Tenure at YU

Academic freedom is a quest that all professors seek. The liberty to break free from the strict scrutiny they face as employees of a university is particularly exacting at YU, where pressure to abide to the philosophy of the secular administration is heightened by an additional responsibility to the Judaic influences on campus. But for those professors who excel in their disciplines and find favor among their students and professional colleagues, tenure is the key that unlocks the gates of autonomy on campus.

At the outset of a sixth year of teaching, professors are independently reviewed as candidates for tenure by committees of previously tenured members of their division within the university. By dividing YC and SCW into four integrated divisions (Humanities, Judaic Studies, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences), and establishing separate divisions for SSSB and each of its graduate programs, YU has divided the tenure review process into distinct teams that are well-equipped to judge the candidates within their respective departments.

Dr. Sheldon Gelman, Interim Vice President of Academic Affairs, observed, "Five to six tenured faculty members from within each division comprise each committee, which has the responsibility of reviewing all the materials submitted by the candidate, reviewing all of the student evaluations semester-by-semester and course-by-course, and performing in-class observations of all of the candidates."

However, the objective ideal espoused by the university in granting tenure is clearly difficult, perhaps impossible, to maintain. This standardized approach, while allowing the institution to base its tenure decisions on a fairly structured arrangement, grants each committee leeway in its methodology of judging the professors. "There are no concrete guidelines that the committees must abide by at YU. People who come up for tenure submit evidence of their teaching proficiency, publication of either books or articles in refereed journals, and faculty citizenship for the committee to examine. However, there are no precise guidelines that must be followed in all cases; we tailor our judgements to cater to the candidate's strengths," Professor of English Dr. Joan Haahr said.

Earlier this semester the Student Senate proposed additional integration of student input into the tenure process as a response to the controversial policies followed by the committees that could be construed as subjective. Seeking to allow a few students to join each undergraduate tenure committee, the Senate believed that evaluations did not provide adequate student feedback into the tenure process.

Jeffrey Kohn, Chairman of the Student Senate, explained, "We wanted students to have an official status in the determination of tenure by providing input to the committees. We weren't asking to have voting power per se, we just wanted to be on the committees in order to have the students' voices heard."

He continued, "Most people agree that student evaluations are not adequate measures of teaching ability, because students rush to fill them out without putting any thought into them. Therefore, we are planning to pursue this matter further in order to find some sort of compromise."

But Gelman and the administration quickly overturned that novel idea, rationalizing that students who attend university for but a few years should not become involved in tenure decisions which affect the university for many years to come. "The tenure process is awkward in a large part because it's a personnel matter, not merely an academic matter, and even in universities where there is a very active student involvement in a whole variety of committees and boards, [students] are exhausted from the tenure process because of the nature of personnel decisions, which are difficult for students who are not part of the long-term process to really fully understand."

Similarly, Dr. Moses Pava, SSSB Professor of Accounting, agreed. "Students have a misconception about what the university is about. The faculty members don't necessarily think of themselves as employees of the university, but more as members of the university. It's comparable to becoming a partner in a law firm, in which your status makes it your law firm. Similarly, when you're granted tenure it becomes your university. So the stake of the professors regarding tenure is clearly much more substantial than that of the students."

Because personnel judgements are integral parts of the tenure process, the fact that committee members must evaluate candidates means that subjectivity is inescapable. However, by facilitating both the committee's evaluation and a separate dean's evaluation, which are simultaneously presented to the Academic Vice President, conflicts of interest are, in theory, eliminated.

"I think it ultimately is an extremely fair process. Everyone on the committees has to be of a higher rank than the individual under consideration, so that there's no possibility of any conflict of interest. The faculty usually bends over backwards to give the candidate the benefit of the doubt," Haahr said. "If it's a negative decision, of course it's sad. Nobody has a personal bone to pick; we're thinking of the long-term interest of the university."

In thirty years at YC, Haahr has witnessed its evolution into a top-tier institution of higher learning; with this experience comes a world of insight into the tenure process. As a past member of tenure committees in the humanities division, she has been a firsthand party to the judgement of candidates for tenure throughout her career.

"There's a sense of collegiality among the committee. In general, people try to be positive at YU, while at other universities they try to be more negative regarding the tenure process. I think it's always been very fair; there have been very few rejections in my experience here, but when there are rejections, they're usually based on very sound reasons," Haahr admitted.

Disappointments, though rare, still occur when tenure candidates are rejected, effectively terminating their careers at the university. Recently, a distinguished YC faculty member who applied for tenure was rejected, leaving a plethora of inspired students uninspired by the university's tenure process.

"I think that it's terrible that a remarkable professor who was loved and admired by his students, who publishes, and who brings a good name to YU, and who recently won the teacher of the year award, could be rejected when applying for tenure. It's a very unfortunate situation that exhibits the problems in the university's arbitrary policy on granting tenure," Scott Nadel, YC '00 said.

Because of the gravity of a tenure decision, which grants professors job security, additional respect in their fields, and salary increases, it is not a judgment to be taken lightly. Therefore, the university has three general categories that are evaluated in each step of the process. Teaching competence, publication in refereed journals, and collegiality are the factors that paint the candidate's self-portrait. While no specific prerequisites exist in order to receive tenure, success in these three disciplines is expected among those seeking tenure.

"Even if the teaching that the committee observes firsthand is good, and the students' recommendations are very impressive, the decision may be a negative one. In building a long-term faculty, there are other things that enter the picture as well, like scholarly promise or compatibility with the department. All those things enter the picture because tenured slots are very rare, so the divisions have to be very careful when making a tenure decision," Haahr explained.

She continued, "There are no specific guidelines regarding the amount of publication required. People must have published in respectable venues. We try to be very fair about evaluating candidates, because we have a faculty with a very heavy teaching load, which we certainly take into consideration. If you teach at Harvard, you often teach two courses a year, while if you teach at YC you teach eight courses. They have a lot of time for research, so that makes a big difference. But some publication is definitely expected at YU."

After the committee evaluates the candidate based on the aforementioned criteria, which include in-house research, as well as references from outside evaluators (usually tenured professors and deans from other universities) who are asked to assess whether a candidate's promotion would be voted favorably at their institution based on the research that the committee discovered, a dean evaluates the information independently; both viewpoints are then passed on to the Academic Vice President, who reviews and conducts further outside research of the candidate. The inquiry is then routed to the President, who directs it to the Board of Trustees for final approval. Practically, however, the inspection conducted by the faculty committee is the integral component of the process.

"There are times in which committees may not be unanimous. Or there may be differences in perceptions between the committee and the dean. The key is to look for a consensus, and when finding inconsistencies in the evaluation, it becomes my responsibility to conduct an additional comprehensive review," Gelman stated.

In order to facilitate a more objective, less contestable formula to granting tenure, the Wurzweiler School of Social Work Promotion and Tenure Committee has tried to identify quantifiable methods of systematically judging tenure nominees. "[At Wurzweiler] they have spent an extraordinary amount of time trying to come up with quantifiable items for each of the criteria. I've shared some of this work with the various undergraduate units that may be interested in it. Some find that it's helpful, while others find that it's much too systematic, because different fields stress different approaches," Gelman said. "As long as I'm here, there will be a much more systematic approach in terms of the criteria if I have a say in it, because it's very important that tenure candidates have an idea of what's expected of them, and if they are not producing a level of scholarship that is expected of them, their biannual reviews should keep reminding them what to anticipate."

The primary criticism of tenure nationwide is the lure of permanent job security; the goal of the tenure evaluation procedure is to weed out those individuals who find it burdensome to teach or conduct scholarly research. While tenure was initially conceived to ensure a free flow of ideas in which one would not be at risk for espousing unpopular ideas, it has, on occasion, become a means for what Gelman described as an "on-the-job retirement plan." Despite its criticisms on campus, tenure goes hand-in-hand with the establishment of a successful university. Granting tenure to the most successful professors in a university allows faculty to take certain risks which they otherwise might not take, forming the fundamental stepping stone that facilitates the process of building an ordinary university into an respected institution of higher learning.