Tenuous Non-Tenure

DENIALS OF TENURE for political reasons are hardly uncommon in most academic communities. Young assistant professors who are self-professed Marxists often find that their efforts to expose students to radical alternatives as well as traditional, pro-capitalist theories result in failure to receive tenure. Usually the political motivation behind tenure denials is masked by objective criteria (e.g., poor teaching performance, insufficient scholarly publication) that are legally acceptable grounds for dismissal. However, at Boston Stage College as case of tenure has arisen where the mask is so thin it fails to hide what can only be termed a flagrant violation of academic freedom and first amendment rights.

Steven Rosenthal, assistant professor of Sociology at Boston State College, and a self-proclaimed "Marxist anti-racist activist," joined the school's faculty six years ago. He was instrumental in writing a strong Affirmative Action plan for the college, and he is an active member of the Committee Against Racism (CAR) chapter on campus.

When the lengthy tenuring process began for Rosenthal in March 1975, with a unanimous vote of the sociology department to "very highly recommend" him for tenure, it appear unlikely that his connection with CAR would in any way prejudice the rest of the proceedings. "All of my activities as a member of CAR were peaceful and could in no way be used against me," Rosenthal, who received his M.S. from Harvard in 1968, recalls.

Nevertheless, at a May 1975 meeting of the school's Special Committee on Tenure, Kermit C. Morrissey, president of Boston State College, asked that Rosenthal be denied tenure because of his action as a member of CAR, claiming that Rosenthal had been the instigator of a CAR demonstration the previous month. On April 15, 1975, CAR members had disrupted a speech being delivered on campus by Avi Nelson, a radio announcer vehemently opposed to forced busing. The three faculty members on the committee asked Morrissey if he had any evidence to substantiate his claim. The president replied that he did have such evidence but would not produce it at that time. All three faulty members proceeded to vote in favor of tenure for Rosenthal, while James Jones, academic dean of the college and the only other voting member of the committee cast the single vote against tenure.

Five weeks later, in a meeting with Rosenthal and Thomas O. Power, president of the Faculty Federation, a local chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, Morrissey told the two men that he had no evidence to support the charges he had made at the committee meeting. Power later informed Dean Jones that the evidence did not exist and asked him to change his vote. Jones refused, claiming that his negative vote had not been based on Morrissey's charges but on "a" lack of enthusiasm displayed by the faculty members on the Special Committee replied to this statement with a letter reiterating their support for Rosenthal.

The debate between the faculty and Jones was somewhat moot, however, because the tenure decision now fell into Morrissey's hands and unlike most previous cases where the president's approval of the committee's recommendation had been a routine matter, Morrissey rejected the faculty's advice. In a letter dated July 21, 1975, Morrissey in formed Rosenthal that "your service to Boston State College will be terminated on June 30, 1976."

WITH THE RECOMMENDATION of the Special Committee on Tenure, Rosenthal's case had "reached the point where tenure at Boston State in historically assured," John Roberts, executive director of the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts (CLUM), said last week. he added that never before in the college's history had tenure been denied to a candidate who had received the recommendation of all faculty committees. "Given this historical background," Roberts said, "the case looks like a blatant denial of tenure for political reasons."

Perhaps Morrissey could have avoided this charge if he had presented Rosenthal with specific, non-political reasons for the firing. But the reasons he has given leave little doubt as to the weekness of his case and the motive for the firing. In his letter to Rosenthal, Morrissey wrote that he had "reservations" about the quality of Rosenthal's teaching and about his ability "to make a long term positive contribution" to the college. Not only did these reservations contradict countless faculty and student evaluations describing Rosenthal with such phrases as "a dedicated teacher who spends a lot of time with students," but they also fail to fulfill the requirements of a clause in the college's contract with the Faculty Federation. That clause requires the president to cite specific, substantive reasons for terminating the contract of an individual faculty member.

Both Faculty Federation and Rosenthal filed grievances in July 1975 with the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts State College system. The board rejected these grievances as well as requests for either an open hearing or submission of the dispute to binding arbitration. In so doing, the Board maintained that Morrissey's letter had "identified the basis" for his decision "with precision and particularity", and upheld the decision to deny Rosenthal tenure. The case appeared to be closed.

However, Rosenthal's firing took on a new dimension when The Boston Globe reported on March 5, 1976 that Boston State College campus police had engaged in "widespread political surveillance of suspected activist students and teachers." Rosenthal said last week he believes photographs taken of CAR members at the Avi Nelson incident on April 15 1975 were the evidence Morrissey had claimed to possess at the meeting of the Special Committee on Tenure.

Since the evidence proved only that Rosenthal was present at the incident, not an instigator of it, and since the college may with the political surveillance, Rosenthal appealed to the Board of Trustees to reopen his case. The Board rejected this request but did agree to re-open the case if its own investigation indicated that political spying had affected the tenure decision.

Morrissey's unsubstantiated explanations indicate that Rosenthal failed to receive tenure not because of any reservations about his teaching ability but because of his unpopular political views; however, in cases such as these the gap between what is known and what can be proved is usually quite wide. Despite the strong moral and financial support Rosenthal has received from students and faculty at Boston State, and from teacher's unions and professional associations across the state, the outcome of his fight for academic freedom, a fight he now plans to carry into Federal District Court, remains uncertain. What is certain is that if colleges continue to use tenure as a means of silencing those who espouse unfavorable political views, they run the considerable risk of turning their institutions into sterile indoctrination centers comparable to what the great German universities had become in the 1930s.