resources in my first year, as I'm acclimating to a new culture and workplace.

This turned into more of a rant than a response.  Sorry.  I'm not going to delete this though because I find that I'm reacting emotionally to the topic rather than rationally or intellectually, and I think it demonstrates some of the complexities of the system, as Perlmutter pointed out.

[barred_owl]

What an awful experience at your first place, onion.  Did you feel as though, had you stayed through the tenure process, that the higher-ups would have agreed with the department on the tenure recommendation?

There's probably no way to know, apart from anecdotal evidence, whether or not administrators would recognize what's going on with departments like that and subsequently choose to reverse a department's negative decision.  Of course, even if something like that could happen, living in that department afterward could be unpleasant, too.

[onion]

What an awful experience at your first place, onion.  Did you feel as though, had you stayed through the tenure process, that the higher-ups would have agreed with the department on the tenure recommendation?

There's probably no way to know, apart from anecdotal evidence, whether or not administrators would recognize what's going on with departments like that and subsequently choose to reverse a department's negative decision.  Of course, even if something like that could happen, living in that department afterward could be unpleasant, too.

The administration just rubber-stamped departmental decisions.  I watched several people get denied tenure or dumped at mid-tenure review.  It's a sick place.

[larryc]

A lot of this cognitive dissonance comes from the narrow world view of recently trained academics--peer reviewed publications are seen as the primary determinant of professional worth. Teaching might be a marginal bonus item. 

But you can't run a department where everyone teaches their courses then goes home to write. Sometimes the old guard contributes in ways that are not immediately apparent--community connections, institutional history and politics, advising and helping to create a camaraderie. But it takes some experience and some time in the department to be able to see these things.