How a denial of tenure at Harvard became a national controversy

[jerseyjay]

When I lived in Boston, there were regular articles in the Globe about some assistant professor being denied tenure at Harvard. At one point, if I recall, there had been nobody granted tenure in the history department since the 1950s. I think that the other Ivy League schools had similar records.

From what I have seen, there seems to be a pattern: Ivy hires a promising person as an assistant professor. Said person publishes a book and establishes a research profile that is well respected and might be well liked by students. Ivy denies tenure. Professor, now a rising star, gets tenure position at a lesser but well established R-1.  Ten or 20 years down the road, professor--now well respected--moves back to Ivy with tenure. I remember reading that Yale had overhauled its tenure requirements in history over the last decade to try to keep more people.

I do not think the "compensation" for being an assistant professor at Harvard with little chance of tenure is monetary. Rather, it is the prestige that comes from being a Harvard professor, the resources that come from being a Harvard professor, and the platform that comes with being a Harvard professor. I think that most people who do not get tenure at Harvard still end up okay, and having a stint at Harvard on their CV looks good, since everybody knows that very few people get tenure anyway. (If  out of grad school I had been offered a 6-year stint at Harvard, with no chance of tenure, and salaries slightly less than lesser ranked universities nearby, I probably would have jumped at it.) For its part, Harvard gets a continual cascade of good people, without having to commit for tenure--some of whom will end up at Harvard later anyway.

I do think there is an issue of institutional racism (at Harvard and elsewhere, including much less prestigious schools) that overlaps with this but is not the same thing.

[tuxthepenguin]

I do not think the "compensation" for being an assistant professor at Harvard with little chance of tenure is monetary. Rather, it is the prestige that comes from being a Harvard professor, the resources that come from being a Harvard professor, and the platform that comes with being a Harvard professor. I think that most people who do not get tenure at Harvard still end up okay, and having a stint at Harvard on their CV looks good, since everybody knows that very few people get tenure anyway. (If  out of grad school I had been offered a 6-year stint at Harvard, with no chance of tenure, and salaries slightly less than lesser ranked universities nearby, I probably would have jumped at it.) For its part, Harvard gets a continual cascade of good people, without having to commit for tenure--some of whom will end up at Harvard later anyway.

Yeah, I can say I've seen the salaries of assistant professors at Harvard and other top places, and they don't compete at all on that dimension. The salary was terrible relative to their other offers. There's no way for competing places to offer the same value as working on the tenure track at Harvard. And let's be honest. The chances of getting tenure at Columbia or NYU aren't exactly 100%.

Assistant professors at Harvard fill a gap that in some ways is similar to adjuncts at other universities. They're not really on the tenure track, since they'll never get tenure, and they get stuck doing some of the things that the high-status tenured faculty won't do. Harvard has no need to ever tenure anyone. They can wait for them to make a name elsewhere and then hire them with tenure. When other schools have an endowment of $40 billion, they can play that game too.

[engineer_adrift]

Google Scholar shows only 100 citations for this academic. That isn't going to get you tenure at Harvard, or even many tier two or three schools.

Hugs, E_A

[Bede the Vulnerable]

I do not think the "compensation" for being an assistant professor at Harvard with little chance of tenure is monetary. Rather, it is the prestige that comes from being a Harvard professor, the resources that come from being a Harvard professor, and the platform that comes with being a Harvard professor. I think that most people who do not get tenure at Harvard still end up okay, and having a stint at Harvard on their CV looks good, since everybody knows that very few people get tenure anyway. (If  out of grad school I had been offered a 6-year stint at Harvard, with no chance of tenure, and salaries slightly less than lesser ranked universities nearby, I probably would have jumped at it.) For its part, Harvard gets a continual cascade of good people, without having to commit for tenure--some of whom will end up at Harvard later anyway.

Yeah, I can say I've seen the salaries of assistant professors at Harvard and other top places, and they don't compete at all on that dimension. The salary was terrible relative to their other offers. There's no way for competing places to offer the same value as working on the tenure track at Harvard. And let's be honest. The chances of getting tenure at Columbia or NYU aren't exactly 100%.

Assistant professors at Harvard fill a gap that in some ways is similar to adjuncts at other universities. They're not really on the tenure track, since they'll never get tenure, and they get stuck doing some of the things that the high-status tenured faculty won't do. Harvard has no need to ever tenure anyone. They can wait for them to make a name elsewhere and then hire them with tenure. When other schools have an endowment of $40 billion, they can play that game too.

Yep.  I've always viewed it as a six-year postdoc.  One hopes to leverage the appointment and get a really good job after being denied tenure.  My main concern is the rhetoric of "we only tenure the best."  The implication is, of course, that the person denied tenure isn't in that category. 

[pgher]

As another datum, my son attends a different Ivy. He said there are very few tenure-track faculty. There are a bunch with titles that seem TT but are actually not eligible for tenure. There are stories about failed tenure bids each year, but they only rile up the undergrads who don't know the rules. E.g., the excellent teacher whose research is minimal, but undergrads don't know what is valued, so they protest.

[mahagonny]

As another datum, my son attends a different Ivy. He said there are very few tenure-track faculty. There are a bunch with titles that seem TT but are actually not eligible for tenure. There are stories about failed tenure bids each year, but they only rile up the undergrads who don't know the rules. E.g., the excellent teacher whose research is minimal, but undergrads don't know what is valued, so they protest.

Why couldn't they be protesting that the wrong thing is valued? Usually I like it when students protest. They are where the money comes from. They may have more power than they realize. Of course, the tenure world is more of an impenetrable kingdom. It doesn't care much what anyone outside of it thinks, and often, doesn't really want to be understood.
The protest should be not about this or that person who didn't get tenure, but the ridiculous way that it is fetishized.

[Parasaurolophus]

I sort of have to shrug. We know how tenure works at Princeton, Harvard, and Yale, and we know that most people don't make the cut when they could and should easily do so. And we know that these people almost always land on their feet. And while I don't want to sling mud or get into the business of judging, especially as a total outsider to the field and its hierarchies, it looks to me like while her overall output is pretty strong, her output while at Harvard was weaker, with gappy publication years and only one or two in the others. Having internalized hegemony's 2-2-4 rule of thumb, I don't see this outcome as surprising or outrageous.

Google Scholar shows only 100 citations for this academic. That isn't going to get you tenure at Harvard, or even many tier two or three schools.

Hugs, E_A

This is field-dependent. Some fields have very low citation rates due to citation norms in the field, how large the field is, how long it takes stuff (including work that responds to or makes use of your work) to publish (sometimes it's years from first acceptance, and acceptance can take years from the initial submission), what publication rates are like (they can be as low as 1-3%), etc. I don't know what's normal for this field, but wouldn't be surprised if citation rates tend to be quite low.

[tuxthepenguin]

As another datum, my son attends a different Ivy. He said there are very few tenure-track faculty. There are a bunch with titles that seem TT but are actually not eligible for tenure. There are stories about failed tenure bids each year, but they only rile up the undergrads who don't know the rules. E.g., the excellent teacher whose research is minimal, but undergrads don't know what is valued, so they protest.

Why couldn't they be protesting that the wrong thing is valued? Usually I like it when students protest. They are where the money comes from.

Not at Harvard. Undergraduate education is a minor part of their mission and they could operate normally without any undergraduate tuition revenue if they wanted.

[Caracal]

Google Scholar shows only 100 citations for this academic. That isn't going to get you tenure at Harvard, or even many tier two or three schools.

Hugs, E_A

This is field-dependent. Some fields have very low citation rates due to citation norms in the field, how large the field is, how long it takes stuff (including work that responds to or makes use of your work) to publish (sometimes it's years from first acceptance, and acceptance can take years from the initial submission), what publication rates are like (they can be as low as 1-3%), etc. I don't know what's normal for this field, but wouldn't be surprised if citation rates tend to be quite low.

Yes, exactly. Even when stuff is cited, it doesn't necessarily mean that much. Some citations involve extensive use of someone's work, but lots of them are just lists of relevant material for some subject. It wouldn't be a good way of judging the impact of someone's scholarship. In humanities fields, this isn't a metric anyone uses or cares about.

[mahagonny]

Google Scholar shows only 100 citations for this academic. That isn't going to get you tenure at Harvard, or even many tier two or three schools.

Hugs, E_A

This is field-dependent. Some fields have very low citation rates due to citation norms in the field, how large the field is, how long it takes stuff (including work that responds to or makes use of your work) to publish (sometimes it's years from first acceptance, and acceptance can take years from the initial submission), what publication rates are like (they can be as low as 1-3%), etc. I don't know what's normal for this field, but wouldn't be surprised if citation rates tend to be quite low.

Yes, exactly. Even when stuff is cited, it doesn't necessarily mean that much. Some citations involve extensive use of someone's work, but lots of them are just lists of relevant material for some subject. It wouldn't be a good way of judging the impact of someone's scholarship. In humanities fields, this isn't a metric anyone uses or cares about.

How about using a measurement that really rocks? Putting new words in the dictionary. Dr. White Fragility
What I'm wondering: if social media accelerates the addition of new words making their way into the dictionary, will it also accelerate their being deleted. Or will it lead to some kind of devaluing of new language.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/04/10/facebook-conversations-racism-add-new-words-dictionaries/3415099002/