The University administration granted tenure last week to Gary Bass, an assistant professor of politics and international relations, acting politics department chair Nancy Bermeo said.
"Gary Bass is a terrific addition to the politics department and the Wilson School," Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter said in an email. "He does work of the highest scholarly quality on issues of importance to scholars and policy makers alike."
Bass' tenure is noteworthy in a University notorious for its reluctance to promote junior faculty.
Only one in seven junior faculty candidates at the University receives tenure, Bermeo said.
Last year, the politics department reviewed the cases of three assistant professors. None received an offer of tenure.
Bermeo emphasized Bass' contribution to international relations at the University. His appointment comes on the heels of recent moves to raise the Wilson School's profile in the field.
"We have a really strong faculty in international relations now, and I think [Bass] will be a major leader in that area," Bermeo said.
Bermeo and Slaughter also noted that Bass' work appealed to a popular as well as an academic audience.
Bass' first book, "Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals," received outstanding popular and academic reviews. Princeton and Cambridge University Presses have already accepted a manuscript for his second book, "A Shuddering World: The Politics of Humanitarian Intervention, 1815-1915."
"He writes like a dream," said Slaughter, who sat on Bass' dissertation committee at Harvard.
Bass' work earned him an honorary position as the Elias Boudinot Bicentennial Preceptor, which allowed him to take a year off from teaching to focus on his research.
In addition to his success as a scholar, Bass also earned a reputation as an outstanding teacher.
He won the politics department's Stanley Kelley teaching prize, and his course POL 388: Causes of War received positive course evaluations and reviews in the Student Course Guide.
Bass said he was "extremely happy" about his promotion. He said he regretted that "some extraordinary scholars have been denied tenure" at the University.
He also acknowledged the hard work needed to evaluate a faculty member for tenure.
"I'm very grateful for all the effort that a lot of people put into [my case]," he said. "My [tenure committee] chair [politics professor Thomas Christensen] worked incredibly hard, as did Anne-Marie Slaughter and Nancy Bermeo."
Part of his excitement about staying at Princeton stems from the opportunity to work with his impressive colleagues in international relations.
"I'm delighted with the University's recent aggressive recruiting of faculty in international politics," Bass said.
Tenure candidates at the University face an unusually rigorous process. First, a three-person departmental committee examines the candidate's publications and seeks outside evaluations of the candidate's work.
Based on the committee's recommendations, the entire department — or, in the case of a double appointee like Bass, both departments — then votes on the candidate.
If the candidate receives his department's recommendation, the case proceeds to the Faculty Advisory Committee on Appointments and Advancements — known as the "Committee of Three." The committee, which consists of six full professors, the senior deans and the provost, makes a final recommendation to the president.
"Occasionally, a candidate clears the hurdle at the department level but fails to clear it at the university level," Bermeo said.
Last year, the politics department recommended assistant professor Patrick Deneen for tenure, but the Committee of Three denied his application.
The University's tenure process came under scrutiny in 2003 when the Committee of Three denied tenure to popular history professor Andrew Isenberg, who had his department's support. Isenberg, who received the President's Distinguished Teaching Award two years earlier, unsuccessfully appealed the decision and is now teaching, with tenure, at Temple University.
The Isenberg case caused many students to worry that the administration was not rewarding excellence in teaching during the tenure process.
In December 2003, President Tilghman announced that "Having their scholarship in excellent condition at the time of tenure has to be [junior faculty's] top priority." She added, however, that service and teaching ability are also "considered very seriously."
Bermeo said that teaching ability should be "rewarded and weighed heavily at tenure time."
"Speaking personally, I think people who don't want to put time into teaching should be at the Institute for Advanced Study or at a think-tank," she said. "I'm afraid it's true [that bad teachers can receive tenure at Princeton], although I'd like to think it's not true in the politics department."
Bass said that while he agrees with Tilghman's emphasis on research, he worries that the University's system makes it difficult for junior faculty to dedicate much time to teaching.
"If teaching is not rewarded, then there's an obvious disincentive," he said. "I did put a lot of time into teaching, but if I had been less lucky with tenure, then in retrospect that might not have served my interests all that well."
Bass came to the University in 1999 from Harvard, where he taught as lecturer and earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in government.
He has also worked as a reporter for The Economist, covering the Clinton administration's foreign policy.
Bass' promotion will not take effect until July.
The University Board of Trustees must also grant him tenure formally at their next meeting.
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