The appeal process here involves a written document and the option of an appearance with the P&T committee. I think the appearance is much more likely to help than hurt, so I schedule it and hope for the best. It helps that I’ve “engaged in some scholarly activity” over the past semester, so I’ve got new things to talk about. My senior colleagues have reiterated and strengthened their support. I’ve got some outside letters commenting on some recent presentations. I also think my responses to the committee’s claims are pretty convincing, so I feel like I’ve got a little room to breathe.
(In short: as my chair put it, the committee’s reasons seem to rely on the least charitable reading of everything in the dossier. My hope is that the combination of new evidence and an emphasis on what’s positive in the original material will sway a vote or two.)
I’ve heard rumors that the original decision was contentious– it had to be, given the evidence– and I’ve been advised informally that this is a chance to hand ammunition to my allies in the room. So my goal is to present my arguments in brief, then move on to my recent work and future trajectory, all the while making points that can be used by whoever is on my side.
My big hope is to alleviate fears that I’ll be dead weight after tenure. It’s easier because I believe my own case. (The irony here is that I’ve always felt more impeded than encouraged by the looming tenure decision, but this isn’t something I can say.)
On the other hand, I have no idea who thinks what, and I’m aware that the conversation in the room will be informed by previous discussion, so there will be subtexts I can’t understand.
I do my song and dance. The committee argued that p. I argue in my document that not-p. Let me remind you of my arguments. Furthermore, here is additional evidence. We get into questions. Some are broad and treacherous: “why does research matter to you?” Gah. Some details about departmental politics, about mentoring, and so on. I suggest a story about why Unsupportive Guy is that way. For reasons I won’t ever know this seems to prompt some knowing looks, so I expand on that a bit, trying to put the negative letter into context while remaining levelheaded and professional. Some of the members are asking what really sound like softball questions– “it seems like it really matters to you that this manuscript make it into print”– and they give the look of support. I’m suspicious, because I’d picked one of them to be anti-me, but I’ll take what I can get. I sum up some themes of my work and talk about ways of extending my projects into the future. I manage to be clear, for once.
Then we’re done. I spend a long time rehashing, kicking myself for small mistakes. My immediate assessment is that I’ve done myself some good, but I could have done more. Too hard to read the tea leaves. I try not to think about it, with limited success.
Going to graduation is more humiliating than usual. It’s hard being the warning to others. I leave town. Time passes.
More time passes. It’s pretty agonizing.
Because I’m in a different time zone, the provost wakes me up. “Neddy! I’m calling with good news!” There is tenure. Alhumdulillah. I become extraordinarily relaxed. People in several states get loaded in my honor.
Some thoughts:
Gratitude to the committee members, who could have easily dug in their heels. Reversals look embarrassing for them, and I was happily surprised at their willingness to re-examine the question. The appeals process is much less formal than the original run-through; it feels like things are a little improvised. Plus, they don’t owe me anything other than a decision, so it would be easy for them to be stubborn. Also thanks to my senior colleagues for coming through when they didn’t have to. Knowing who your friends are: priceless. Almost as good as knowing who they aren’t.
The down side: if we re-ran this scenario a hundred times, I’m not sure how many times we’d get this outcome. Feels a little…unreliable. Like this. Not sure how right this is.
Some lessons, besides the obvious injunction to publish more. Presenting your case to people outside the discipline is tricky, and it requires spelling out how research in your field works in ways that might feel awkward. Grit the teeth and self-promote. Even your ephemera changes the course of scholarship. Say it.
You never know just how good will comes in handy. My departmental colleagues said nice things about me, of course, but I also got a lot of help from people across campus– people who didn’t have to help. Friends in the know passed on rumors: your case was hard. There was fighting. Press on. It might have had something to do with understanding disciplinary expectations; you should clarify…and so on.
The other thing that helped, oddly, was keeping in mind (to the extent it’s possible) that this doesn’t matter all that much. I told myself and others that this was far from the worst thing to happen to me (true!) and that I’d be fine (true, harder to believe). I got excited about other careers; I started looking for headhunters and talking to administrators about other kinds of work in higher ed. But here’s what’s weird about this: when other people have been denied tenure, I liked to remind myself that they’ll be fine, that losing a job isn’t losing a loved one. But in this scene it’s really hard to stick to that outlook, because so many people see tenure as a life-or-death thing. Being treated as though I’d just been diagnosed with a terminal illness encouraged me to see myself that way, and knowing I’d go on the market as damaged goods didn’t make it easier. The lesson, I suppose, is that the academy…what’s a polite word for mindfuck?…is hard to escape. Realizing and expecting this makes the task somewhat easier, I hope.
44 comments
July 1, 2009 at 7:24 pm
SEK
I feel used.
(But happy! This is great news for Neddy!!!)
July 1, 2009 at 7:40 pm
read
congrats, white man who will never starve
July 1, 2009 at 7:45 pm
read
the
July 1, 2009 at 7:47 pm
grackle
I didn’t comment on part I because I had hopes for this outcome – as at the same time I had images of you swimming from door to door (do you really look like Bert? lucky stiff), asking to use the pool and having a drink to remember old times. Congratulations.
July 1, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Standpipe Bridgeplate
Minimum poop!
July 1, 2009 at 7:51 pm
ari
It was okay the first time, read.
July 1, 2009 at 7:53 pm
read
i meant my comment non-ironically btw
coz i happen to think the same thought like sometimes
July 1, 2009 at 7:56 pm
read
-the
July 1, 2009 at 7:57 pm
ben
I still want to know why the tenure review process is constituted as it is. My first thought was that the departments might be small enough that that’s the only way to make it practicable, but perhaps there’s some advantage in the setup.
July 1, 2009 at 8:04 pm
CharleyCarp
All’s well that ends.
Congrats.
July 1, 2009 at 8:05 pm
N Merrill
I’m not sure, Ben. I know of a highminded rationale, but I bet there are others in the background.
July 1, 2009 at 8:10 pm
read
.well?
i meant ‘and understand the feeling’, incomplete thoughts, i mean sentences
July 1, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Ben Alpers
Congrats, Neddy!
Now tell me honestly: is there any reason that the kind of tenure system you just successfully navigated is superior to the kind in which a department puts forth clear expectations, votes on tenure, and then is affirmed by a college and/or university committee unless procedures have been manifestly violated?
One other comment I meant to put on the last discussion: the difference between the two kinds of systems I described on that thread is not exactly one of stringency. For example, the typical public institution system can be more or less stringent; research expectations can be higher and lower. To my mind the real differences are:
1) Is there a presumption in favor of tenure? Is the normal case tenure or denial? What I’m calling the public system: presumption in favor of tenure. What I’m calling the private system: either no presumption or presumption against.
2) What standards are used in judging scholarship? Public system: measurable, quantitative standards of productivity. Private system: more qualitative standards of various sorts.
3) How free are units to set their own standards? Public system: Units set their own standards, subject to approval by the higher administration. Tenure review committee’s above the departmental level judge the department’s decision against the department’s own, written standards. Private system: Various extra-departmental committees judge the case on their own standards.
There’s no question that more marginal cases result in denial in the private system than in the public system. It’s not at all clear to me that, in the long run, this necessarily results in a higher-quality senior faculty.
July 1, 2009 at 8:11 pm
jacob
Two thoughts, now that the story has a happy ending (whew! congratulations! yet I remain terrified). Your comment about presenting your work outside your discipline brings to mind the several discussions that were recently on Crooked Timber, inspired by Michele Lamont’s new book, about the difficulties of professors judging work outside their disciplines. She says, based on her observation of multidisciplinary grant committees, that philosophers have the hardest time, and historians the easiest. How (if at all) do you think your story is affected by the fact that you’re a philosopher?
Second, your comment in the first post about how you won’t starve, at least partially because (unfairly) you are a white man [with high social capital and, I presume, relative health] is valuable both because, obviously, it reminds us about privilege, and because it reminds terrified grad student me that I share that privilege and that I too won’t starve, even though there’s no market next year and crappy things like this happen even to the best of scholars. [Cripes, that’s a long sentence.]
July 1, 2009 at 8:21 pm
ben
If you think that’s a long sentence, jacob, you have no business in the academy.
July 1, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Bitchphd
I still hate you for scaring me.
July 1, 2009 at 8:39 pm
N Merrill
Let me get back to these questions in a few days. I want to mull them over. No, not really, I’m out of town for the 4th. But they’re interesting.
July 1, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Mr. Sidetable
Even though this story ended well (for which, many congratulations), it makes me even happier that I chose to never go on the academic job market. No matter whether it’s the public or the private tenure system, I just know too many people who have found the entire process completely dehumanizing (both those who’ve gotten it and those who haven’t).
July 1, 2009 at 9:05 pm
foolishmortal
It is instructive but unkind of you to share with those who give a shit about your work the stomach-jarring reality of it.
P.S. Read!
July 1, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Jeremy
I enjoyed this. Especially because it has a happy ending. Although — and not to be cruel — I kinda would have liked it to not have had this ending. I wonder what you would’ve done had the appeal failed, and where you would’ve ended up. It’s been very informative to hear about your experiences in the tenure process, but I’m interested in hearing about what people who don’t make it somewhere do. Presumably some of them achieve tenure elsewhere, but how does denial in one place affect your chances elsewhere?
July 1, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Vladimir
Now that you’re through this piece of fucking hell, Neddy, don’t let me catch you voting to deny anyone tenure! More to the point, won’t you help us do away with this awful, awful tenure system entirely?
July 1, 2009 at 10:48 pm
ari
More to the point, won’t you help us do away with this awful, awful tenure system entirely?
And replace it with what?
July 1, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Vladimir
Five-year contracts, as Shirely Tilghman once proposed, would beat tenure. Or something else that doesn’t put huge, often unreasonable demands on people during peak their reproductive years.
July 1, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Ben Alpers
Wouldn’t five-year contracts replace a system that places huge, often unreasonable demands on people during their peak reproductive years with a system that would, instead, place huge, often unreasonable demands on people throughout their career?
I fail to see how this would be an improvement.
July 1, 2009 at 11:47 pm
Vance
I’m glad to hear it, Neddy — I even forgive you the artificial suspense.
And I’m with you, Ben. As a private-sector employee, I’m subject to review, firing, etc., but the criteria are far less demanding: I generally have one task, involving interaction with a limited number of people, and I’m judged on how well I’m doing it currently, with a time horizon of a couple of years at most.
July 2, 2009 at 12:54 am
andrew
I’m so sorr–wait, there’s a second post! Congratulations!
July 2, 2009 at 2:29 am
blueollie
I am glad to hear it.
July 2, 2009 at 4:19 am
dave
If you don’t want tenure, can we in the UK have it back? We lost it a generation ago. OTOH, it hasn’t exactly led to administrators rampaging through depts with bloodied axes, nor has it stopped UK academics being, on the whole, a bunch of obstructive, whining children when it comes to internal management decisions.
July 2, 2009 at 4:39 am
read
FM!
July 2, 2009 at 5:49 am
Fanny Najef-Yoga
Public system: Units set their own standards, subject to approval by the higher administration. Tenure review committee’s above the departmental level judge the department’s decision against the department’s own, written standards.
I think that this is the ideal of how it works, but it may not always work this way in practice. At my (public) university we have language in our contracts saying what standards for tenure should be broadly, and written standards in each department, and it didn’t stop the college-wide committee from going on a rampage and trying to reject every single reappointment/tenure decision our department made last year. They were, no joke, very angry about the way people formatted their CVs. The dean rescued most of us, but still.
I’m a philosopher, and we’re definitely suffering from the phenomenon Lamont describes; the people on the extra-departmental decisions seem to take it on themselves to try to judge the work they’re reviewing, and frankly I don’t think they have the competence. (Which is not a knock on them as scholars; I don’t think I have the competence to judge work in physical chemistry either.) Another factor is probably that philosophers publish less than people in other disciplines. Still, I’d say that the public system won’t work if the implementation is dysfunctional enough.
July 2, 2009 at 6:17 am
foeb
Such psychological possibilities available as the wronged but still powerful. You can now cultivate an air of isolation and resentment, like Clarence Thomas! You can ignore all precedent and logic in departmental decisions and be the loose cannon you’ve always wanted to be! You can find a Scalia-like mentor to join you! You can go fishing with Dick Armey!
July 2, 2009 at 7:17 am
Colin
This is great. I’m on the road and can’t comment longer, but I will definitely have a drink or two in your honor.
July 2, 2009 at 8:20 am
docdave
neddy, again thanks for writing this story out. Glad that you made it onto the lifeboat.
July 2, 2009 at 10:06 am
DOW
“What I’m calling the public system: presumption in favor of tenure. What I’m calling the private system: either no presumption or presumption against.”
Slightly off topic–and wa-hoo for Neddy–but these positions are reversed when it comes to students and graduation, aren’t they? Private: presumption of graduation once you’re in (e.g., permission to drop courses up to the final exam; hey, you might endow a chair some day)… public: no presumption or presumption against. It’s why my son suggests a science degree from UC San Diego is worth more than a degree from, say, Stanford.
July 2, 2009 at 10:40 am
ben
On the other hand, maybe he just wants to live in La Jolla.
July 2, 2009 at 2:03 pm
heydave
Good for you!
Can I haz mine now?
July 2, 2009 at 3:02 pm
md 20/400
Yay, Neddy! Perils of Pauline in Academia. I am glad for your happy ending. (No, not like that.) That whole process would have killed me with anxiety, depression, etc.
July 2, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Jason B.
I’m with heydave. I’m not up for tenure yet. I’m not even a full-time professor yet. I just want the chance. Urgh.
July 2, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Ahistoricality
Nicely done.
July 3, 2009 at 6:12 am
Tenured radical
Congratulations. Now, in this happy moment, remember: do unto others as you would have had folks do unto you. All the rules for being the best possible senior colleague are in this post.
July 3, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Rob_in_Hawaii
Congratulations! I particularly admire the calm demeanor that comes through in both posts. Your rational, measured tones and detached reporting style make it seem almost like you are talking about someone else. And I point this out because I understand how soul-crushing this whole episode must have been for you. At least until today’s welcome bit of good news.
Many people (or maybe just me) would have been swinging wildly from blind rage to bottomless self pity to the hashing out of fiendishly cruel revenge schemes.
July 8, 2009 at 2:34 pm
rosmar
Congratulations!
(A side note on private versus public colleges–I teach at a small liberal arts college, and you can’t drop a course here after the midway point of the semester, so it isn’t as if everyone graduates here. The rules for dropping courses were less stringent at UC Berkeley, where I got my PhD, than they are here.)
July 10, 2009 at 10:27 am
Eleanor
Congratulations on pulling through, Neddy!
Jeremy, if you’re still interested (and still reading), here is a very short version of my story of life after T&P denial. After two, union-backed appeals – both of which involved repeating the entire process from the beginning, more or less, including an entirely fresh set of external letters for the second, start-completely-from-scratch review, so, essentially, I went through the whole process three times if you’re still counting – I lost my case.
In the midst of all that, my husband moved out (and in and out and in and out…. it was/is one of ‘those’ sorts of splits).
As a result of both processes, getting bounced from my job and from my marriage in glouriously slow and painful motion over the course of three hideous years, I am now, on paper at least, a homeless, unemployed, single/separated mom of two. Everything I own is in a storage locker, which is located in a different state than the one I am presently in.
Now, before you call anyone to check on me, I am fine!
Life is actually pretty amazing right now.
What happened?
Well, at first you need to know that I too have the unfair advantage of being white and over-degreed. Compounding this, I also come from generations of the same, in both directions. Big, generally happy families too. There is now and never was the slightest danger of starvation (or even a missed meal) or actual sleeping in shelters, for me or mine. This is a huge advantage and resource base that many don’t have in similar moments of life crisis.
I went on the job market immediately after the first denial. I was offered a tt track job – which turns out to be pretty common, actually. And in one of the scariest moves of my life, I turned it down. No regrets, then or since.
(Without kids in tow, I probably would have taken the offer and happily. With – I couldn’t. Every single faculty member I met during the on-campus assured me the local k-12 schools, in that county and every single surrounding county, sucked. Their exact words. It also turned out to be just too far from the family I was trying to get closer too to have back up on hand in the whole raising-children project.)
The next year I had brief hope for a reprieve like Neddy’s as described here, but in the end I was out, though I had one more year after that of employment. The job market had nothing for me that year or the next (and I didn’t apply for many jobs either, being somewhat disenchanted by the idea of staying inside the academy…) and on a bit of a whim at the suggestion of a friend, I scanned the Fulbright awards page, found one that seemed a good match and applied.
I got the award last year, and so last fall, I took my kids off on a ten-month adventure to Venezuela. We had an awesome year, so awesome in fact that I have just received an applied-for extension of my Fulbright to go back for one more semester this September, and possibly if my departmental invitation to teach the second semester as a visiting professor is approved all the way up the chain, I will teach at the University there for the second semester this coming year as well.
I am, as the Quakers say, proceeding as the way is opening. And the way I have found myself on is opening to a much bigger and far more adventuresome world than I ever dreamed or even imagined. I am, at this point, waiting with excitement and anticipation for whatever comes next.
July 10, 2009 at 1:33 pm
bitchphd
Wow, Eleanor. That’s awesome.