Tenure Discussed At GSE Conference

Earlier this month, journalists and academics convened at Gutman Library at the Graduate School of Education (GSE) to discuss the ramifications of instituting tenure in their fields.

About 50 people attended the two-day conference organized by Harvard's Project on Faculty Appointments, according to project director Richard P. Chait, professor of higher education at the GSE.

The purpose of the conference, Chait said, was "to better acquaint members of the press, including broadcast media, with issues or controversies that surround faculty work life."

"[The conference] aimed to update journalists on the action institutions have taken in response to pressures to change employment systems," Chait said.

Bill Kovach, curator of the Nieman Fellowships, which co-sponsored the conference, said the event helped journalists explore whether job security would necessarily lead to greater investigative freedom.

"One of the panels we organized was to discuss similarities and differences between the two areas [academics and journalism]," Kovach said.

The seminar featured three panels that examined faculty employment trends at colleges and universities across the country.

John B. Duff, president of Columbia College in Chicago, sat on a panel titled, "What's at Stake? The Current and Future Role of Tenure in the Academy."

Duff recently implemented a new tenure system at Columbia College, in which each tenured faculty member is subject to review at the end of each year.

Tenure may then be revoked if a faculty member receives two consecutive negative reviews, Duff said.

"That's a real step forward in that people then know that they have to keep performing," he said. "The best way to avoid a problem with an incompetent person having tenure is not to give that person tenure in the first place."

Lamson Rheinfrank, a former trustee of Williams College, sat on the same panel as Duff.

"There isn't a president I've talked to--off the record--who believes that tenure is needed today for academic freedom," he said recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Despite the various viewpoints discussed at the conference, Chait said the participants did not emerge with any sort of conclusion paper or formal recommendation.

"It was really a briefing session," he said. "We didn't have a concrete goal like the issuance of a statement or any product of that sort."