Climbing The Ladder To Harvard Tenure

By now, it's a familiar story.

The junior professor is popular, well-regarded, beloved by undergraduates and graduate students alike. She spends seven years at Harvard, teaching popular courses that win acclaim in the CUE guide.

In the seventh year, her tenure case comes up for review. The ladder to tenure is fully in view. Instead, the professor is sent down the Harvard chute, and out the door.

It happened to Alan Brinkley, who for three straight years packed Sanders Theatre with his course on modern American history.

It happened to Mark McConnell, who achieved popularity despite the difficult and tedious material of Math 25.

And this year, it happened to Liah Greenfeld, Loeb associate professor of the social sciences, who developed a following of undergraduates and graduate students.

A committee of senior faculty decided not to recommend Greenfeld for tenure in December.

And while professors like Greenfeld view their fate pragmatically, looking ahead to positions at other colleges or universities, students losing a popular professor have little in the way of consolation.

Shortly after news broke of the Greenfeld decision, a group of 37 sociology graduate students--out of 70 total in the department--drafted a petition bemoaning the "enormous void" created by her departure.

"It was a real shock that she did not get tenure," says one student who has worked closely with Greenfeld. "A lot of people assumed that she had a very good chance."

And the pattern, the student says, was easy to recognize.

"People do have this mindset that Harvard tends not to tenure people that are in the junior faculty", she says.

Her complaint is nothing new. For generations, Harvard has had a reputation of tenuring professors who have "made it big" at other schools. Using the Harvard name, the University simply picks the best and the brightest.

Most universities in the U.S., says Sociology Department Chair Aage B. Sorenson, have tenure-track systems. Junior professors are hired with the expectation of receiving permanent appointments some time in the future.

These colleges "review anybody in the junior ranks as a matter of course", Sorenson says.

But Harvard has no such built-in tenure system. And junior faculty members generally come here for temporary stays. Statistics indicate that only a small percentage of "ladder faculty"--Harvard's term for assistant and associate professors--go on to attain tenure.

"Harvard is a very unusual university", says Sorenson.

The standard procedure at Harvard is as follows.

.Scholars who enter the system as assistant professors are reviewed in their fourth year for promotion to the associate level.

.If promoted, a faculty member serves until his or her seventh year, when a tenure review may be initiated at the discretion of the department.

.If the tenure committee recommends the candidate, the president convenes another committee of senior faculty to review the candidate or candidates. The final decision rests with the president.

The administration recently established a database that allows it to track faculty members through the tenure process.

The first case to be examined is of junior faculty members who came to Harvard in the 1984-85 academic year and are eligible for tenure review this year. That year, 49 scholars in all were recruited. Of the 37 who stayed at Harvard long enough to be considered for associate professorships, 35 were promoted to the posts.

Just 24 of these, however, underwent preliminary review for tenure, not including the two faculty members who waived such review.

Of the original 49, only six received tenure this year after their seventh year in the system. One review is still pending.

Defenders of the University point out that some of these professors left before tenure review.

But the low number of tenures--just 12 percent of those who entered the faculty eight years ago, and 25 percent of those who underwent preliminary review--demonstrates the slim chances of junior faculty members receiving tenure.

While students aren't always aware of these difficult odds, faculty members are. Junior professors come to Harvard prepared for temporary stays, according to Associate Professor of Government and Social Studies Houchang E. Chehabi.

When he was recruited by Harvard, Chehabi recalls, he was told immediately that he would not likely remain beyond his seventh year here.

Chehabi says the Harvard administration informed him that "basically I shouldn't expect tenure, even though in rare occasions exceptions are made".

Candidates for junior professorships know that Harvard is an unlikely source of permanent appointments, Chehabi says.

"The reputation of the place is such that one comes with such an assumption," he says. "I don't think anyone comes here expecting tenure".

Chehabi says he knows people who have turned down Harvard offers in favor of tenure-track positions at other universities. But many, he says, are willing to come to Harvard even for a temporary stay.

"Harvard is like Disneyland for a scholar", he says. "You say to yourself that even though you're not going to spend your life here, six or seven years here is a very nice prospect."

"Next year I will be applying for jobs elsewhere", says Chehabi, who is in his sixth year as a professor.

Chehabi's good nature about the tenure process is not shared by all students, some of whom have reacted with anger to tenure denials.

The anger usually stems from the loss of a professor who spends time with students and often teaches the only classes in a specific field.

But administrators argue that much of students' displeasure is rooted in misconceptions about the tenure process.

Even though former Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence reformed the process in the late 1980s to remove the link between tenure reviews and openings in the department, junior professors are still not entitled to reviews, which are performed at the discretion of the departments.

In the seventh year of a junior faculty member's stay, a department can make arrangements for outside evaluations or for its own review committee. If the department votes to end the process, the junior professor's quest for tenure ends.

Other student complaints are targeted at the process by which Harvard seeks outside input about the candidate in consideration.

While other universities simply ask for evaluations, Harvard sends a 'blind letter', a list of potential candidates that includes the tenure candidate and other leading scholars in the field.

Outside scholars are not told which of the listed professors is the internal Harvard candidate.

Students often complain that this process weighs against internal or younger candidates because only older faculty have international reputations that outsiders will recognize.

According to one source, blind letters list junior faculty members with other professors with similar experience, so as not to weigh the scales against younger professors.

Another complain lodged by students is that Harvard, as a research-oriented institution, places too little emphasis on teaching.

But professors say that teaching is indeed part of the review process. Professors who defend the current system say that without research, teaching goes stale.

Even professors who are detached from the student body contribute to the atmosphere of learning on campus.

"There are occasional genuises whom one would want to have on the faculty even if their customary mode of communication took the form of grunts and grumbles", writes former Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky in his book, The University: An Owner's Manual.

Professors also say that when committees consider candidates for tenure, they pay specific attention to classroom teaching.

When Greenfeld's tenure case was reviewed by the Sociology Department, Sorenson says, the committee sought out graduate student input as a standard part of the process.

Still, students often perceive Harvard as the ultimate research university--one which places enormous importance on research and scholarship, while disregarding undergraduates and the professors who instruct them.

"Understandably, undergraduates see the world in terms of the teaching ability", says Joseph J. McCarthy, assistant dean for academic planning.

One reason that student's interests are not represented, they say, is that they are not consulted in the tenure decision-making process.

"[Graduate students] don't seem to have any voice in this process of tenure as a group," says Sociology graduate student Marie-Laure Djelic.

Even Sorenson admits that he wasn't quite sure what to do with a student petition that praised Greenfeld and voiced objection to the tenure committee's decision.

"I don't know what you would say to the students other than thank you", Sorenson says.

Taking the high road, Rosovosky writes that students often don't have enough background to provide helpful input.

"Professional qualifications are the main issues, and neither staff nor students have the training to make valid judgments", he writes in An Owner's Manual.

Harvard's tradition of turning to outside scholars dates back to the presidency of James B. Conant '14. Ironically, he was seeking to avoid a trend of tenuring only faculty insiders.

Today, the University faces the opposite phenomenon. Few insiders remain at Harvard beyond their stints as junior professors. And almost everyone, from students to junior faculty to the tenured professors themselves, agrees that there should be some reform.

This is little comfort to students who have lost their favorite professors. But administrators say that recent attempts to make the tenure system more fair to junior faculty are succeeding, to some degree.

"I'd like to believe that the number of junior faculty members getting tenure is increasing and also that there is more optimism among the junior faculty about the process," McCarthy says.