Tenure Under Serious Threat at the University of Alabama
Robert Olin, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, has recommended the creation of a "post-tenure" review process that could result in firing professors.
The recommendation appears in the minutes of the University's Reallocation Committee, the body charged with cutting costs and shifting resources in order to make up for dwindling financial resources.
Dean Olin says that a post-tenure review could result in firing non-performing professors or in increasing their teaching duties (from four classes per year to eight) in the case of those whose research is judged inadequate. Olin remarked that the additional review process has been tried at Virginia, and is "good public relations."
What is tenure? It is the primary means through which academic freedom is assured. Professors who hold tenure cannot be fired arbitrarily, based on political or personal considerations, and are therefore at greater liberty to explore unpopular ideas or speak out on controversial academic matters. Academic freedom is basic to productive research, and to effective teaching.
To be sure, Olin is correct that the public does not easily grasp the concept of tenure, and wonders why professors should have job security while they do not. But the answer to this question is not to be found in a short-sighted political stunt in which, in all but name, tenure is eliminated. The answer is in educating the public is what tenure is and why it is worth preserving, despite the risks posed by occasional dead-beat professors.
Make no mistake: Imposing a post-tenure review is the same as eliminating tenure altogether. The fact that the suggestion comes up at all in the context of a budget reallocation discussion is the tip-off to its true purpose: to reduce the size of the faculty, especially at the high-end, i.e., at the leve of full professors who earn the highest salaries.
We call on Dean Olin and the President of the University, Barry Mason, to repudiate this plan as damaging to the best interest of the University.
New UA President Calls for Abolishing Tenure (in all but name):
Representatives of the faculty listened last Wednesday morning to Robert Witt, the new president of the University of Alabama, explain why a system of “post-tenure” review is a good idea. It is a PR vehicle, he said, and will help the university win public support for increased funding when its requests come up before the legislature. Who could argue against it, after all, when the only matter at issue is whether or not university professors should be subject to periodic review of their performance?
A professor who is tenured – usually after a grueling six year process of review and assessment – cannot be fired except under extraordinary circumstances. Ever year thereafter he or she is evaluated, not just by the department chair and dean but also by the students. Merit raises and promotion are both contingent on this process.
Post-tenure review, on the other hand, means that the professor will be subject not just to evaluation but to possible dismissal. In effect, it eliminates tenure in all but name and subjects professors (as well as the disciplines they represent) to political pressures that have nothing to do with the search for knowledge.
It is true that tenure is a privilege, not a right. It is also a calculated risk. The risk is that we will end up with a dead-beat professor who contributes little or nothing to the mission of the university. What justifies taking such a risk?
Academic tenure protects professors from being fired unreasonably, for teaching or researching or inquiring into an area that might be politically or commercially unpopular. Throughout history, the process of exploring and expanding the frontiers of learning has necessarily challenged the established order. That is why tenure is so valuable, not merely for the protection of individual faculty members, but also as an assurance to society that the pursuit of truth and knowledge commands our first priority.
Why does the United States lead the world in research and development? The reason is that we protect our senior faculty from unreasonable dismissal. We want new ideas; our society flourishes because of them. Other countries, like the former Soviet Union, tried to regulate the ideas of its people, and look where it got them. But to get the new ideas we need to protect the people and the institutions whose job it is to develop them, and that means protecting tenure.
As an American citizen, you know that it is sometimes inconvenient to guard some of our most precious individual rights -- like the right to freedom of expression, and the freedom to learn. Likewise, academic freedom might be inconvenient -- it might make it harder for a university to plan outcomes and products the way a corporation would. But a university is not a corporation; it should be an oasis from the marketplace where new ideas -- new curiosities -- get a chance to be aired, and if worthy, to grow. Academic tenure protects such inquiries.
It is true that at the University of Texas-Arlington, where Dr. Witt is now president, the faculy implemented a policy of post-tenure review. Dr. Witt points to this as evidence of facutly choice in the matter. What Dr. Witt did not mention is that post-tenure review was mandated by the Texas legislature in law passed in 1997. To suggest the facutly wanted it is like saying that death row inmates in Alabama "want" the death penalty because they have a choice of lethal injection or electrocution.
In any case, what has been the effect?
First, a poll conducted in 2002 by researchers at Sam Houston University revealed 84% of professors said that tenure is the basis of academic freedom. Nearly 50% said the policy of post-tenure review had been implemented for financial reasons. Fully 70% said the process was of "little value."
Second, morale in Texas is low and getting lower, because professors no longer feel they enjoy job security. They worry that they will be fired for voicing unpopular ideas or for doing research in areas that administrators do not favor. Many have left, either by taking early retirnement or moving to other universities that still protect academic freedom.
Dr. Witt failed to mention that all of the top research universities in the United States give full protection to tenure. Ironically, his proposal, if actually implemented, would undermine his laudable goal of moving the University of Alabama up in the research rankings. Post-tenure review is the characteristic of an institution which has given up on the quest of becoming a major research university.
We agree with Dr. Witt that University of Alabama sorely needs structural reform to introduce greater accountability for the already overburned taxpayers of Alabama. For this reason, we urge him to support a proposal which would limit the terms of deans and provosts to a maximum of five years and require that all of these positions be filled exclusively from the ranks of the tenured faculty at the University. That's what they do at the University of Chicago and Princeton University. We could do a lot worse at Alabama than to imitate these institutions.
Such a reform would break the power of a growing class of highly paid professional academic administrators, many of whom have not experienced the rewards and obligations of research and teaching for decades. If deans and provosts had to return to the classroom every five years, we believe that they would once again appreciate the reasons for tenure and the imporance of defending it. This reform would also save millions of dollars in the next decade on salaries for deans and provosts which are typically close to 200,000 dollars per year.
We tend to the think the people of Alabama can understand this line of thinking. The question is, why doesn't Dr. Witt?
Charles W. Nuckolls is Professor of Anthropology, University of Alabama. David T. Beito is Associate Professor of History, University of Alabama. Both are members of the Faculty Senate
Reverend Winslett and Post-Tenure Review
Letter to the Editor: At an early morning meeting last Wednesday with representatives of the faculty, Dr. Robert Witt announced that he favors "post-tenure" review. Reverend Hoyt Winslett, Jr., is not a member of the faculty, and he was not present at the meeting. Nevertheless, he critizes Professors Beito, Holt, and myself for characterizing post-tenure review as an assault on research and teaching mission of the university. The facts Reverend Winslett either does not know or has chosen to ignore are these:
1. Facutly in Texas did not chose post-tenure review, contrary to what Dr. Witt said. It was forced on them by a law passed by the Texas legislature in 1997. To suggest they wanted it is like saying death row inmates in Alabama "want" capital punishment because they have a choice between lethal injection and electrocution.
2. A 2002 poll conducted by a Sam Houston University research group found that that 84% of professors in Texas said that tenure is the basis of academic freedom. Nearly 50% said the policy of post-tenure review had been implemented for financial reasons. Fully 70% said the process was of "little value."
3. Post-tenure review in Texas has resulted in a departure of well-qualified faculty to other institutions and a serious morale problem among those that remain.
Tenure protects professors from being fired unreasonably, for teaching or researching into an area that might be politically or commercially unpopular.
Throughout history, the process of exploring and expanding the frontiers of learning has necessarily challenged the established order. That is why tenure is so valuable, not merely for the protection of individual faculty members, but also as an assurance to society that the pursuit of truth and knowledge commands our first priority.
If Reverend Winslett still doubts the value of this protection, let him contemplate the history of his own church: Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was burned at the stake (at Oxford University, no less) in 1556 for promoting reformist ideas the established powers of the day found uncomfortable.
Charles W. Nuckolls, Professor, Department of Anthropology David T. Beito, Associate Professor, Department of History
Marvin Johnson on the Elimination of Tenure
In his letter of January 29 the Rev Hoyt Winslett, Jr. concluded with a statement that academic freedom "does not mean freedom from accountability." It is important that the Rev. Winslett and other citizens realize that faculty at the University are currrently held ccountable throughout their careers in several different ways.
First, there is a six-year probationary period and an annual peer review of accomplishments to determine whether or not a person is to be granted tenure. In addition, all faculty, both before and after they receive tenure, are evaluated each year by the administration to determine the extent to which their work is considered to be meritorious. All faculty are evaluated by students each semester and the results of these evaluations used as important references in peer review and merit evaluation. Finally, all faculty are evaluated, some annually and others every six years, to determine their eligibility to serve on the graduate faculty.
If faculty do not receive strong sopport form their peers they will not receive tenure. If they do not receive strong support from the administration, there salaries will deteriorate. If they do not receive favorable evaulations from students it will diminish their chances for tenure and promotion and will result in lower salaries. If they are not granted graduate faculty status, it will seriously diminish their chances to work with advanced students, develop credentials as mentors, and teach material more closely associated with current research.
All these evaluations are administered independently and all must be passed successfuly if a faculty member is to have a representative and fulfilling career.
Apparently the Rev. Winslett would have the University adopt yet another process whereby tenured faculty may be fired. If the University makes the critical decison to replace tenure with short term contracts, it will deny to its faculty the levels of trust and commitment necessary for the protection of academic freedom and, with that single stroke, will have abandoned its place as a full member of the academic community.
Faculty held in such a tenuous relationship with an institution can never have the security necesssary to actually be a faculty. That is, they will never be able to consider a full range of research possibilites without concern that they may not produce quantifiable short term results to be used as credentials in their next review.
In short, they will be forced to think more about keeping their jobs than about the advance of knowledge. Such a crippled faculty can never porvide the kind of university so badly needed by this state and deserved by its students and people.
Marvin Johnson
Associate Professor of Theory and Composition,School of Music
Tuscaloosa News, March 23, 2003
To the Editor
Professor Bishop must remember that when an entrepreneur fails they lose money and time but have the opportunity to try again. If a college professor holding a tenured position is driven from that position, there is practically no chance that they can ever recover what has been lost. Extremely limited opportunities for academic service, in a society which has little understanding or sympathy for that kind of commitment, renders such an event irreversible. In a word, it is a sentence of death.
Entrepreneurs strive to produce goods and services which add to the material well being and comfort of the community. The results of their successful efforts are received with enthusiasm and their rewards tangible indeed. Academics strive to advance the arts and sciences. The results of their efforts are frequently unknown outside the academic community and little understood and appreciated when they are. If fact, there is a good possibility that what they report will not support the status quo, will not support the popular culture, and will not reinforce societal conditions and attitudes friendly to short term business gains.
Without tenure, the academic community can not survive because it is from that community that we are most likely to hear news which requires that we change our attitudes, our habits, our enterprises, our allegiances, our presumptions, our biases, and our tastes. By ending tenure, like monarchs of old, we will simply “kill the messenger.”
Marvin Johnson, Associate Professor of Theory and Composition School of Music