A 'stunningly flawed process' on tenure
Robert Zaller
Issue date: 5/22/09 Section: Ed-Op
After the interregnum of business caused by the University's mourning period for Dr. Constantine Papadakis, the Faculty Senate is now poised to resume consideration of a matter left on its plate by former Provost Steven W. Director.
I don't think many of us who experienced Director's stealth regime realized the full extent of its mischief. I saw some of it up front in his attempts to muzzle the Tenure Appeals Committee during my service on it. Director blocked the committee's access to relevant records - something no previous provost had attempted to do - and tried to restrict the committee's function to merely reviewing the final year of a candidate's service instead of the entirety of the probationary record from the initial contract forward. The committee objected to this unilateral rewriting of its charge, but was stonewalled. The president refused to meet with the committee to discuss its concerns, although it was in theory directly advisory to him.
Now, we know a little more about Director's shenanigans. In the fall of 2005, he set up a so-called Provost Advisory Committee to make recommendations to him on all tenure and promotion candidacies. The PAC was initially dubbed the University Tenure and Promotion Advisory Committee, which implied that it had the status of a regular University Advisory Committee. UACs have a special status, as set out in the Faculty Charter. When they include faculty, their faculty components must be staffed upon recommendation by the Faculty senate. The Tenure Appeals Committee is in fact an all-faculty committee, whose nine members are chosen by the senate, the University Assembly, the president respectively.
Director unilaterally set up a PAC, only then advising the Senate and asking not for appointments but a slate of names to choose from. Provosts can, of course, set up ad hoc committees to advise them on particular matters; they cannot unilaterally create permanent bodies that become part of a process, such as tenure review, that is carefully defined and bounded by the Charter. That, though, is what Director did - alas, with the complicity of the senate, which thereby made itself a party to a major intrusion on the tenure process.
I don't think many of us who experienced Director's stealth regime realized the full extent of its mischief. I saw some of it up front in his attempts to muzzle the Tenure Appeals Committee during my service on it. Director blocked the committee's access to relevant records - something no previous provost had attempted to do - and tried to restrict the committee's function to merely reviewing the final year of a candidate's service instead of the entirety of the probationary record from the initial contract forward. The committee objected to this unilateral rewriting of its charge, but was stonewalled. The president refused to meet with the committee to discuss its concerns, although it was in theory directly advisory to him.
Now, we know a little more about Director's shenanigans. In the fall of 2005, he set up a so-called Provost Advisory Committee to make recommendations to him on all tenure and promotion candidacies. The PAC was initially dubbed the University Tenure and Promotion Advisory Committee, which implied that it had the status of a regular University Advisory Committee. UACs have a special status, as set out in the Faculty Charter. When they include faculty, their faculty components must be staffed upon recommendation by the Faculty senate. The Tenure Appeals Committee is in fact an all-faculty committee, whose nine members are chosen by the senate, the University Assembly, the president respectively.
Director unilaterally set up a PAC, only then advising the Senate and asking not for appointments but a slate of names to choose from. Provosts can, of course, set up ad hoc committees to advise them on particular matters; they cannot unilaterally create permanent bodies that become part of a process, such as tenure review, that is carefully defined and bounded by the Charter. That, though, is what Director did - alas, with the complicity of the senate, which thereby made itself a party to a major intrusion on the tenure process.
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