Should Service Be Considered in Tenure?

When junior members of the English Department met with President Derek C. Bok and Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence earlier this month to complain about two recent tenure denials, they charged that Harvard places a disproportionate share of administrative work on its junior faculty.

To remedy the situation, the English professors proposed an additional semester of paid leave time and a more through evaluation of teaching and administrative contributions. And unless the administration accedes to their requests, the junior faculty said, they will not have a realistic chance of competing for tenure at Harvard.

"Historically, the English Department meeting [with Bok and Spence] is going to be very important," says newly tenured Professor of Romance Languages and Literature Alice A. Jardine. Jardine--and faculty members in a wide range of departments--say that the dissatisfaction of junior English faculty is but the most visible sign of problems with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences' time-honored tenure system.

Although Spence released a 1985 annual report saying that FAS needed to increase the possibility that its junior members would receive senior posts here, junior professors now say they have yet to see any appreciable results.

And a recent twist in the argument over whether Harvard offers its junior professors a fair chance is the charge that the University requires time-consuming administrative work that detracts from a young scholar's time to conduct research and write--the traditional criteria for senior-level posts.

From sitting on the Faculty Council and degree committees to serving as head tutors and thesis advisers, many junior faculty members say they are overburdened with the day-to-day responsibilities of the undergraduate program. And, they add, such work gets no consideration in the all-important tenure reviews which take place at the end of their seventh year.

"If you are expected to be a full citizen of the University, you simply cannot work at a rate that is any more rapid than your senior colleagues," says Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities Deborah E. Nord, an English Department professor whose recent tenure denial helped prompt the meeting with Bok. "They don't produce at a rate that would qualify them for tenure at Harvard."

In fact, many junior professors say that Nord's case is a classic example of the flaws in Harvard's tenure review process. Nord, the author of two books on Victorian literature, has an impressive resume of Harvard experience. Head tutor of the English Department for several years, she sat on the Faculty Council for three years and was also a member of the Committees on Degrees in Women's Studies and History and Literature.

But, the way Harvard's system currently works, Nord's administrative duties were not even considered in her tenure review. And, despite the support of her department's senior faculty, Nord was denied a lifetime post by an ad hoc committee of outside scholars earlier this spring.

"There is not any illusion about whether it counts for tenure because it absolutely does not," Nord says. "If the University is going to continue to have the tenure procedure it now does, it is not in the interests of junior faculty to be good citizens."

And Assistant Professor of English and American Literature Allen H. Reddick, the current head tutor in the English Department, says, "University service has no bearing whatsoever on whether one gets tenure or not. It doesn't work in your favor at all, but it necessarily takes time away from your scholarship."

These issues of service to the University are directly connected to the broader questions of Harvard's tenure review process, according to junior faculty. And for that reason, they say that their criticisms are unlikely to produce much change.

The way the process currently works, Harvard sends "blind letters" to top scholars around the country asking them to evaluate the internal candidate against the leading names in that person's field.

After receiving those evaluations, the department's senior faculty vote on the candidate, and, if they approve the promotion, Bok then convenes a group of outside scholars for a final review. The tortuous process comes to a close, though, with the president, who has final say on all hiring matters and has been known to overrule departments' recommendations.

And with the "best scholar" operating as Harvard's standard for promotions, junior faculty who have spent a large part of their seven years here teaching or doing committee work say they are disadvantaged.

"It's not just your work that is being evaluated, your reputation is being evaluated. You have to be doing your work and making your mark outside Harvard too," says Nord.

"Anything done for the University but not visible outside isn't going to help," says Jayne Assistant Professor of Government Mark A. Peterson, the department's head tutor. "Anything that interferes with making a name for oneself interferes with the chances of being tenured."

Senior faculty members agree with Peterson's assessment of the tenure system, but many add that the current system is designed to maintain high academic standards and should not be changed to accomodate what many call the "good citizenship" activities of junior faculty.

"Tenure at Harvard is very dependent on the outside reputation of the candidate. Because of that, you will inevitably see that scholarship matters even more," says Sociology Department Chair Aage B. Sorensen.

And Kenan Professor of English and American Literature and Language Helen H. Vendler adds that, while departments often do consider University service, senior faculty are really the overburdened workers in the community.

"The thing is, it is a constant problem for us too. It is not as though we are not aware of how hard it is to keep your work going," Vendler says. "If someone can't keep their work going when they are doing lesser service then they won't be able to do it later. There is some quality you are looking for of an ability to package your time."

Because senior faculty are asked to evaluate candidates for tenure around the country, to travel and speak at conferences and to sit on other universities' ad hoc committees, the amount of time they spend doing service work is considerably more than what junior faculty spend, Vendler asserts.

But many junior faculty say that they contribute as much time as any senior professor to the University--even as they struggle to finish the scholarly work that is expected of those seeking promotion.

"Before I came here a number of people said to me `Whatever you do, don't be head tutor,'" Peterson says. "Junior faculty are not reticent enough about accepting responsibility."

"If anything the University is really benefiting tremendously from a group of junior faculty that is giving much more to the University than they will ever get back," Peterson adds.

For many junior professors the issue is where to find more time for scholarship. If the University grants them an additional semester of paid leave time--they currently get one semester--many say that could make the difference for completing the second book, which often determines tenure in the humanities and social sciences.

"As long as the expectation that you need to be a superstar in x amount of time exists, then they need to give us the time," says Assistant Professor of History Eric Arnesen. History Department members recently asked Bok to allow them more paid leave time, a request identical to the one pressed by English faculty at their recent meeting with the president.

But while most faculty--junior and senior--agree that the University should find a way to give more time for junior professors' scholarship, some say that simply giving more time off is the wrong way to go about it.

"I think junior faculty could get more resources for their work at Harvard," says Sorensen. "If there were more resources available to support junior faculty in their research it would help."

Sorensen and some other professors advocate a system which would allow junior faculty to teach half the usual couse load, with half their salary coming from the department and half coming from a dean's fund for junior faculty research.

Other junior faculty say the issue should not be granting more time for scholarship, but reordering priorities. Some faculty say that by giving less importance to teaching and service, the University is selling its students short.

"Teaching is not the priority here, nor working with students," says Assistant Professor of Anthropology Terrence Deacon. "I have spent far more of my time than was healthy for my academic advancement working with students. If I had been more clear what a small role those things play I might have made some different choices."

In fact, many junior professors concede that they consciously devote less time to teaching and interaction with students because they know that any efforts they make will not be rewarded.

"You have just built a strong tendency into the system that teaching and students will suffer," Arnesen says.

But despite the complaints, many professors say that department heads have become more sympathetic to the needs of junior members. In particular, they say, more and more senior faculty are being appointed head tutors in an effort to spare junior professors from the time-consuming bureaucratic responsibility.

"I have some sympathy with the arguments," Sorensen says. "I think the departments can organize their workloads differently. Sociology has tried to save junior faculty from taking on the more onerous tasks."

Yet faculty members and administrators say the difficulties of the tenure process are not unique to Harvard; across the Ivy League, they say, university service is not considered during the tenure review.

However, in the larger state schools administrators say they do try to give some weight to junior faculty contributions to teaching and administration.

But despite the arguments for and against university service, many junior professors say the entire tenure system itself must be overhauled. "Part of me is hesitant to say the answer is giving people more time off, because I feel that the structure, standards and process are all wrong," says Nord.

And Jardine adds, "It is clear that the entire tenure process needs to be reviewed, and the relationship between academic excellence and reputation, service to Harvard and the community and teaching needs to be re-examined."

For now, the pace of change is slow for junior faculty. The English Department has promoted only one junior professor in 25 years, the History Department has not made an inside promotion in 10 years and the Sociology Department just made its first internal promotion in six years this spring.