"Botched": IHE article on AA professors denied tenure

[Wahoo Redux]

Any thoughts?

African-American professors denied tenure. 

[Hibush]

I read a bit more in CHE.


It's impossible to second-guess tenure decisions based on newspaper accounts, but some screwups can be identified and help remind us to avoid them.

In Harris' case at UVA, his chair provided positive performance letters each year indicating that he was on track for tenure. The chair relied on the written criteria for tenure in the college.

Well the poor naive chair was completely wrong to do that. The college does not use the written tenure criteria. It has unwritten criteria that everyone supposedly knows, except--notably--for the chair and the tenure candidate.

Tenure criteria are going to be fairly subjective in any case. It is so important to keep reinforcing the principles that are consistent. I think the chair bears primary responsibility for interpreting those for a particular candidate, and communicating those regularly to the college administration and P&T committees in writing. If those groups disagree, they can make that case long before the tenure package is prepared.

If a faculty member is hired with the intent of diversifying the department, so that they study something that is outside the existing norm, the differences need to be respected and understood. That is another big job for the chair in communicating with the faculty. Any vibrant department should be challenging itself in this way, so the assignment is crucial for many chairs.

[mahagonny]

Any thoughts?

African-American professors denied tenure.

Yes, a few. Even if the process was way-off not legitimate, this is not even close to being most inequitable thing visiting the lives of people who teach in college. It's just something that people delve into because there is a tradition of second guessing tenure and promotion decisions, with the possibility of lawsuits usually lurking. And there may be some sort of impediment to the black candidate that isn't fair, but that doesn't give him or her a claim to eminently impossible circumstances. OTOH, anything that makes tenure look bad is OK with me.

[Baldwinschild]

I read a bit more in CHE.


It's impossible to second-guess tenure decisions based on newspaper accounts, but some screwups can be identified and help remind us to avoid them.

In Harris' case at UVA, his chair provided positive performance letters each year indicating that he was on track for tenure. The chair relied on the written criteria for tenure in the college.

Well the poor naive chair was completely wrong to do that. The college does not use the written tenure criteria. It has unwritten criteria that everyone supposedly knows, except--notably--for the chair and the tenure candidate.

Tenure criteria are going to be fairly subjective in any case. It is so important to keep reinforcing the principles that are consistent. I think the chair bears primary responsibility for interpreting those for a particular candidate, and communicating those regularly to the college administration and P&T committees in writing. If those groups disagree, they can make that case long before the tenure package is prepared.

If a faculty member is hired with the intent of diversifying the department, so that they study something that is outside the existing norm, the differences need to be respected and understood. That is another big job for the chair in communicating with the faculty. Any vibrant department should be challenging itself in this way, so the assignment is crucial for many chairs.

My current department revised its p and t guidelines after we hired a person of color who works in an interdisciplinary field.  As a consequence, she faced no difficulties when she went up for tenure.  At my former institution, two POCs were granted tenure with no promotion; they went up at the same time.  I believe they were given the opportunity to reapply for promotion after meeting certain publication conditions.  I can't say more because the details would be revealing. 

[Hegemony]

I believed in the essential fairness of the process until I was on our Tenure Review Committee.  One case in particular stands out — a young female minority prof who had been bullied by her head of department (as we could see very clearly in multiple documents), and a chain of corrupt administrators who were buddies of the head of department. A large tenure review committee full of people who rarely agree, and we were all appalled and horrified at what went on. But overturning the decision required the okay of the head of department — which clearly he was not going to give.  Our in-person interview with this guy would make your hair stand on end, he was so egregious. And it was supposed to be taped, but the administrators' office even lost the recording. If it were a film, you'd say it was all too neat, it was so unbelievable.  Since then I have abandoned my conviction that the process can't be drastically corrupt. I have no idea about the case of these particular professors. But my first reaction is not "Oh no, there can't have been any unfairness in the process!"

[mleok]

According to this set of P&T regulations for the UVa Medical School,

https://faculty.med.virginia.edu/facultyaffairs/advancement/pandt/current-pt-policy/

promotion to associate professor can be justified on the basis of excellence in one domain, but tenure requires excellence in two domains. Promotion to associate professor without the award of tenure confers an additional four years of tenure eligibility, but it's unclear if the general campus has the same P&T policy.

[Hibush]

It looks as if UVA did a little critical thinking about the P&T procedure.

Prof Harris has tenure.

Furthermore, Provost Pianta wrote "I have gained a number of insights on the P&T process, both as our process intersects with emerging trends in academia and in part through the review of Paul Harris's tenure appeal. I have begun to consider the effects of the changing shape of the publication landscape and the extent to which traditional indicators, such as impact factors and citation counts, may be more or less relevant for some fields than others."

I am appalled that it has taken until now for a leading institution like UVA to realize that publication and citation rates vary among fields. There may not even have been a racial angle to what appears to be gross general academic-administration malpractice.

[Parasaurolophus]

I am appalled that it has taken until now for a leading institution like UVA to realize that publication and citation rates vary among fields.

No kidding. That's just unbelievable. How did anyone in my field ever earn tenure at UVA?