No, not that kind.
I think, though, that I’ve come to the end of my tether when it comes to academic tenure. I’m a pro-labor guy, no hesitation, so I’ve resisted thinking about changes in (or dispensing with) the tenure system on the principle that it represents the kind of benefit that, once released, will never come again. It manifestly protects professors who propose uncongenial ways of looking at sensitive topics — no small matter, at a moment when the public arena admits an increasingly constricted range of views. Still, I think I’ve reached the point of counting the side effects worse than the disease that the prescription presumably remedies. Specifically, after a year or so of reading and thinking along with the circle that grew around Invisible Adjunct, I’ve been convinced that this “benefit” for academic labor really does serve the interests of the established professoriate to the disproportionate detriment of the least privileged academic workers.
I hate to say this, especially at a time when numerous parties assail academic freedom without embarrassment (Amardeep Singh just called my attention to this controversy involving my neighbor to the south, Wendy Doniger; but there are the various versions of the Academic Bill of Rights, the controversies involving profs who take unpopular stands on Ashcroftian and Cheneian government). When the tide is running against free expression of critical views, tenure provides an obvious bulwark for venturesome intellectuals.
But. . . . But I just don’t see it any more. Partly because I’m still wincing from IA’s departure from academia, partly because the pattern of benefits and harms has come clearer and clearer to me, partly because I’m not sure that the academy in the US is so very homogeneous that Prof. Radical who gets fired from the University of Xiphius won’t be snatched right up by Righton College (if she’s an attractive candidate).
Mostly, though — the ultimate particular, in my Aristotelian ethical reasoning — I doubt that there’s an equitable way to administer so intensely valuable/costly a benefit. I gather that tenure decisions are typically made after six or seven years of service — but when the decision involves consequences for another thirty years (often more), that seems an unreasonably small sample on which to base so momentous a decision. Too often a candidate can knock himself out earn tenure, then (lacking so potent a motivator) drift for years afterward. Too often decisions turn on circumstances that ought not bear such great significance. The standards vary too unreliably between one institution and another, sometimes between one department and another, often between one committee and another.
If a benefit can’t be administered fairly, it ought not be perpetuated just because it would be a great thing if it were administered well.
I’m not sure what would ensue if the academic labor market were released from the gilt prison of the tenure system, but I’e been persuaded that it’s worth trying.
To get personal for a moment, and in response to ReverendRef’s pointed question of a couple days ago, I’m looking around for another job, several of which are not directly academic. Of course, I’d like to live near Margaret for the next two years; the nearer, the better. It’s no secret that the whole family misses the east coast. And it’s not much of a secret that I don’t fit in well at Seabury — and I wish both for Seabury and for myself the possibility of an unhindered exercise of their/my particular gifts in the pursuit of their/my calling. It doesn’t look as though we complement one another well enough to make this a productive long-term arrangement, very much to my regret. So I’m ready to walk away from tenure myself (although my most preferred outcome would be a position at an institution that wanted me on their faculty, to do there what I do best). Factor that into whatever you make of my view of tenure as a system; I’m sure my perspective on tenure has been affected by my experience of the process and its results.
Posted by AKMA at April 14, 2004 10:29 AM | TrackBackOne other positive about tenure you don't mention is that it offers some measure of job security when universities are doing budget cuts. Since most academics are compensated moderately even when they are successful, that security can mean a lot.
But it still might not outweigh all the negatives that you point out. Perhaps a solution would be to make tenure an issue later in the career (perhaps at the juncture where we currently move from Associate to Full professor). After the first five-to-eight years, profs. could be given longer (say, four or five year) job contracts.
Posted by: Amardeep Singh at April 14, 2004 11:28 AMI am glad that I once acquired tenure because it allowed me to continue doing what was important to me. And I feel doubly blessed to have been given the grace to give up tenure, despite its putative benefits, when what I was doing ceased to feed my soul. I see tenure as a tool -- sometimes useful, sometimes not, sometimes turned into a brutal weapon. Its value lies in the integrity of the system in which it exists and of the people who hold it.
Posted by: Holly at April 14, 2004 12:40 PMWell, that would certainly be one way to cut down on the job-market problem. One of the benefits of spending four to twelve years of one's life vowed to poverty (at least for administrative purposes) and enduring a perennially choked job market is the chance at a tenure-track job and eventually tenure -- the opportunity to explore new scholarly avenues, take risks in teaching, expand roles in the instutition or its surrounding community, take a few years off from research to care for family, etc., etc.
I feel that the benefits of tenure still outweigh its (many) defects. Also, I would only assent to tenure being abolished if tenure for administrators is likewise abolished and if administrators (who have proliferated at a rate many times greater than that of faculty over the past 2-3 decades) are trimmed in number and more strongly devoted to sharing governance with faculty than seems to be generally the case. News from the academy at large leaves me with little confidence in the likelihood of most American colleges or universities choosing to stand behind a temporarily unpopular professor, and I do not care to spend my entire career at the mercy of student evaluations and potential flamers on the Internet.
If my university eliminated tenure tomorrow (note to passers-by: I am a tenure-track prof), I wouldn't quit -- but I'd start looking much more seriously at other career options. I like a certain amount of security and stability in my career, and academia without tenure seems unlikely to provide it.
Posted by: Naomi Chana at April 14, 2004 05:27 PMWow.
For what it's worth, I'm glad our paths crossed. You will continue to be in my prayers even moreso as you work this out.
Peace
Posted by: Reverend Ref at April 14, 2004 06:48 PM