STANFORD UNIVERSITY, STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305-2O70
SCHOOL OF
HUMANITIES AND SCIENCES
OFFICE OF THE DEAN
415/723-2275
Karen Sawislak
Department of History
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
Dear Karen,
As you know, the H&S Deans received a recommendation from your colleagues in the History Department regarding your promotion to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure. Their recommendation was accompanied by a set of appointment papers, a compilation of reports and letters from a variety of individuals who were consulted from both within and beyond the University. The members of the School's Committee on Appointments and Promotions and the H&S Deans read the complete appointment file as part of their review and discussion. Following the A&P review, the H&S Deans also discussed all the evidence.
I regret to inform you that the conclusion of these reviews is negative and, as a consequence, you will not be promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure. In the next few days, I will send a complete report of our deliberations to Provost Rice for her information. If you have any substantive questions about the procedures used in reaching our conclusion or about the evaluations themselves, you should write directly to Kathryn Gillam, Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs, with your concerns.
I want to summarize for you the reasons for our decision, although by virtue of being a summary, it will not reflect either the full range of substantive concerns that led to the decision, or indeed the range of valuable contributions you have made to colleagues and students in the History Department.
As you know, in considering a promotion to tenure, the school applies extremely high standards. The first criterion for tenure is that the individual have achieved, or give every promise of achieving, true distinction in scholarship. The second criterion for tenure is a demonstrated commitment to excellence in teaching. Our decision in your case was based primarily on our assessment of your scholarship. It was agreed that your teaching fully meets our second criterion, though it was also judged that your teaching performance, while excellent, was not sufficiently exceptional to override the concerns that arose about your scholarship.
To assess your scholarship, information was solicited from numerous colleagues in the field of American social and labor history. The list of referees was compiled by the department with the approval of the cognizant dean, John Etchemendy. The referees were provided with copies of your published work as well as the prospectus and draft chapters of your new project. Those who responded wrote detailed evaluations of both the published and unpublished work.
The overall picture that emerged from this body of evidence was a positive one, though in the end we judged it less strong than we expect of successful candidates for tenure at Stanford. Here, it will be helpful to discuss your two major projects separately. Your first book, Smoldering City, has clearly established your reputation as a historian. Although most of the letters assessed your first book positively, few displayed the kind of enthusiasm that we look for in a strong tenure file. The evaluators praise your work as thorough, well written, pedagogically useful, and as having permanent reference value. But they also raise questions about the extent to which the book breaks new ground or represents an advancement of the current state of social and urban history. As one referee puts it, "Smoldering City is a worthy effort, but not a book I would place at the top of its generation. Smoldering City does not have the brilliance, power, or clarity of argument of [another book] by
[another scholar] ... Neither is it equal to [another book by another scholar], magnificent for its ethnographic and historical richness...." Another referee says that it "is a very good book that shows a talented historian at work," but goes on to say that "within each of [the arenas covered in the book], her findings are not terribly surprising and echo much of what other historians have found in their narrower studies." There were also concerns expressed about the breadth of the book. As one referee put it: "the [Chicago fire] is such a unique event that it is hard to know how many of her conclusions are applicable elsewhere."
The referees' overall evaluation of your new book project, The Labor Problem in America, was both a notch more enthusiastic and a notch more tentative. The following is a representative comment: "Of course, it is difficult to judge the final shape of the book from two chapters and related essays. But if the volume lives up to the promise in what I have read, it will certainly make a real impact on the field of labor and social history." This reaction was echoed in many of the letters. The new project, because of its wider scope, could establish your reputation as a genuine leader in the field, if it fully achieves the potential suggested in the prospectus. When evaluating tenure cases, we must frequently evaluate assessments of the promise or potential of new work. In the present case, we were struck by the caution with which the referees judged this new project, caution no doubt forced by the fact that it is too early to form an entirely confident assessment of the work.
When judging a tenure case, we are naturally concerned about both quality and quantity of published work. In the above paragraphs, I have discussed concerns that arose about the quality of your work, but serious reservations were also expressed about quantity. Although your first book is a substantial scholarly contribution, it is nonetheless a revision of your dissertation. In addition to this book, you had, as of the tenure review, only two published articles. From the point of view of quantity alone, this is substantially below the norm at Stanford. Of course, we realize that your main effort since the appearance of the first book has been the new book project, but this makes it all the more important that this unfinished project be far enough along to inspire confident predictions on the part of the referees about its ultimate success. As I noted earlier, we were convinced of the project's promise, but unsure of the probability that it will actually live up to that promise.
In the end, the deans judged that the quantity and quality of your published work did not meet the School's standards for a tenured appointment. The promise of your unpublished work, though significant, and the quality of your teaching, though excellent, were not sufficient to overcome this judgment.
I know that this letter will come as a disappointment to you. I want to assure you that you are entitled to a non-tenure accruing terminal year appointment in 1997-98. If you wish to receive more information about the review process and the substance of the file, please do not hesitate to contact Associate Provost Gillam.
Finally, let me say that the H&S Deans are all convinced that you are launched on an exciting and fruitful career as an historian. We are sincerely thankful for all you have brought to Stanford during your time here and wish you the very best of luck in the future.
Sincerely,
John Shoven
Dean
School of Humanities and Sciences
| cc: | Condoleezza Rice
Norman Naimark
Jane Hawthorne
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