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[prytania3]

Trade books are probably more valuable than publishing peer-reviewed articles in tiny little journals that 15 people, tops, read.  Calling people who publish trade books "deadwood" is out of line.  Their ability to take ideas and get the public interested (as evidenced from trade book publishing) is, in my judgment, much more impressive than peer-reviewed publishing in the North Montana Underwater Basketweaving Journal of Important Textile Things.

"Deadwood" is an offensive term used almost exclusively to refer to senior faculty and it was a mistake to use it.

Thank you, Anthroid.

[nocalprof]

What's an appropriate term for a faculty member that was tenured under a system that had substantially lighter research requirements than those now in place for junior faculty members, who is explicitly not interested in doing publishable research, teaching at a high level, or performing service duties?  There certainly are enough of these cases to warrant a label (just as there are plenty of clueless untenured newbies out there too).

To answer the OP's question, we have one faculty member (let's call him a subfossil arboreal fragment) who literally says "No way in hell I'm sitting on that committee" any time the chair specifically asks him to sit on a committee.  Doesn't matter if its department, college, or university level.  And then he smirks and giggles.

A colleague thinks he does this specifically to drive up the bloodpressure of the junior faculty (all of whom are _required_ to sit on both departmental and college committees) but I don't think he's that malicious.  He just doesn't give a crap about the institution.

[onion]

What's an appropriate term for a faculty member that was tenured under a system that had substantially lighter research requirements than those now in place for junior faculty members, who is explicitly not interested in doing publishable research, teaching at a high level, or performing service duties?  There certainly are enough of these cases to warrant a label (just as there are plenty of clueless untenured newbies out there too).

To answer the OP's question, we have one faculty member (let's call him a subfossil arboreal fragment) who literally says "No way in hell I'm sitting on that committee" any time the chair specifically asks him to sit on a committee.  Doesn't matter if its department, college, or university level.  And then he smirks and giggles.

A colleague thinks he does this specifically to drive up the bloodpressure of the junior faculty (all of whom are _required_ to sit on both departmental and college committees) but I don't think he's that malicious.  He just doesn't give a crap about the institution.

I know a term that can cover both tenured and untenured faculty who behave in uncollegial ways:  asshat.

[prytania3]

What's an appropriate term for a faculty member that was tenured under a system that had substantially lighter research requirements than those now in place for junior faculty members, who is explicitly not interested in doing publishable research, teaching at a high level, or performing service duties?  There certainly are enough of these cases to warrant a label (just as there are plenty of clueless untenured newbies out there too).

Sometimes they're called political animals, so it would behoove you not to get up into everyone's business. And what do you call junior faculty who get up into everyone's business instead of minding their own? Are you the chair? The dean? The provost? I thought not. Everyone works hard before tenure--it's called paying your dues, and it's amazing how much whining I hear from junior faculty on this board about doing what everybody else did. People who complain about "deadwood" will be the death of tenure, and I'll laugh like a hyena when tenure is no more.

[neutralname]

Sorry to those who find the term "deadwood" offensive.  But "do-nothing blowhard" is more of a mouthful. 

It's all relative.  I expect I'd be called deadwood in many departments.  The deadwood in my school are still breathing, and they provoke students to complain.  So they are active in their own way.

I've been noticing the difference in style between pleasant faculty who say "X is a lovely person but not very productive or helpful to have around" and the potty-mouths who use terms like "deadwood."  But they mean basically the same.  The pleasant speakers tend to get elected to more positions of power though.  It's more political to speak nicely on campus.  Even here, people seem to be quite sensitive.  Why so thin-skinned?

The threat to tenure comes from the administrators hiring 70, 80, 90% adjuncts in some departments.  Tenure won't be abolished, it will just be phased out. 

[testingthewaters]

Plus, it's harder to yell with half a muffin in your mouth.

I just had to point out grassy's words to live by. Indeed. Many a departmental disaster could have been avoided if only a muffin was shoved in the mouth of one of the perps.

[mountainguy]

I just had to point out grassy's words to live by. Indeed. Many a departmental disaster could have been avoided if only a muffin was shoved in the mouth of one of the perps.

And even more department disasters would be averted if the muffins contained a certain illicit substance :).
(I can't believe I just said that, but it's true).

[observer3]

But then the karma caught up with them and they were mostly deported, arrested, killed, fell down stairs, retrenched, retired.

That's not to say their ghosts don't still haunt us.  

I will be laughing at this for some time.

[venuvian]

Tenure won't be abolished, it will just be phased out. 

Just as "life-time employment" has been phased out by industry over the past several decades.  Behavior in industry likely never deteriorated quite like it sometimes does in academia, but the "phase out" happened just the same.

[upallnight]

Our department meetings are not raucous, but they are also not places where people feel that they can voice opinions or ask questions.  We have a department head, not a chair.  We also have a micromanaging dean. So the meetings are a place where we are told what is going to be...period.  There is this bizarre pretense of asking for our input and asking votes.  However, regardless of our input, we are given our marching orders and that is that.  We don't choose what we teach, when we teach, etc.  If the head likes you, you are fine.  If the head doesn't like you, you get what you get.  We are treated like hourly employees.  Honestly, the staff have more power than the faculty.  If a staff member (who has a good relationship with the head) doesn't like you, you can really be hurt.  Staff who are incompetent are kept on and faculty punished for pointing out staff errors. 

Faculty are not empowered to do anything about it.  Those who try to rally the troops get punished. 

So ... a peaceful faculty meeting can also result from a beaten down, detached, fearful faculty.

[mad_doctor]

In general, my departments and colleagues have been functional, but beseiged over the years.  Long-term beseige fatigue wears even the best people down.  When that happens, the frustrations and negative forces begin to express themselves.  One colleague a few years back began hu's career as a competent and well-respected scholar, good teacher, and affable colleague.  Hu made tenure and promotion to associate despite the Dean's recommendation against (something to do with a tie-breaker vote on the curriculum committee).  The Dean then swore in public that hu would be promoted only over his dead body.  Hu had been an associate professor for almost 20 years when I arrived, although the Dean who cursed hu had been gone for more than a decade.  Many people may have described hu as a problem senior faculty, but I believed hu had already earned a pass on that allegation.  So, I suppose I'm saying that whenever I encounter senior colleagues with bad behavior, I just remind myself to not be like that when I become senior faculty.

[skaking]

deadwood deadwood deadwood! that's for all the lazy senior profs who publish nothing and engage in no kind of service to anyone but their sorry selves. to those who publish a bit more slowly then when you were junior, or who publish trade books, rock on. but those sitting on their asses teaching from ten-twenty year old notes, stick it. you're the death of us all.

[prytania3]

deadwood deadwood deadwood! that's for all the lazy senior profs who publish nothing and engage in no kind of service to anyone but their sorry selves. to those who publish a bit more slowly then when you were junior, or who publish trade books, rock on. but those sitting on their asses teaching from ten-twenty year old notes, stick it. you're the death of us all.

Coming from someone who can't even use capital letters.

Oh Larryc!

[tee_bee]

deadwood deadwood deadwood! that's for all the lazy senior profs who publish nothing and engage in no kind of service to anyone but their sorry selves. to those who publish a bit more slowly then when you were junior, or who publish trade books, rock on. but those sitting on their asses teaching from ten-twenty year old notes, stick it. you're the death of us all.

Coming from someone who can't even use capital letters.

Oh Larryc!

Yeah, that post's credibility is somewhere below zero. But the sentiment behind it is understandable. If "deadwood" is so offensive, let's replace it with "retired in place." But we need another word for "retired in place" (or RIP, ha!) faculty who then are, to keep with the pun, revivified about three years before they want to retire as full (a reward for those decades of hard, hard work), having done nothing for the prior 15. A couple articles, and boom! Full professor time. The word: losers. A better word than "I-wouldn't-vote-for-your-promotion-if-my-life-depended-on-it."

I write this as a full prof--getting older by the minute--who once was an asst prof and saw all the department's time, resources, best graduate students, etc., misappropriated by a large cohort of losers whose average yearly productivity was less than one scholarly article of any sort per year. Lest one argue that "well, as you age you slow down," we did have to remove the oldest prof from the calculation--he was well into his 70s and was a publishing machine, and doing good work. I don't think deadwood is an age--it's a state of mind. We can get rid of asst prof deadwood; booting the associates and fulls is, of course, near impossible. So there they sit.

At least the senior people could mentor junior people; no one in my junior faculty cohort was mentored by our "senior" "colleagues" because these RIP faculty never were at the office. I am not kidding--one could have shot a cannon through the floor (with the biggest offices with the better views) in which these folks were assigned offices (I was going to say "worked," but that rarely happened there) and hit not one living soul. Kinda hard to mentor someone if you're never there.

"But you should be collegial," we were told. Sure, but colleagiality works both ways, and when any efforts at reform were just shot down by a block of senior faculty who voted no for its own sake (kind of like the current GOP senate superminority), it was hard to have a lot of respect for sclerotic obstructionists. We tried to couch our arguments nicely; or, as Jefferson put it, "In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury." Like spending too much travel money.

I think most productive full profs resent their vacationing-whilst-at-work faculty as much as do the junior people, if they are consuming scarce resources, like air conditioning, or toner. It was no secret that many senior people went to disciplinary conferences as vacations--they''d say it n faculty meetings ("Oh, it's in San Francisco this year! Then I'll go!), knowing that they could do so with impunity. The result: productive faculty were driven out to better situations, and that old department lost its PhD program. Deadwood can be incredibly corrosive.

/rant. I return you to your originally scheduled reasonable discourse.

[profxfiles]

If "deadwood" is so offensive, let's replace it with "retired in place." But we need another word for "retired in place" (or RIP, ha!) faculty who then are, to keep with the pun, revivified about three years before they want to retire as full (a reward for those decades of hard, hard work), having done nothing for the prior 15. A couple articles, and boom! Full professor time. The word: losers. A better word than "I-wouldn't-vote-for-your-promotion-if-my-life-depended-on-it."

Around here, these faculty are often referred to as "METRP", an acronym coined by a long departed dean. It stands for "Minimum Effort To Retain Position" and often showed up on salary evaluations.