FAS Dean Explains Tenure Process to CUE

Members of the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) heard an inside perspective on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) tenure process yesterday.

Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Vincent Tompkins briefed CUE members on the factors that go into the complex Faculty hiring process.

“[The process] has a reputation for being complicated, drawn-out and difficult. Many of these things are true,” Tompkins said, comparing the tenure process to the undergraduate admissions process.

The search for a senior—or tenured—Faculty member, or the procedure for granting tenure to an associate professor, begins when a department requests authorization from Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby to conduct a search, Tompkins said.

Each department that has been granted permission to conduct a search develops a short list of five or six candidates. Departments then send “blind letters” to 15 or 20 scholars outside Harvard who work in the field of the tenure candidates to request feedback on their qualifications. The letters also ask the outside reviewers to alert the department to any female or minority candidates whom they might have overlooked, Tompkins said.

Senior Faculty members in the department write confidential letters to Kirby to explain their opinions of the candidates.

If Kirby approves a candidate’s case, the candidate is then considered by an ad hoc committee consisting of three outside scholars, two senior Faculty members from other departments and committee chair University President Lawrence H. Summers—who has the final say in all tenure decisions.

Summers, who considers 25 to 30 senior Faculty appointments each year, focuses on the qualities of scholarship, teaching ability and citizenship in making his appointments, Tompkins said.

All three factors are important, but research is weighted more heavily than teaching or citizenship in the hiring process, he added.

A recent addition to the internal tenure process includes an early review of associate professors’ scholarship and chances of receiving tenure at a major research university, according to Tompkins.

Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71, also a CUE member, said candidates under consideration have no ability to advocate for themselves in the tenure process.

“Your work has to speak for you,” Gross said.

Departments, ad hoc committee members and Summers are very careful in awarding tenure.

“Tenure is the granting of complete academic freedom for the remainder of one’s life. While we don’t want to ‘miss’ we can’t ignore the seriousness of a false alarm,” said Cabot Professor of Social Ethics and Pforzheimer Professor at Radcliffe Mahzarin Banaji.

But Gross said that quality of teaching remains important even for tenured Faculty. Those who receive low CUE ratings are encouraged to take advantage of the resources at the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning.

Tompkins added that Kirby’s emphasis on increasing the size of the Faculty may mean hiring of more professors at the associate level, as well as hiring of more senior Faculty members.

The CUE members, who met yesterday afternoon for the last time this year, also discussed putting course videos online during shopping period to make it easier for students to preview classes. They also considered ways to increase student input into the next steps of the curricular review process and agreed to ask the Undergraduate Council to nominate student members for any future curricular review committees.

—Staff writer Sara E. Polsky can be reached at polsky@fas.harvard.edu.