Tenure

I'm up for tenure this year. In fact, my tenure vote is next Friday.

For those of you outside the academic community, the idea of tenure is this: During your first six years or so as a faculty member, you are "probationary faculty," which means that you can be fired any time. All they have to do is to fail to renew your contract, and you are gone. No reason or explanation is necessary.

After tenure, you can still be fired, but it's harder. They could fire you if you failed to do your job. (Here I'm talking about not showing up for class or not turning in grades; merely being a lousy teacher is probably not enough.) They could fire you if you committed a crime, or if you slept with one of your students (which is technically not a crime, but should be.) But they can't just let you go.

The idea is to allow faculty a certain measure of "academic freedom." They should be able to talk about their views in class, and not feel like they could get fired for it. They should be able to pursue new areas of research, even ones that aren't popularly accepted.

Now, it's really not as simple as all that. For one thing, if they want to fire you, they can probably find a way. There was a case here in the University of Wisconsin System a few years ago where a tenured faculty member was fired for what the chancellor called "insubordination," although the faculty member thought it was just spirited dissent. That one went to court, I think, although I don't know how it turned out. In another local case, the administration reorganized the whole university, firing entire departments. One of the people with 18 years of experience there ended up teaching in my department.

For another thing, it's not quite so clear that they can let you go for any reason before tenure. I know of one case where someone was denied tenure and fought it, on the basis of not having been properly told of any need to improve. That would certainly be the case for me. My pre-tenure reviews have been consistenly positive, so I can't imagine that they are going to turn around and deny me tenure now.

Also, next week's vote is not the final word. The tenured members of my department will vote, but that's really just a recommendation. That goes up the line, and more people make recommendations, but the final decision rests with the chancellor. I don't think I've done anything to tick off the chancellor, but who knows?

So the truth is that next week's vote is not binding, doesn't have any particular suspense, and the outcome doesn't truly guarantee my future here at my university. Nonetheless, it's on my mind to at least some extent. Tenure is a milestone in the life of a faculty member (one that I've taken my time to get to) and I'll be happy to reach it.