Need to know what to say to colleague when he is denied tenure next week

[quercus]

Will they appeal, do you think?

M.

Maybe. He would have to claim bias on academic freedom grounds, or procedural violations. I'm not sure how a candidate is supposed to know if procedural violations exist, but from what I saw, there haven't been any. He really lost it on the merits, not on technicalities.

[quercus]

A lot will depend on what the dean tells him about the reasons. I have no idea how that conversation will go...our dean is not known for her tact.

[Kron3007]

Will they appeal, do you think?

M.

Maybe. He would have to claim bias on academic freedom grounds, or procedural violations. I'm not sure how a candidate is supposed to know if procedural violations exist, but from what I saw, there haven't been any. He really lost it on the merits, not on technicalities.

Yeah, this one sounds pretty hard to appeal.  All of the meetings and written warnings are not just there to help guide you to tenure, they are also a paper trail to justify denial. 

[Ruralguy]

The only "in" on appeal that I see is that perhaps there was too much emphasis on "collegiality" which the AAUP has explicitly said should not be a separate requirement for tenure.

I say "perhaps", because if specifics were given about avoided service, then that's fine, but it depends on what exactly happened and what was communicated an when.

[quercus]

The only "in" on appeal that I see is that perhaps there was too much emphasis on "collegiality" which the AAUP has explicitly said should not be a separate requirement for tenure.

I've been thinking a lot about collegiality lately in this context, and I think the common way that people think of it is, "Did the candidate make friends; is the candidate well-liked or likable." [Not saying that you think this, Ruralguy. But this may be the reason for AAUP being concerned about an emphasis on collegiality in the tenure decision.]

To my mind, collegiality is about whether you are a good colleague, not a good friend. That means that service is very tied up with collegiality, more so than the other two categories (as mleok noted upthread).

If you don't do enough service, you are not doing your fair share of the work that makes the department and the university run. And that means you are a lousy colleague even if everyone thinks you're a swell guy and likes having you around.

[eigen]

The only "in" on appeal that I see is that perhaps there was too much emphasis on "collegiality" which the AAUP has explicitly said should not be a separate requirement for tenure.

I've been thinking a lot about collegiality lately in this context, and I think the common way that people think of it is, "Did the candidate make friends; is the candidate well-liked or likable." [Not saying that you think this, Ruralguy. But this may be the reason for AAUP being concerned about an emphasis on collegiality in the tenure decision.]

To my mind, collegiality is about whether you are a good colleague, not a good friend. That means that service is very tied up with collegiality, more so than the other two categories (as mleok noted upthread).

If you don't do enough service, you are not doing your fair share of the work that makes the department and the university run. And that means you are a lousy colleague even if everyone thinks you're a swell guy and likes having you around.

I think this goes to Ruralguy's point about documentation and specifics. Collegiality can be used as a way to "ding" someone who's not part of the in-group, but in that case there are likely not specific criticisms of how that person is not pulling their weight.

[Ruralguy]

Right.

Poor service (meaning next to nothing and also bad mouthing service or doing openly bad job with an easy task or all of the above)  can be a form of poor collegiality, but poor collegiality needn't  specifically depend on service (or teaching or research). This is why the AAUP hated tenure decisions based on what was essentially stated as "collegiality" but didn't mention any problems with categories that were related to the job (service, research, teaching). There was just a general sense in some of these cases that the candidate   was a "gadfly" or "didn't fit in." Maybe in some of those cases you don't have to give them Colleague of the Year Award, but it seems unfair that without specifics, you'd just say "we don't like her" and then ding the person for tenure. Of course the OP didn't say this was the case...seems much more like the specifics of poor service and some other factors led to poor collegiality, but I hope that was all enumerated in the denial letter.

[financeguy]

"not inclined to perceive his failings in areas he doesn't care about (community, institutional mission, social justice)."


This is the first time I've ever heard the term "social justice" as something remotely related to a tenure decision. I'm not critiquing this (yet) since I have no clue what it means. How could one check this box? Hold the right opinions? Join the protest?

I can't say I'm super surprised at whatever this is. The finance certificate program I used to be an adjunct in that routinely leads to six figure jobs no longer exists but a new certificate has been announced in.....wait for it.... racial justice. A quick indeed search shows thousands of jobs for the credential eligible by holders of the former certificate and exactly zero for the latter.

[Ruralguy]

I think the OP  was saying that social justice is part of the schools mission and that the colleague was speaking of it derisively. That's borderline...one could possibly defend it under academic freedom. However, it's hard to run a college
if faculty stonewall the mission.

[kaysixteen]

It does not appear that this guy ignored mentoring advice, merely that he took the *wrong* mentoring advice, namely, that he followed his grad school professors' advice to make research productivity the be-all and end-all of his tt program.   He, like many recent grad school grads, was trained to do and think x, but at many if not most colleges, x is not what is really required.

[Kron3007]

It does not appear that this guy ignored mentoring advice, merely that he took the *wrong* mentoring advice, namely, that he followed his grad school professors' advice to make research productivity the be-all and end-all of his tt program.   He, like many recent grad school grads, was trained to do and think x, but at many if not most colleges, x is not what is really required.

I had a somewhat similar situation where my postdoc advisor was giving me one piece of advice that directly contradicted what I was being told by the dean during my annual pre-tenure review/meeting with my dean.  I listened to the one who was making the decision.....it's crazy not to. 

[quercus]

This is the first time I've ever heard the term "social justice" as something remotely related to a tenure decision. I'm not critiquing this (yet) since I have no clue what it means. How could one check this box? Hold the right opinions? Join the protest?

I can't say I'm super surprised at whatever this is. The finance certificate program I used to be an adjunct in that routinely leads to six figure jobs no longer exists but a new certificate has been announced in.....wait for it.... racial justice. A quick indeed search shows thousands of jobs for the credential eligible by holders of the former certificate and exactly zero for the latter.

I'm not talking about a political litmus test.

Service generally helps the college run smoothly, creates community, and promotes its institutional mission (which, yes, specifically includes social justice here). Some people don't care about the community of scholars and students they work within, or what the institution seeks to achieve in the bigger picture--they just want to put their heads down, do their research, and let others turn the wheels. An institution can only tolerate so many of those people before there is no community and no mission.

[marshwiggle]

It does not appear that this guy ignored mentoring advice, merely that he took the *wrong* mentoring advice, namely, that he followed his grad school professors' advice to make research productivity the be-all and end-all of his tt program.   He, like many recent grad school grads, was trained to do and think x, but at many if not most colleges, x is not what is really required.

I had a somewhat similar situation where my postdoc advisor was giving me one piece of advice that directly contradicted what I was being told by the dean during my annual pre-tenure review/meeting with my dean.  I listened to the one who was making the decision.....it's crazy not to.

The fact that he had a formal, written evaluation from the institution he was working for specifically stating that he had to improve on service should have counted infinitely more than any "mentoring" advice he had from his previous institutions.

[Ruralguy]

This may be going to far afield, Quercus, but how do you generally navigate the tricky subject of social justice at your school? There must be some conservative faculty who interpret that phrase very differently than woke progressives. I don't think it would be proper just to shove them (the conservatives) aside. Nor would it proper to shove the woken aside if your school tends to see social justice through a more conservative lens (i.e., not through government intervention if at all possible, etc., more involvement of religious institutions).

[polly_mer]

This may be going to far afield, Quercus, but how do you generally navigate the tricky subject of social justice at your school? There must be some conservative faculty who interpret that phrase very differently than woke progressives. I don't think it would be proper just to shove them (the conservatives) aside. Nor would it proper to shove the woken aside if your school tends to see social justice through a more conservative lens (i.e., not through government intervention if at all possible, etc., more involvement of religious institutions).

Super Dinky had a social justice mission.  It was clear that the mission had shifted from the 1980s intellectual discussions of what a good society should do with significant global historical perspective to a more concrete set of activities to support our students in becoming solid contributing members of the community.

Thus, while a couple humanities professors were really woke on pronouns and identifying unearned privilege, most professors were focused on how to help students with complicated lives learn to code switch as aspiring middle class professionals.  Most of our students needed mentoring on matters well outside formal classroom subjects.  Refusing to be on campus frequently enough to get to know students as people was failing to support the mission.  Refusing to help students navigate all the support systems (e.g., the town food pantry, on-demand buses as the sole public transportation, negotiating scheduling the tiny required courses such that the timing of tne section would work for all ten students) was failing to support the mission.

Yeah, there were mandatory required courses on the theories of various aspects of social.justice.  However, the theory that mattered for faculty is education leads to a better life and formal classroom experience is only part of education.