L'affaire Isenberg, or, the trouble with tenure

In denying tenure to Professor Andrew Isenberg, Nassau Hall's "Committee of Three" has betrayed the administration's frequent promises that Princeton University is an institution centered on undergraduate education. Isenberg, a member of the faculty since 1997 and a leading environmental historian, was turned down despite being the recipient of the 2001 President's Award for Distinguished Teaching. That this decision has led students to draft a petition calling for its reversal testifies further to Isenberg's value as an educator.

The incentives implicit in Nassau Hall's decision will damage the quality of education at Princeton. Now that junior faculty members see that even earning the touted teaching award brings one no closer to tenure, they will realign their priorities. Students will be shunted aside as their teachers plunge into an intellectually unhealthy "publish-or-perish" mindset. Still more professors will hold only one office hour per week or view classes as a tiresome distraction from their real "work."

The irrelevance of teaching to tenure contradicts an obvious university interest in retaining dynamic and dedicated teachers on the faculty. Those denied tenure almost always leave Princeton to work elsewhere. Unless action is taken to keep Isenberg at Princeton, students will be denied the benefit of his consistently well-reviewed and popular lectures. In a broader sense, the current tenure system threatens to make good teachers a rarity at Princeton. What happened to Isenberg will happen again. It has happened before.

Professor Isenberg's case begs a larger question: does Princeton need tenure at all? Though professors enjoy guaranteed occupancy of the tenured Eusebius P. Codweiler Chair in Comparative Comparatology, it is not clear that their doing so makes Princeton a better university.

The tenure system, which grants secure posts to selected faculty, has long been defended on the grounds that it protects academic freedom. There is inherent value in Princeton's having a diverse and outspoken faculty, but professors like Cornel West or Peter Singer — both assuredly controversial — are in no danger of being forced out. Indeed, the University actively recruited them because their controversial pronouncements attract attention, stir debate and enrich the academic life of the campus. Any university worth its salt has an incentive to protect academic freedom if it wishes to stay on the cutting edge of academia. Thus Princeton's tenure can only be understood as an honorific perk separating the "best" faculty from the rest. Strangely, the definition of "best" seems utterly unrelated to teaching ability. After all, Isenberg won an award for being the "best" teacher.

Some of the tenure system's bolder defenders respond that teaching is not the university's top priority. They argue that students are a nice way to raise funds to support the university's real mission: cutting edge research. Indeed, there are institutions where research is the central goal. We call them think tanks and there are easier ways to fund one than taking on 5,000 students. Teaching is obviously central to Princeton's mission.

Finally, tenure can actually stifle academic freedom and scholarly progress. Who has not heard an academic say that he or she had best watch their words until receiving tenure, even if only in jest? Tenure insulates senior faculty not from censorship but from accountability, while intimidating their juniors from treading on colleagues' toes. Tenure can powerfully reinforce the intellectual temptation to go along to get along. Moreover, the briefest look at the journals section of Firestone shows that "publish or perish" produces a lot of garbage. Without tenure pressure academics would crank out fewer papers for the Journal of Post-Apocalyptic Gender Studies. This would be good for the advancement of learning and save a lot of trees. Conversely, senior professors without guaranteed posts would have to continue working at a competitive rate. Broadly, then, abolishing tenure would make the academy more efficient.

Of course, tenure won't disappear. Professors want it too much. Yet Princeton could change the way it awards tenure. The most important reform would be to make teaching ability a key factor in evaluating candidates. Without dynamic teachers the Princeton undergraduate experience will be diminished. Without hope of tenure, good teachers will go elsewhere. Secondly, there must be structured student input into tenure decisions. This could be implemented by nothing more difficult than having the deciding bodes pay careful attention to course evaluations and the Student Course Guide.

Tenure controversies could also be avoided if the system were more transparent. In The Daily Princetonian's coverage of the story, nearly all those interviewed refused to comment on how or why decisions were made. Observers of academia know that tenure committees' mysterious decisions often mask the intrigues of departmental politics and the tyranny of fashionable ideas.

Respect for teaching, student participation and transparency will boost the legitimacy and value of Princeton's tenure system. In the short term, though, Nassau Hall must show students that skilled teachers are valued at Princeton. Reconsidering Andrew Isenberg for tenure would be a good start.

Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky is a Wilson School major from New York, N.Y.