U. delays review of tenure

A long-planned review of the University's tenure system — the mechanism by which select junior faculty are awarded a job for life — has been put on hold indefinitely, President Tilghman said Thursday.

"We will not conduct the review this year, and we are still considering when the right time [to conduct it] would be," Tilghman, who has been planning such a review since her inauguration in 2001, said in an email.

The review is being postponed in favor of other, more "urgent" priorities that require the attention of both the Dean of the Faculty and Provost — the two senior administrators whose portfolios would include the review — Tilghman said.

She would not elaborate on the projects that are taking precedence over the review apart from saying, "We are still discussing these [issues] with the appropriate [department] chairs, and won't be ready to talk about them more generally for a few weeks."

Dean of the Faculty David Dobkin said the composition of the senior administration also makes it less than logical to do a tenure review this year, saying, "just as it didn't make sense to do it in the first year of a new [Dean of the Faculty], it doesn't make sense to do it in the first year of a new Provost."

Last year, in the aftermath of the Drew Isenberg controversy — in which an assistant professor in the history department was denied tenure, to the dismay of many students — Tilghman reaffirmed her commitment to a review of the system, saying that she wanted to conduct a review this year.

At the time, Isenberg criticized the system as "intentionally opaque" and was joined by other junior faculty who described the system as rife with "secrecy."

While calling for a more open system, junior faculty also highlighted the need for better mentoring by their tenured senior colleagues, allowing them to better understand the University's expectations of them.

Last year, and again in her email message, Tilghman said she strongly supports the idea of a review, including one that seeks answers to junior faculty's concerns regarding the fairness of the process.

"I think one goal of the review should be to identify a system that allows our junior faculty the best opportunity to establish their scholarly and teaching credentials — a fairness issue," she said.

In an earlier interview, Provost Christopher Eisgruber '83 acknowledged the "humongous complexities" involved in the system and outlined what he thought were other questions that any review would have to address.

"On the one hand, you can look at our faculty and say the rate of [granting] tenure is low," Eisgruber said.

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"On the other hand, you can look at the composition of our faculty and say, well, the proportion of tenured faculty is high."

Tilghman also suggested that any review must consider the period of time granted to junior faculty to achieve tenure.

"There are fields in which our current length, five years, is considered sufficient time in which to make a well-informed judgment," she said, "and other fields where five years feels like a very short period."