P&T Guidelines -- faculty are to be positive and courteous -- ?

[AJ_Katz]

New P&T guidelines for my department are floating around and I have some concerns about appropriateness of certain language.  In the introduction of these guidelines, it states that the candidate will be judged upon performance in accordance with their assigned responsibilities "and overall departmental citizenship."  For clarity, all of our faculty have a small % of their assigned responsibilities defined as "service" and these elements relating to citizenship / collegiality are being created as a separate category of evaluation for the department-specific document.

Specifically, a section separate from "Service" is being called "Collegiality and Service" and defines the following:  All faculty are expected to be positive, contributing citizens of the department and the university. All should interact with colleagues, students, staff, and the public in a professional and courteous manner. Departmental, university, and professional committee work and/or activities appropriate to the position can fulfill service obligations.

My concern is that if someone is not liked, then they might not get tenure because they were deemed to be a poor department citizen.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for people working together to create an inclusive, friendly working environment.  However, women, POC, and people from other cultures may be judged more strongly on their personality characteristics, so this type of language basically makes it okay to dismiss "unlikable" people.

Please tell me I am blowing this concern out or proportion.  Our department head has given us less than a week to review, following which, they would like to have it adopted by the faculty.  If I am not blowing this out of proportion, is there anyone on the fora that might want to take a look at the full document via PM for a brief review? 

[waterboy]

Well, I'm now more paranoid that I used to be (experience), but I'd say this is a dangerous and slippery slope.

[Ruralguy]

About 20 year ago the AAUP started to strongly discourage the use of "Collegiality" and such as a separate category for P&T. Whereas they realized that one reason someone might fail at teaching, scholarship or service is an inability to get along with others, many felt that keeping a distinct category would lead to precisely what you and others have described: criticizing someone too deeply for unpopular opinions or maybe even worse (just denying tenure because you simply don't like the person).

Around that time there was a case involving a junior scientist (a woman in a department of older men). I recall her saying that they though they hired the affable and ever helpful daughter. When she arrived, they were appalled that she had opinions, and started to write bad reviews of her overall work, though others in the college/university didn't get it because she had good evals, published a lot, got grants, etc. I believe this was covered in the Chronicle round about 2000 or so.

[Ruralguy]

A better way to deal with this would be to put general statements in all student, staff and faculty handbooks  saying that all community members are expected to interact in a positive and courteous manner. That is to say, you don't write it with the implication of punishment if you don't do it, but you declare it enough times in obvious places that someone could bring this up as part of interacting with a particular faculty member with regards to their service, teaching or scholarship.

[polly_mer]

Specifically, a section separate from "Service" is being called "Collegiality and Service" and defines the following:  All faculty are expected to be positive, contributing citizens of the department and the university. All should interact with colleagues, students, staff, and the public in a professional and courteous manner. Departmental, university, and professional committee work and/or activities appropriate to the position can fulfill service obligations.

Ruralguy is correct that having a separate official category of collegiality is generally discouraged by AAUP: https://www.aaup.org/report/collegiality-criterion-faculty-evaluation

People who are flat out jerks affecting the institution can be dealt with other ways and shouldn't wait until the tenure evaluation if the behavior is indeed out-and-out unprofessional, as Ruralguy also wrote.

You want to quash this fourth category now.

[AmLitHist]

If that were a criteria for P&T or even ongoing employment here, my whole department would be screwed.  We all can be/have been a bunch of d*cks at some time or another, myself included.  Lately, though, we get along pretty well, probably because nobody cares enough to cause much trouble.

That kind of language is in all our documents, and honestly, we're all mostly pretty good about it, but during those past times when there have been conflicts, a lot of us could have been targeted and gotten rid of.

Are there similar requirements for deans and other admins to be similarly charming, collegial, and load-shouldering?  If so, ours would be in deep, deep trouble if such rules would be enforced.

Seriously: I'd be leading the charge against that language, NOW.  (Polly beat me to it.)

[LibbyG]

It's the word "positive" I get stuck on. If someone is pointing out a real and serious problem, then they are negating something and, by definition, being "negative."

I'd push back hard against that first sentence. If you would like to cite a source, Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility includes a good point about how ground rules like "assume good intentions" can function to suppress needed dissent and perpetuate inequality.

And, yeah, everyone should interact professionally with everyone else. That should even be in a P&T document.

[Bonnie]

That language has no place in a P&T document. Fight it fight it fight it. And document your fight so that, if you win this time around, you are prepped for the fight when this idea returns in a few years.

[Ruralguy]

Perhaps something like this can be written into college documents, such as "While dissent is to be tolerated and even at times encouraged, it is expected that faculty do so in a professional, courteous manner." 

[clean]

Here is what I have learned from 20+ years of university employment:  Faculty are not proactive. They are reactive.  Until you know the history of something, it seldom makes sense. 

Once you know the backstory of why this is being submitted, it may make more sense and then it will be more easily defeated or amended. 

Good luck. 

[onthefringe]

Agree this has no place in a promotion/tenure decision document.

In my opinion, lack of "collegiality" that reaches the level of a firing offense should be handled on a university level outside the academic processes of promotion and tenure. Being a jerk or simply not fitting in should not be a reason to be denied tenure. Being abusive, assaulting people etc, should be a disciplinary/firing offense regardless of whether the person in question is tenured.

I believe that tenure has values in a lot of different ways, but that one of the quickest ways to promote the opposition to tenure is to use it to protect faculty who have done awful non academic  things from being dismissed

[Ruralguy]

Most colleges have grievance procedures for relatively minor issues (usually) and then more of a structured procedure for legal  H&D or Title IX issues. Although its rare to fire a prof over this sort of thing, especially if they have tenure, most know that its been done. The trick is having the proper procedure in place.

I do agree with Clean that you should figure out the backstory here. Perhaps the newly promoted Chair had someone constantly at her back, and nobody paid attention. Or maybe the whole dept. looks at other depts and sees that the viper nests are the ones that fall apart fastest.

[Hibush]

I'll pile on to say that the desire to use collegiality in assessing someone's value in the department usually comes from a good place, it has historically been used to discriminate against the non-traditional hire. Most departments are making efforts to avoid both intentional and unintentional discrimination based on otherness, but to find ways to make the department more welcoming to diverse hires.

[clean]

In general, I agree that in a perfect (or even preponderance of perfection) world, I would not want to have such a standard as a measure for tenure.
However, I have endured working with, shall we say, a toxic personality.  Had the person met the minimums for tenure and promotion ***, I dont know that I would have voted to grant them.

In the end, I think that there should be a place for asking the committee/department "Does anyone want to work with this person on a committee? "  If the answer is 'no', then why should they/we be forced to endure it?  Why grant 'lifetime employment' or specifically, 'a contract without renewal' to such a toxic person?

IF the issue is that someone believes that the candidate is being discriminated for a protected reason, then someone should by God speak up and challenge the others.  IF the candidate is a loon, then hopefully there is some method to provide relief for the faculty to do what others (administrators) have failed to do so far and let them go!!


***  Meeting the minimums allows one to apply for tenure. It does not mean that tenure is now earned!  For example if someone has the minimum necessary publications, but only because they brought in most of them from prior employment and has done nothing since, and no indication of continued publication, should they be granted tenure, especially if they are toxic or otherwise a loon/nut/problem/asshole? 

So count me on the fence on this.  Perhaps there is a better way to do what is being tried, which is why I first suggested rooting out the history/backstory of this change.

[Hibush]

I have endured working with, shall we say, a toxic personality.  Had the person met the minimums for tenure and promotion ***, I dont know that I would have voted to grant them.

In the end, I think that there should be a place for asking the committee/department "Does anyone want to work with this person on a committee? " 

As ruralguy and onthefringe noted, there should be mechanisms in place to deal with that outside the tenure process. Bad behaviour should be addressed long before tenure review.