Tell Me, How Can I Get Tenure at Harvard?

Dear Miss Getachair,

I am a Lecturer in East Asian-American Relations at Harvard. Let me make clear right from the start that I don't need the job. Before I came here I was an important man on the National Security Council in the United States Government, I turned down the job of editor-in-chief of Harper's hoping I would get tenure at Harvard. Now it seems I won't be able to stay. Is there anything I can do? CHARISMATIC

Dear Charismatic,

It's probably too late. "East Asian-American Relations" is much too fuzzy, Make up your mind: Do you want American or do you want East Asian? If you want to stay at Harvard-- and neither government nor Harper's (why not the Atlantic, for heaven's sake?) is the place for a young gentleman--you should look for another job. Have you ever thought of being a House Master? Or, better--I'm told all these newspapermen come to Harvard each year as Nieman Fellows. Surely they need someone to take care of them.

Dear Miss Getachair,

I am an instructor at a state university in the Midwest. I want to be a Harvard professor. What do you think I should do?   YOUNG AND DETERMINED

Dear Y&G,

Join a women's auxiliary or a minority group.

Dear Miss Getachair,

I am rich, successful, and surrounded by important friends. All Harvard offers is crummy pay, a heavy teaching load, and a community infested with underfed hippies and overdressed tourists. So why am I beating my brains out to stay here?   BAFFLED

Dear Baffled,

Good question. I'm baffled, too.

GOOD QUESTION, indeed. Why do so many scholars enter the Harvard rat race and compete for that elusive bit of cheese, a tenured appointment? Some cite their eminent colleagues, others the excellent library, the fine students, or the Boston location.

All stress the importance of the Harvard name. The prestige of Harvard does more than boost a man's ego; it usually boosts his career. Researchers in the natural sciences find that Federal grants have a tendency to gravitate toward Cambridge. And for social scientists, the ivied paths of Harvard often lead directly to Washington.

But as the many state universities improve in quality, competitors to Harvard appear on the horizon. Although their libraries and faculties do not equal Harvard's the salary and fringe benefit offers of these universities may lure individual members of the Harvard Faculty. This still does not happen very often. The Dunlop Report on the Recruitment and Retention of Faculty noted that in the decade from 1957-8 to 1966-7, only 24 tenured Faculty members left Harvard to accept academic positions elsewhere.

Harvard Faculty members are not being drawn away. But the Harvard magnetism has lost its attractive force for many academics at other universities. Fifty years ago, perhaps, middle-aged professors sat around and waited for the call to Harvard. These days, the call often goes unheard. The 1968 Dunlop Report noted that in the previous decade, about half of Harvard's offers to professors at other universities were refused. The report concluded that "once a man is settled and reasonably successful, it is hard to move him either to or away from Harvard."

If that is true, Harvard should be grooming its junior Faculty members for tenured positions. Instead, Harvard is an export factory which supplies the nation's universities with many of their brightest young professors. As its budding scholars fall off the vine, Harvard goes on looking for "the best man available anywhere in the world" to fill each opening. That is why this year, for instance, the History Department failed to renew the contracts of three junior Faculty members and extended futile offers to distinguished European historians who replied that they like it where they are.

***

Dear Miss Getachair,

Why be modest? I am a bright young historian of modern Europe. For several years I have been working on a brilliant book which, alas, is still in manuscript. Now my contract is up for renewal and my department informs me that it wants a book, not a manuscript. The chairman keeps adumbrating something called the Graustein formula which, coupled with the implications of the Dunlop Report, means (or so he says) that there is no longer a place for me at Harvard. Is he telling the truth? What is this Graustein formula, and what does it want from me?   UNAPPRECIATED

Dear Unappreciated,

The Graustein formula is a rule. Harvard has many rules. When they don't want to give you something, they cite a rule. When they want to give you something, they find a way to bypass the rule. You wanted something that they didn't want to give you.

NAMED AFTER the Harvard mathematician who did the statistical work, the Graustein formula was given to Harvard by the influential Committee of Eight in 1938. Professor Graustein estimated that the average tenured Faculty member stays at Harvard for 34 years. He then computed the number of annual appointments each department must make to remain at its current size. That figure--"the Graustein number"--more or less determines the frequency of appointments in each department. For example, if a department had 17 tenured members in 1938, it would be entitled to appoint a new member every other year.

Because new departments and new fields within departments have developed since 1938, and because life in general does not always conform to written rules, the Dean of the Faculty must, in his words, apply the Graustein formula "flexibly." If a department has a chance to pick up a hotshot professor, it can borrow ahead on its Graustein number and get him while he's available, even if the next scheduled appointment in the department is several months or years hence. If a patron donates endowed chairs to a specific department, or if a particular field grows rapidly, the Dean has two options. He can bring in new professors "above the line," and change the department's Graustein number. Or he can make "below the line" appointments, hiring a few extra people and post-poning the decision to replace them until the time of their retirement.

"It's a useful managerial tool," Dean Dunlop commented last week. He said that the formula has three major advantages: it works to prevent retiring professors from hand-picking their successors; it enables departments to adjust to changing fields of study; and, if handled properly, it creates an even age distribution in the Faculty.

The Graustein number is also a good figure for a department chairman to have ready when a disappointed assistant professor asks why he was not rehired. But this institutionalized mystification fools no one. "The Graustein is simply a clothesline to hang appointments on," quipped one assistant professor.

One assistant professor of History whose appointment was hanged this year is Charles S. Maier '60. Maier was appointed an instructor in Spring 1967. In Fall 1969, after the enactment of the Dunlop Report's recommendation to phase out the position of instructor, Maier became an assistant professor. Under the provisions of the changeover period, he opted for a four-year term. His contract came up for renewal this year, one year before its fourth and final year, 1972-3.

MAIER HOPED to be promoted to the tenured rank of professor. Because he had already taught for more than five years, he was not eligible for a three-year term appointment. Before the Dunlop Report, the scholar shinnying up the Harvard Great Chain of Being served five years as an instructor and then, if his contract was renewed, another three years as an assistant professor. A regulation of the American Association of University Professors requires universities to grant tenure to academics who have taught at the school for eight years. So, after serving his initial eight years, the assistant professor in the pre-Dunlop era would, if promoted, receive tenure and the title of associate professor.

Under the new, post-Dunlop system, a person begins as an assistant professor with a five-year contract. After those five years are up, he is promoted (if he is lucky) to associate professor, which is now a non-tenured position. When that three-year contract expires, he is ready to become a tenured full professor.

When should an assistant professor be made an associate professor? The Dunlop Report is deliberately vague on that point. "Appointments to this rank should be limited to those who merit serious consideration for promotion to tenure," the Dunlop Report recommended. Elaborating on this point, Dunlop said last week, "There are two requirements. First, a person must be of a quality, given a further period of development, likely to show the kind of quality we are looking for in tenure appointments. Second, there must be reasonable prospects of a permanency."

Just what constitutes "reasonable prospects of a permanency"? Dunlop would rather not say. He maintains that a general definition cannot be codified. "I don't mind two or three people competing for a vacancy," he commented. "But I will not see the debasement of the associate professorship by having ten guys competing for one spot."

As dean of the Faculty, Dunlop must approve the promotions that each department recommends. This year, he cracked down on promotions and required department chairmen to justify each new appointment. He identifies two reasons for this policy: "We are interested in getting the best possible people, in looking outside as well as inside; and we want the record clear with regard to equal employment opportunities." He does not mention a third reason--the financial difficulties which demand stringency.

WHATEVER HIS reasons, Dunlop last Fall vetoed the Government Department's recommendation to promote two assistant professors, Robert L. Jervis and James R. Kurth, to the rank of associate professor. You can only promote one, Dunlop told Department chairman James Q. Wilson. When Wilson then presented a Department recommendation to promote Jervis and let Kurth go, supporters of the more radical Kurth protested vehemently. After a couple of months of bickering, Dunlop finally agreed to let the two promotions go through.

Both Jervis and Kurth specialize in international relations. Dunlop's original reluctance to promote two men and let them compete for one vacancy may stem from his recognition that in the field of international relations, only half a vacancy exists. Presumably, both Kurth and Jervis are now vying for the spot that Henry A. Kissinger '50 once occupied. But Kissinger is only half gone. Although Dunlop says, "As far as I'm concerned he has resigned." the chairman of the Government Department says that Kissinger can return to his place if, sometime in November, he communicates his intention to leave the Nixon Administration by the end of the year. The place that Kurth and Jervis are competing for may soon be no place at all.

No matter what happens, Kurth and Jervis are relatively fortunate. If they were in the History Department, they would probably be out looking for jobs. The History Department has never appointed a non-tenured associate professor. By interpreting the Dunlop report's guidelines so strictly, the Department in effect has cut a man's trial period down to four years. Under the old system, an instructor who showed promise in his first couple of years would be rehired and would have five additional years to prove himself before his contract came up for review. Today a man with a Ph.D. starts as an assistant professor. He has four years before his appointment is reviewed. If his department interprets the term "promise" broadly, he will have another three years to produce written work. But if his department, like the History Department, thinks that to promote a man to associate professor is to promise him a tenured position, the assistant professor will have only four years to write a distinguished book.

Most people can't do it. When Charles Maier's contract came up for review last winter, his book was still in manuscript. While that may have been a factor in his case, the tenure bid of his colleague, Samuel R. Williamson, was also shot down. And Williamson had already written one prize-winning book and had another book in the works.

The regulation that a man must have published a book of proven value is one of those rules that can be cited or waived, depending on the sentiments of the department. For example, Edward L. Keenan '57, received tenure almost two years before his book on Ivan the Terrible was published. Patrick L.R. Higonnet '58 who, like Keenan, became a professor in Spring, 1970, also had no published book at the time of his appointment. So even in the History Department, a man can get tenure without having completed a book. And while scholars in some other fields produce primarily articles, historians are normally judged by the merits of their books.

***

Dear Miss Getachair,

I am an assistant professor. I have been offered the job of Senior Tutor. Should I accept?   HESITANT

Dear Hesitant,

As Senior Tutor, you will receive a secretary, a telephone, a free house, a private office, and a sure shot at a tenured position...at any university but Harvard.

After all the administrative drudgery that Senior Tutors perform, they must find it disheartening to learn that the position hurts, rather than helps their chances for promotion in the Faculty. Since the post was created in 1952, there have been 63 non-tenured Senior Tutors. Six of them have become tenured professors at Harvard. "Most Senior Tutors do not make it at Harvard unless they're given tenure at the time of their appointment," observed Charles P. Whitlock, who as dean of the College acts as chairman of the Administrative Board of Senior Tutors. "But most Senior Tutors go on to be full professors at other colleges," he added.

When asked if he thought the job of Senior Tutor of Kirkland House hurt his prospects for tenure, Sam Williamson said only, "It didn't help." Williamson served as Senior Tutor during the hectic days of radical political activity. The chores of the position eat away research time. They also prevent a man from building his departmental reputation and keep him from doing the requisite number of favors for his senior colleagues.

Even if a man stretches his days to the bursting point, he will find his record as Senior Tutor a hindrance. Departments do more than ignore a man's contribution as Senior Tutor; they often count it against him. Academics apparently prefer scholars who are strictly scholars and not administrators, too. The Senior Tutors who make good usually have House Masters slugging for them in their own department: consider Mason Hammond and Ernest May in Kirkland House; John Bullitt and Joel Porte in Quincy House; and Eliot Perkins and Franklin Ford in Lowell House.

Many conservative Faculty members felt especially hostile toward Senior Tutors during the late Sixties, when they thought the Administrative Board should have been punishing student radicals more severely. These political considerations probably damaged the Harvard career of Cornelis Klein, associate professor of Mineralogy and former Senior Tutor of Leverett House.

Klein had advanced higher on the ladder than Maier and Williamson. In July, 1969, the Geology Department raised him to the non-tenured rank of associate professor. In Spring, 1971, the Department recommended that he be promoted to full professor and be granted tenure.

When a department wants to hire an assistant or associate professor, the Dean of the Faculty must approve the choice. WHEN A DEPARTment wants to give a man tenure, more elaborate approval is required. An appointment without limit of time, which lasts an average of 34 years, is a more serious matter than a term appointment of three or five years. The President of the University must approve each tenure appointment. Ever since the Committee of Eight Report revised the system in 1938, the President has convened an ad hoc committee to advise him in his decision.

After a department meets and recommends a candidate for tenure, the department chairman must submit to the Dean a list of scholars, outside as well as inside the University. From that list, the Dean and President select an ad hoc committee to judge the proposed appointment. This ad hoc committee then considers a pile of written material prepared and collected by the department chairman. Such material includes letters from the chairman and other members of the department, opinions of scholars inside and outside the University, a biography and bibliography of the nominee, a description of the search procedure, and a discussion of why this candidate is the person best qualified for the job. Meeting with the President, the ad hoc committee then interviews the department chairman and other experts. Finally, the committee reports to the President, and the President decides.

The ad hoc committee procedure is designed to help the President judge a candidate's qualifications and ensure that the department has checked outside the University in searching for the most eminent scholar available. The system also helps watchdog the distribution of tenure appointments among the fields within a department. Sometimes a department selects more than one name and asks the President and the ad hoc committee to choose the best person. More often, it proposes one candidate and requests his confirmation.

On May 25, 1971, one month before leaving office, President Pusey vetoed Klein's appointment. Such a decision is always unusual. In Klein's case, it was especially surprising, since his department unanimously had recommended his promotion. Characteristically, Pusey's motives were a subtly blended mixture of academics and politics.

THE ACADEMIC question went beyond Klein's personal qualifications. In Fall, 1970, Dean Dunlop had created a committee to investigate the status of Geophysics in the Geology Department. Francis Birch '24, the Department's only tenured geophysicist, by then had already passed the retirement age. The small committee of scientists from outside and inside the University reported that Geophysics, the fastest growing and most glamorous area of Geology, was grossly understaffed at Harvard. It noted the abundance of Harvard mineralogists and suggested boosting Geophysics at the expense of Mineralogy. So one year after Klein became an associate professor of Mineralogy, with the assumption that his work met the University's standards and that "reasonable prospects of a permanency" existed, a special and prestigious committee was reporting to the President and Dean that Harvard needed more geophysicists and fewer mineralogists.

The special committee's recommendations were no doubt important. But senior members of the Department who testified before the ad hoc committee say that President Pusey himself played an extraordinarily energetic role. "He was clearly in command," one Geology professor recalled. Pusey easily dominated the men he had asked to serve on the ad hoc committee. One of these men had also sat on the special review committee.

One geologist speculated that his fellow Department members described Klein's virtues less emphatically when questioned by a President who obviously opposed the appointment. After one of Klein's backers reminded Pusey that Klein had conducted a good deal of research despite the time-consuming duties of the Senior Tutorship, the President reportedly snapped back, "Franklin Ford was a Senior Tutor, and he did all right."

Klein's performance as Senior Tutor hardly endeared him to Pusey. No one objected more than the President to the Ad Board's lenient treatment of disruptive student radicals. Pusey's distaste for Klein's politics probably provided the passion behind his academic objections to the appointment.

"The only thing that I find an unresolved problem is the non-reaction of the Department," Klein says in retrospect. "They had made two decisions: a promotion to associate professor, which was a unanimous decision, and then a unanimous decision to recommend me to the ad hoc committee. I find it odd that the Department in no way reacted." Klein thinks that the chairman could have appealed the verdict to a new judge, President Bok, who took office a month later.

If the Department had in fact not wanted to appoint Klein, it might very well have spared itself the unpleasantness of arguing his merits and simply sent his name to an ad hoc committee sure to shoot him down. Neither Klein nor his senior colleagues contend that is what happened. Such things have happened, however, in the History Department, which is notorious for its acrimonious debates and factional splits.

THE HISTORY Department had its full share of unpleasantness in Fall, 1969, when it debated the appointment of Fritz Stern, a German history professor at Columbia. David S. Landes, professor of History and Stern's good friend, supported the appointment enthusiastically. Oscar Handlin, Warren Professor of American History, led the opposing forces. As usual, the sides split roughly along the American and European divisional lines of the Department.

The Department recommended by a split vote that Stern be hired. The ad hoc committee was unimpressed, however, and President Pusey rejected the appointment.

Stern's supporters were bitter. They knew that Handlin had gone to the top to voice his objections. They also suspected that Franklin L. Ford, McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History and former dean of the Faculty, was less than enthusiastic about the prospect of a new man encroaching on his territory of modern German history. They realized that if Ford had wanted the appointment, he was close enough to Pusey to guarantee its approval.

Why was Stern blackballed? In such cases, the academic and political reasons tend to blur together. On the one hand, Stern writes slowly and reputedly mistreats graduate students. On the other hand, his record in the Columbia strike was mushy left, which was anathema to conservatives like Handlin.

The wounds were still red when Patrick Higonnet's bid for tenure came up in the Spring of that academic year. Higonnet was a Continental historian who specialized in modern France and could also cover Austria-Hungary. The Department was looking for someone to replace Crane Brinton, who had taught French history. It also needed someone to do Austria. Higonnet seemed to be the man.

Higonnet had even more going for him. His conservative politics pleased Handlin and the other Americanists. His ignorance of Germany satisfied Ford. The departmental chores he had performed softened up everybody. And the coup de grace: his father, a French inventor, had helped Stern's chief backer, David Landes, gain admittance to a number of important French archives. Higonnet was in the right place at the right time. The Department united behind him, and the President confirmed the appointment.

Higonnet may have outclassed his competitor, Robert Darnton of Princeton, on purely academic considerations, although in fact Darnton had published more written work. Whatever the case, the important point is that Higonnet did not have to battle with academic weapons alone. Politics, both personal and partisan, enter into decisions to hire as well as decisions not to hire.

***

Dear Miss Getachair,

I am a great teacher, and my students love me. Unfortunately I haven't published very much at all. You see, I've been too busy drawing up new courses and meeting with students. Do you think my department will understand? What are my chances for tenure?  ANXIOUS

Dear Anxious,

No. And nil.

JUST AS WE, like Dosteovsky, can imagine the modern Church crucifying Christ, so we can envision Harvard University terminating the contract of Socrates because he had produced no written work. Although all the written rules stipulate that "creative work," and not printed pages, determine a candidate's eligibility for tenure, in practice the dictum of "publish or perish" retains its force.

Scholarly work, and not teaching ability, decides the fate of the academic at Harvard. Defending the system, Dean Dunlop argues that the University must be able to predict a man's future. A professor's teaching ability can fluctuate sharply over the next thirty years, Dunlop maintains, but his capacity to produce creative written work will remain relatively constant. Ignoring the truth value of this dubious statement, we can still safely conclude that at Harvard, teaching comes second to research.

James C. Thomson Jr., Lecturer in History and one of the three young historians who did not receive tenure this year, expressed the view of most junior faculty when he said. "The system is so constructed in theory and practice as to provide good teaching only by accident. On the one hand, those hired for permanency are not hired with an eye to their teaching ability. On the other hand, those who are junior faculty teach under conditions of such stress, overwork and career anxiety, knowing the odds are 99 to 1 that they won't be kept here, that they put their energy into getting their theses and other publications into print to get themselves jobs elsewhere."

Although the charismatic Thomson did not receive tenure, he will stay at Harvard as curator of the Nieman Fellows program. Like most administrative posts, the appointment of curator is "without limit of time." The appointment extends indefinitely but can be terminated any time at the pleasure of the President. Such an appointment lacks the security of a tenured position. As one Faculty member observed wryly. "To get thrown out, a tenured professor really has to rape little girls. Lots of them. One wouldn't be enough." Presumably, for an administrator, one would be enough.

Thomson will continue to teach courses as a Lecturer in History. His tenure appointment, like many others in the History Department, collapsed because it was spread too thin over different areas. Thomson specializes in East Asian-American relations. This field is just gaining scholarly recognition, but to the academically conservative Harvard History Department, it is still unestablished. The East Asian wing of the Department supported Thomson's candidacy, but the Americanists opposed it. The Americanists won, and Thomson lost. In a similar episode, Ernest R. May, an American historian, backed the bid of Sam Williamson, a specialist in European diplomatic history. Caught between the two opposing camps of Americanists and Europeanists, Williamson was neither fish nor fowl. The Department would not recommend his promotion.

ONE WAY TO open a new field in a stuffy department is to raise money for an endowed chair. John K. Fairbank '29, Higginson Professor of History, is directing a fund drive for a chair in Vietnamese Studies, which will presumably be occupied by his protege, Alexander B. Woodside, assistant professor of History. The going price for an endowed chair is $1 million. The income on that sum is primarily used for salaries, which average $24,000 and do not exceed $33,000. Because Fairbank began the drive in 1967, when the cost of a chair was only $600,000, the University has set that amount as the target. The Ford Foundation donated half, and Fairbank has already raised another $150,000.

"It's rather difficult to drop a field," Fairbank said. "You come along with a new field and you have to raise money for it. A field once established usually doesn't disappear." A field did disappear when Fairbank was promoted to a place in Chinese history over 25 years ago. The history of the Spanish Empire has not been taught at Harvard since.

But Fairbank is the exception to the rule. If Woodside receives tenure at Harvard, he will have Fairbank to thank for it. In 1960, Fairbank came to Woodside with an idea.

"I suddenly realized in 1960 that Vietnam is a subject that isn't studied," Fairbank recalled. "That was a real giveaway. What was I doing around here? We were so occupied with China that we never thought about Vietnam. It was French, and no one ever went there."

"Luckily, an able man came along," he continued. "Woodside was at Harvard as a graduate student in Chinese history. I asked him if he was interested, and he said he was." Last year, Woodside published a book on the Chinese influence in Vietnam.

Some men do very well when they switch fields. John Womack Jr. '59, professor of History, moved from American to Latin American history when he was a junior faculty member. Now he has a brilliant reputation and a tenured position at Harvard that the History Department had wanted to fill for 14 years. But not everyone is so successful. Thomas E. Skidmore made a giant leap from medieval European history to Brazilian and South American history. He is now at the University of Wisconsin.

***

Dear Miss Getachair,

Could I be dreaming? Just yesterday my Department voted against giving me tenure. Today I talked to ten senior faculty members and not one brought it up. Am I hallucinating? Did it all really happen?  SCHIZO

Dear Schizo,

You sound quite sane, but forgetful. Remember: you're no longer living in the real world. Now you are at Harvard.

IF SHE CAME to Harvard, Lewis Carroll's Alice would feel right at home. The world of University manners becomes most surreal after a junior faculty member is not rehired. None of his colleagues mention it. "It's perfectly absurd," Klein laughed. "You've taught joint courses with these people, you've known them outside. Nothing is said. Not even, 'Gosh, that's too bad.' It's very strange." Thomson also marvelled at "the degree to which these things aren't spoken about," adding, "No one says, 'I'm sorry things didn't work out."

No one says a thing. The system keeps on plugging along: the frills change, but the premises remain the same. Occasionally, the bulky machinery causes hilarious blunders. Consider the episode of the secretary in the Department of Romance Languages, who accidentally mailed a letter inviting the wrong professor to come with tenure to Harvard. He accepted and he came. There was nothing the Department could do.

But such gross mistakes are the exception. The system normally runs quite smoothly. It doesn't encourage good teaching, but it does let some good teachers through. It loses many bright young scholars, but it manages to hang on to a few. Lately, under pressure from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Harvard has increased its hiring of blacks and women. These days, if a clever department chairman wants to hire additional non-tenured faculty, he just looks around for an eligible woman or black. The President and Dean also ask department chairmen to submit a list of blacks and women who were considered for each tenure appointment. Dean Dunlop may be cutting financial corners, but not at the expense of the University's affirmative action plan.

It would be naive to expect promotions to proceed on purely objective, academic criteria. What is alarming about the present system is not the latitude it permits for personal considerations. Rather, it is the system's premises. The University should be a place for teaching as well as for research. When a department or ad hoc committee is considering a man's record, his teaching ability is not the primary concern. Because departments at Harvard initiate appointments, the criteria for selection tend to be especially technical and book-oriented. At smaller colleges, the president usually directs the entire procedure and pays more attention to a candidate's teaching ability.

Harvard must find ways to develop and keep bright young scholars, or else it will lose the best men to the universities catching up from behind. While it is all well and good to disdain the superstar salaries and featherweight teaching loads that some universities give to distinguished professors, it would be unrealistic to think that Harvard can trade on its name alone for much longer. Once eminent men have settled down somewhere, it is very difficult to lure them away. Either you develop your own young scholars or you dangle out tempting bribes to attract big names from outside. Harvard must choose its course, unless it wishes to languish like an ancient battleship, a glorious but non-functional reminder of another era