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* An address to the ADE-ADFL Joint Summer Seminar at Washington University, 28 June 1973.
MAY I start by saying I am deeply honored by the invitation to address your associations on what must be one of the most perplexing and difficult set of problems facing higher education today. I claim no particular insight with respect to problems concerning tenure. I am here, really, to tell you of a plan we have been considering at Union College for the past few months and which was finally adopted by our Board of Trustees just two weeks ago after 78% of the faculty had signed a petition endorsing it. Arguments about tenure are usually developed in such cosmic terms that I suspect we see only the forest and never the trees. We forget that occasionally we may do the forest most good by setting up a new arrangement for the trees. I like to think that what I shall lay before you is a system for rearranging those trees in order to save the forest—a system encompassing a new set of principles designed, ultimately, to save tenure. My basic argument is that unless we are willing to consider some alternative arrangements for tenure with respect to the principles currently employed, we are in real danger of losing both the principles and tenure itself. I shall make my presentation here brief, and I shall try to highlight the principles which lie at the foundation of the system we have adopted. The presentation will be divided into three parts. The first will deal with the context of the problems we face and, I think, the problems higher education faces collectively. You will see that in many respects Union is just a microcosm of higher education in general. The second part will deal with the principles of our system. In the third part I shall try to point out some of the disadvantages and advantages, as I see them, of the system. I shall, upon occasion, have to lift your eyes to the cosmic issues, but I hope to pay attention to the particulars also.
As you must know, any system for dealing with such complicated problems will have peculiar adaptations on each campus. I shall not belabor you with the particulars of the system we have been developing for Union; I shall try to stick to the principles which are at the foundation of that system for two reasons: in the first place, the precise details would probably be nearly incomprehensible to anyone not familiar with our governance structure, and I am not sure anyone—myself included—is fully familiar with that structure. In the second place, it seems to me clear that we should concentrate on principles. Too often in issues of collegiate policy principles are ignored in the political skirmishes. Too often ad hoc systems are created with gerrymandered devices designed more to arrive at the vector consequence of antagonistic political forces than to make some clearly articulated principles concrete in application. Any set of principles may well take on different particulars as they are applied. My desire is to be sure we pay attention first to the principles; if we could come to some agreement on them, their application could be left to another meeting. Furthermore, it seems to me one of the virtues of the present widely-adopted tenure system is that it is a system based upon principles. It was promulgated at a particular time and has had many adaptations on particular campuses, but it was and remains primarily an attempt to apply a fundamental set of principles.
As you can see, I have set myself no simple task. On the one hand, I want to avoid having us bog down in particulars; on the other hand, I said I do not want to attend too much to what I have called the cosmic issues. Is there any room in between? I don't know. I know that part of my difficulty is with the language. You are more sensitive to the demands of the language than I. I shall let you be the judges. Also, part of my difficulty lies in my propensity to use metaphors. I am trained as a philosopher, and I need not tell you that we philosophers can extend any metaphor beyond the breaking point. I am used to addressing philosophy conferences, and I try not to say too many heretical things there—at least I try to keep my heresies so carefully developed that they no longer seem like heresies. In the context of this meeting, then, I am tempted to lay before you one heresy on which I have been working: much (perhaps all) great philosophy is simply the development of extended metaphors. And the worst heresy of all: I think we should celebrate, not apologize for that fact. Certainly, having just flown out of and over Vonnegut country and having tried Breakfast of Champions on the way, I think neither I nor any other philosopher need apologize for extending metaphors—or patience. Nevertheless, my use of metaphors may confuse—not aid—those with more sensitive ears than I. For that I do ask your indulgence.
Well, enough of these intellectual interests. I am here to talk about the environment for intellectuals, not what they do. I shall turn to that now by turning first to the context in which we faced our consideration of alternatives to tenure.
In considering the context of our situation I shall make some historical observations and some comments about future projections. Historically, there are three interrelated issues. During the recent past Union College grew at a rather rapid rate. We did so in response to national needs and in response to the pleadings of public officials. We acquired thereby an excellent faculty and a rather young faculty. As a result of the youth of our faculty, we project relatively few retirements, especially when compared with the number of faculty completing their probationary period and thus entering the tenured ranks. In the recent past Union was very stingy about granting tenure. Even at the present time, a junior faculty member stands less than one chance in three of being found qualified for tenure, apart from any tenure limitation policies. However, the junior faculty we have now and those we are acquiring are in many instances outstanding, and they would in all probability make very good candidates for tenure. We can project, then, a period for the next ten to fifteen years when a high proportion of faculty might be on tenure. We could estimate that 80% or more of the faculty in the college at large might be on tenure, and, even worse, it is quite possible and reasonable to project for individual departments that 100% of their faculty might be on tenure for the next ten to fifteen years. The most dramatic case is with one of our larger departments, for which we could conceive, apart from some limitation policy, a situation of 100% tenure, with the oldest person not retiring for over twenty years.
A second consideration also has to do with the rather rapid growth of the college over the past few years. We simply cannot project for the future any such growth in the size of our student body or the size of our faculty. It would seem today that it would be an act of irresponsibility for us to plan for rapid expansion during the remainder of this decade. Each expansion erodes the endowment base which underpins our vitality as a private institution. I shall not lecture you now on the necessity of having private colleges viable and active. I shall only say that I would take it as irresponsible for us to become suicidal. Consequently, our response to quantitative, institutional growth is clear. We shall not grow in quantitative terms over the next few years. However, part of the difficult problem we face is that, while we do not project quantitative growth, we must provide qualitative growth.
The third consideration is somewhat more complex, if only because it cannot be easily quantified. It relates to changes in the body of knowledge, changes in student demands, and consequent changes in curricula. The body of knowledge grows and changes at an increasingly rapid pace. A curriculum which is to survive and be responsive must adapt to those changes. A glance at some of our older catalogues and records sheds light on this problem. There were periods in Union's history when the curriculum changed very little. The period of course requirements and distribution requirements induced a kind of conservation into the curriculum such that one did not have to worry as much about the future. In an era in which every student had to take an English course, a history course, a modern language course, and so on, faculty were needed in those areas just to staff those courses. One could assume with a sufficient degree of certainty that those faculty members would be needed into the indefinite future. Also, in an era in which the body of knowledge changed less rapidly it was not of such deep concern whether a substantial number of faculty were fully conversant with the frontiers of their disciplines and were bringing those frontiers to the classroom as well as colleagues. However, now the body of knowledge is expanding and growing at an exponential rate and the student who is not kept abreast may fall behind dangerously. Many of the major degree programs we offer now, and even some of our present departments, simply did not exist a few years ago.
I should like to pause at this point to ask you to consider a specific issue. I confess that when I first considered tenure limitation policies, I was a sceptic. From the vantage point of my own discipline—philosophy—I could see the interest in and even to some extent the importance of keeping a department au courant . However, on this one issue I could not see the crucial importance. After all, I reasoned, what philosophers had to say twenty years ago was not disreputable—you can see I am a heretic—and if the student learned all about John Dewey instead of John Rawls, surely there would be no major problem. I speculated that the same might be true with respect to literature. Suppose the frontiers which the Shakespeare professor was bringing to his students were the frontiers when he was a student twenty or more years ago. Would that be a major problem? I speculated it would not, but I discussed the issue with some of my friends who teach literature and, while some agreed with me, others dissented quite sharply. In order to clarify my point, let me make a contrast.
No matter what I thought of the consequences of teaching outmoded philosophic or aesthetic theories, it was clear to me that with the broader view imposed by my new responsibilities as provost, teaching outmoded ideas in other areas would be very bad. Consider an electrical engineering department which has no one knowledgeable about transistors, a biology department with no one knowledgeable about the DNA, a physics department unable to teach solid state physics, or a civil engineering department still concerned solely with structures while ill-equipped in the field of environmental engineering. These examples could be multiplied; they are simply ones that come quickly to a layman's mind. Our engineering, biology and physics students—to continue with the examples—do go out and attempt to use the substance of what they have learned in these areas immediately after graduation. Are there analogies in philosophy and literature? I do not know. I do not think graduate school is an analogy. I shall not stop to say why here—I fear if I did, far from thinking me a mere heretic, you might brand me an agent of the devil.
I shall not pursue this digression further. There are other reasons, I think, that provide sufficient conditions for the need for tenure limitation policies.
Suffice it to say at this point that in any field the changes in knowledge create changes in student needs and demands. The faculty must remain ready to meet those changes or the institution will atrophy. Furthermore, we enter an era in which even engineers have fewer particular course requirements and many students have virtually none. Thus, shifting student fads about which courses to take have an influence on staffing which is frightening to consider. This situation is complicated by the fact that while we can project dramatic changes in curricula, we cannot project precisely how those changes will take place.
As a consequence of these three factors and the related projections, the trustees at Union decided over three years ago to institute a tenure limitation policy which would prevent the tenured ranks at the college from growing higher than 60% of the total faculty. Had the three factors not coalesced, they might not have acted. But the three factors did coalesce. One can ignore the fact that curricular change will take place and that there is a need for scholars close to the frontiers of the discipline if one can project quantitative growth for the institution and, thus, the ability to bring in junior faculty all the time. However, one cannot ignore these needs when the quantitative aspect of institutional growth has stopped. I shall not spend much time considering with you the actions of our board of trustees. They really predated the recommendations which have since been handed down by the AAUP/AAC committee headed by Dr. Keast. In fact, the reasons for our trustees' actions were almost precisely the same as those given by the Keast Commission in its recommendation that the tenured ranks of faculty at colleges be limited to somewhere between one-half and two-thirds of the total faculty.
This, then, completes the context which I wish to develop for you. If I may judge from national figures and the response we have received as the result of the proposals we are now making, I should say that what we have here is a problem that has significance beyond the merely parochial interests of Union College. Higher education in general cannot responsibly project the kind of rapid growth that its institutions have known over the past few years. And yet the curricula in all of our institutions must remain sensitive to changes in student demands and also to changes in the body of knowledge that is professed for the students. The rather recent but rapidly spreading applications of tenure limitation policies in other colleges and universities, apparently given sanction by the Keast Commission, are testimony to that national significance. We at Union have been down the road of tenure limitation policies; as I pointed out, we had one of the earliest. If there is no better way to preserve curricular sensitivity for future generations of students, tenure limitation policies may be a necessary evil. However, by forcing the release of fully qualified faculty as a result of the effects of limitation policies, they force the substantial sacrifice of real students today for a hypothetical group of future students. Here, then, is the context of the problem that we have faced and, I suspect, the context of the problem which higher education faces. I shall now turn to a consideration of the principles involved in the proposal we have been considering for the past few months at Union.
1. The first principle that lies at the foundation of our efforts is the principle that academic freedom must be preserved and that the institution of tenure, while perhaps guilty of overkill in its protective quality, is nevertheless an important institution to keep alive, active, and viable. I assume I do not need to say much to you in defense of academic freedom. I do think it needs defense, and especially in these times it needs all the defense that can be brought to it. But I shall assume you are too enlightened to need me to defend it here. A word on the institution of tenure may be in order, however. What is important about the institution of tenure is that it is a system , relatively independent of personal prejudices, attitudes, or even good faith, that does protect academic freedom. I emphasize the word “system,” for it seems to me in that word lies the clue for the necessity of the institution of tenure and the concomitant failure of straight contract systems. On a straight contract system, academic freedom may well be preserved, but it is only preserved because of the “good faith” attitudes of—let us face it—the administration and governing boards. The protections of tenure, however, are systematic protections and are thus largely beyond the reach of administrations and governing boards. I should repeat, then, that our first principle was that academic freedom must be protected by some system. We could think of none better than the institution of tenure, so the retention of a viable and active tenure system became a necessary condition for any system that we were to develop. In order to provide for the protection of the institution of tenure, we looked away for the moment from our concern with a maximum tenure ceiling and concerned ourselves instead with a minimum tenure floor. Our concern in this instance was not to worry about the maximum proportion of faculty that we felt we could allow to become tenured; our concern was with what minimal proportion of faculty must be tenured in order to have a viable institution of tenure that would be capable of protecting academic freedom sufficiently. Thus, our first principle was that the proportion of tenured faculty would never be allowed to fall below a certain level. Of course, that level must be quantified. However, the particular quantification that we sought was not as important as the principle on which we sought it. We wanted to have a minimal number of faculty always on tenure, and we sought a level which was to be the critical mass of tenured faculty that could insure the continuation of the institution of tenure as a viable and active means of defending academic freedom.
In considering the next set of principles, we found that we faced a situation which is nothing short of a logical dilemma. I emphasize this point because I think it has been ignored too frequently in the discussion of these issues. Once we had decided that academic freedom must be protected and that the institution of tenure was the best institution we could find to protect academic freedom, we faced a set of three possible policies. The first dealt with maximal tenure limitation policies; the second dealt with the advancement of faculty on the basis of merit; and the third dealt with a probationary period (for example, that mandated by the 1940 Principles) at the end of which a faculty member must be either given tenure or dismissed from the college. The problem we faced reduced itself to a logical problem: simultaneous adherence to all three policies is simply logically impossible. There is no possible way for those three policies to be put into effect at the same time. Now, the classical way to avoid a logical dilemma—or in this case a logical trilemma—is to deny one of the elements. By way of example, I should point out that historically, in earlier and simpler times, the first element—tenure limitation policies—was denied (usually implicitly). Those were earlier and simpler times and, as I tried to point out previously, the context for higher education has changed considerably. By way of further example, I should say that the Keast Commission implicitly advocates adherence to a tenure limitation policy as well as adherence to a seven-year-up-or-out rule and thus by implication denies the second element: that is, advancement in accordance with merit. Our decision was to deny the element which tied us to a seven-year-up-or-out rule as being that element which was the least harmful to abandon. I may now return to an enumeration of the principles of our system and ask merely that you keep in mind this logical dilemma I have outlined.
2. The second principle of our system is that the number and proportion of tenured faculty shall be limited. These limitations are to be set by a rather complicated set of procedures for determining faculty needs on a rolling projection basis. We had already set these procedures in place and merely absorbed them into this present proposal. Briefly, what is to happen is that on-campus committees project faculty position needs for the near-term future and judge in accordance with these projections which positions can be safely tenured and which should be retained on some other basis (remembering, now, that we have set a floor beneath which the number of tenure positions will not be allowed to fall). These projections are annually reviewed and updated, and they are sent to the Provost and the President to add their comments and pass them on to the Board, where a final determination is made. The limitations on the number and proportion of tenured positions has, as I explained earlier, two interrelated objectives: to allow the college to retain enough flexibility in its curriculum so that it can respond to changing student demands and to develop a system whereby we can be relatively assured that a substantial proportion of the faculty is constantly bringing developments on the frontiers of their disciplines into the classroom and to their colleagues. Just as the institution of tenure provides a system, relatively independent of particular personalities, to protect academic freedom, so the tenure limitation policies provide a system, relatively independent of particular personalities, to protect curricular freshness and vitality. As an institution, tenure may work generally against the retention of curricular vitality; as an institution, tenure limitation policies may work marginally against academic freedom. Taken alone, either scheme is open to the objection of the fault of its extreme. The contribution of the Union plan is to point out that appearances are deceiving; tenure and tenure limitation policies are not logically inconsistent except in their extremes. We can, we think, retain both as important parts of our faculty personnel policies.
3. If you remember back to the three elements of the logical dilemma to which I referred before, you will remember that I said we had decided to abandon the seven-year-up-or-out policy but that we decided to retain the other two elements. The third principle, then, of our system is that we resolved that promotion and retention policies at Union College would be based exclusively upon consideration of the merits of the person and curricular needs. Assuming there is a curricular need for the services offered by a person and assuming the person is fully qualified in accordance with our rather exacting standards, the person will be retained and promoted on the Union College faculty. I shall not stop to defend this policy here; I should think its defense self-evident to all of you. I should, however, point out that one of the sad ironies of the past year is that the AAUP/AAC Commission on Tenure has really ultimately abandoned this principle. That abandonment is surprisingly explicit at certain points. However, if I am right about the logical dilemma which I outlined earlier, whether the Keast Commission is explicit or not about abandoning this principle, by adhering to the other two principles it abandons this principle automatically. I find it hard to believe that reasonable people could really advocate a system which would not imply that promotion and retention policies should be based exclusively upon consideration of merit and need, but that is where the situation lies and I simply lay the case before you.
From these three crucial principles, the rest of the principles of the system we are considering follow almost automatically.
4. The fourth principle is that we shall be able to offer contracts to faculty who are deemed fully qualified to receive tenure at the end of seven-year service but for whom we cannot project a tenure opening.
5. The fifth principle is that all faculty, and especially faculty on contract, will be subject to review, and that faculty on contract, whether they are before or after seven-year service at Union, may find that their contracts will not be renewed if there is either no curricular need for their services or they are no longer qualified as Union College faculty members.
Each of these principles, as they have been worked out toward incorporation into a detailed system, has been hedged about with checks and balances—again in an attitude to provide a system designed to keep any particular decision as removed from the vagaries of whim as possible.
In conclusion, let me turn briefly to some comments on the disadvantages and advantages of the system we have adopted. As I see it, one of the major disadvantages is that it forces us to break our ties with the American Association of University Professors. Union was one of the charter signatories to the 1940 Principles and has lived within them religiously. Union's AAUP chapter is the oldest AAUP chapter in the state of New York. We do not break with AAUP lightly. AAUP has been an important defender of academic freedom over the years, and these are not the days to be threatening any organization that defends freedom of inqury or speech. I should much prefer a world in which AAUP would adopt some reasonable system related to present conditions—and a world in which AAUP would then enforce that system. But at the moment, AAUP has decided to stick stubbornly to its past while it struggles toward the future as the weak sister in collective bargaining developments. We are sorry about that, and it is with no sense of joy that we may have to sever our ties with AAUP.
The second potential disadvantage is the possibility that our action may have a chilling effect on academic freedom. Actually, we thought we had safeguarded tenure so well that we did not take this possibility seriously. After all, in putting a minimal level under tenure we invoke a provision for safeguarding tenure that even the 1940 Principles do not invoke. No doubt academic freedom is more threatened by having a tenure limitation policy than by tenuring every person upon appointment to the college. But no one has recommended that, and the situation we faced was one of having no more than roughly 60% of our faculty on tenure, which meant no less than roughly 40% of our faculty on contract. Now, the issue came down to the question of whether that 40% must be at Union less than seven years or whether some could stay beyond seven years. On the grounds of preserving a merit promotion system, we opted for the latter. I do not see how the issue of academic freedom was involved in that decision. Convinced as I am of my argument on these grounds, I would not raise this as a disadvantage except for the fact that I have received many telephone calls, many letters, and many other contacts since our plan was announced. In some instances these contacts have been pretty ugly. I hasten to add that none of the ugly contacts have come from faculty or defenders of the present status quo. They have all come from those who would like to kill tenure and (I suspect) threaten academic freedom. There are such people, of course, and my original assumption was that they were simply misguided in thinking that the system we proposed would kill tenure or threaten academic freedom. However, I have received enough such contacts to worry me, and while I am still convinced of my logic, I am worried that I may have missed something. I lay it before you, then, to decide whether this does have a chilling effect on academic freedom. Knowing, as you do, how seriously we treat academic freedom, you must know that such issues strike at the heart of the system. There is, of course, a related problem, which is that by a college like Union “going it alone,” we may threaten the vitality of AAUP, and that by threatening the vitality of AAUP, we may threaten academic freedom. I quite agree, and I think this is a serious criticism. However, I think the AAUP threatens itself. As I pointed out earlier, our problems with tenure and staffing are not unique. In fact, they reflect a national condition. By deciding to abandon the merit principle, as the Keast Commission does explicitly and the AAUP does by staying with the status quo, the AAUP gives the junior faculty good reason for not supporting or joining the AAUP. However, the AAUP, like the university, depends upon a constant flow of junior faculty for its own vitality. Thus AAUP threatens itself. The consolation I can take in our action is that we hope AAUP will realize the danger it faces and will respond accordingly. Our hope is that by colleges like Union which have long-standing reputations for the protection of academic freedom and the provision of academic excellence taking action alone, the AAUP will respond by realizing something must be done. I hold no particular brief for the system that we have proposed. I certainly do not think it is the greatest invention since the flush toilet. I am certainly not here to attempt to sell this system to you. My own prediction is that until or unless AAUP or some other organization can develop a system nationally acceptable, many colleges and universities will have to develop particular systems and that we shall see more maverick proposals as time goes along. If the AAUP could find some other system which would solve the problems that we face in higher education today, I should be happy to recommend that Union rejoin AAUP and its commitment to the protection of academic freedom.
Let me briefly at this point say a word about the possible advantages we think have been built into the system we propose.
There is a financial advantage. It is not as great as it might be if we kept all nontenured faculty less than seven years. However, there is some financial advantage to be accrued from the fact that faculty will be more efficiently related to curricular needs. We shall not find ourselves as much in the position of having faculty with little work to do as we might on a no-limitation policy.
There is a morale benefit. If one follows any other tenure limitation policy, one virtually destroys the morale of younger faculty. Under those circumstances we must say to some younger faculty that no matter how well they perform and no matter what they do, they may be released at the end of six years. But it is to just that faculty that we look for vitality, life, and innovation in the curriculum. By telling them there is no future and nothing they can do could change that, we force them back on narrow self-interest and the consequent educational conservatism which will naturally follow.
There is a great moral advantage. The system we propose allows justice for those who have been only a tiny minority in academia previously: women and minority ethnic groups. Such people are just now beginning to come out of the graduate schools in significant numbers. By cutting off tenure possibilities for them and by instituting systems where no matter what their merit, they cannot advance, we do them a great disservice and a moral injustice. We visit a cruel hoax on them, a hoax which tells them to try the system while we know that they will find it wanting.
Finally, I think there is another important advantage, and I shall close on this note. The problems Union faces are common problems throughout the country today. In higher education we seem lost in a morass of confusion and controversy. The system we propose is based on principles; it is not merely a gerrymandered system designed to resolve particular problems. It is a system that could quite easily be adopted and adapted by other colleges and universities. It could also be adopted nationally. The AAUP could set national floor-ceiling levels and could enforce a system like this as easily as the present system. It is a system that would allow junior faculty across the country to feel some hope that they are to be evaluated on their merits rather than dismissed as a result of some arbitrary limitation. We need to give our junior faculty some hope, for our hopes for higher education lie in their hands. As a consequence, it seems to me that one of the added advantages to the system we propose is that it may help lead us out of this swamp of conflict onto the higher ground of cooperation.
Provost, Union College
© 1973 by the Association of Departments of English. All Rights Reserved.
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