A Tenuous Tenure Process

In a move that has stirred surprisingly little Faculty unrest, University President Lawrence H. Summers has revamped the historically autonomous tenure process at Harvard Law School (HLS). Unless transparency is made a priority, a potentially positive change could be little more than a power shift.

Under the old system, candidates receiving two-thirds approval by a vote of the full HLS faculty were then passed along for a presidential stamp of approval—which rarely went against the faculty’s vote. Under the new system—which is in line with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Kennedy School of Government tenure processes—Summers will now appoint an ad hoc committee to review each case brought for tenure review. This committee, also chaired by Summers, will include experts from outside HLS who can objectively judge a candidate’s qualifications. If approved by the committee, the candidate will be brought to a vote by the HLS faculty, and if he or she receives a two-thirds vote of approval, Summers will make the final decision up or down.

By inserting himself into the tenure selection process before the faculty has its say, Summers could potentially skew the selection of new tenured professors. That Summers now has the power to choose the ad hoc committee members while simultaneously chairing such a committee is a dubious change indeed.

The addition of the ad hoc committee to the selection process should help HLS make appropriate decisions about whom to select for tenure. Although faculty from within a school are often the most qualified to determine how cohesively candidates will work with existing Faculty and the student body, the selection of tenure without any outside judges can make the tenure process dangerously biased. Too often, the insular world of academia breeds a faculty that “self-reproduces” in only offering tenure to a certain type of professor favored by the faculty. Broadening the initial round of selection with ad hoc committees incorporating non-Harvard opinions, internal favoritism will likely be reduced and fresh talent can be more easily integrated into the HLS faculty.

Despite the benefit of direct outside opinion, the new committees may also give Summers undue influence on the selection of Faculty—potentially undermining the autonomy of HLS. Ideally, the qualifications for tenure should be made public, and the ad hoc committees should better clarify and make transparent the overall process so that candidates can rest assured that they are being treated fairly by the system. But the tenure process is highly secretive and likely to remain that way. Through micro-management—and possibly mismanagement—Summers could potentially prevent candidates he personally dislikes from getting through the committee before they are brought before the full HLS faculty for a vote. And without full transparency, Summers would not be held accountable.

Rather than Summers, Dean of HLS Elena Kagan should chair the ad hoc committees. She has the experience to identify quality law professors; in helping guide a committee of outside experts, she will be a more informed partner in the process as the appointment directly relates to HLS. Additionally, Kagan has more at stake than Summers to ensure that newly tenured faculty will work well at HLS and not simply fill the central administration’s larger political goals. Most importantly, this change in the tenure process must lead to an advancement of transparency. Otherwise, any possible internal bias of the HLS faculty may just be replaced by the President’s.