Correspondence: The "Haves" Versus the "Have-Nots": The Case for Tenuring the Nontenured

Correspondence: The "Haves" Versus the "Have-Nots": The Case for Tenuring the NontenuredAuthor(s): James M. Henslin and William Van AlstyneSource: AAUP Bulletin, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Mar., 1972), pp. 100-102, 104-105Published by: American Association of University ProfessorsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40224559 .

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CORRESPONDENCE

Letters published in this section represent the personal views of their authors, and are not necessarily those of the editors, or of the Association. Departmental and institutional affiliations are recorded for purposes of identification only. The editors reserve the right to con- dense, to cut, or to make minor stylistic changes in the interests of greater readability, but always retaining the writer's central point. Every effort is made to keep such changes at a minimum.

The "Haves" Versus the "Have-nots": The Case for Tenuring the Nontenured

Since the tenured among us, with their conservatism, are those who are most frequently heard in our official publication, it appears time for someone from the "other side" to speak up. A recent article in the Bulletin (Autumn, 1971, pp. 328-33) is the latest example of the AAUP's defense of the status quo demonstrating its continued reluctance to extend equal protection to all faculty members. Although I am specifically addressing myself to the points raised in this article since it is this defense of the continuation of the nontenured status for some of us that has precipitated this response, it should be noted that the unwillingness of the AAUP to extend equal protection to all of our constituents is regularly manifested in the writings in our "official publication."

When William Van Alstyne, listed as the "immediate past General Council of the AAUP and the current Chair- man of Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure," publishes statements on tenure in the Bulletin, he is doing more than expressing a personal opinion - he is expressing an entrenched position within the AAUP, and for purposes of good discussion and hopefully enlightening de- bate it is necessary to speak out and to disagree publicly with such pronouncements that are haughtily handed down to the lower echelons of our organization.

I have no quarrel with the merit of the arguments presented for the justification of professional tenure, where tenure is defined, as Van Alstyne does, as "the need for full academic due process for the removal of a professor from his educational responsibilities." The first two parts of this article are well argued, and they constitute an excellent defense of tenure that merits wide circulation in our profession. It is the third part of the article, entitled "A Lengthy Postscript: Academic Freedom and the Nontenured Faculty," with which I find myself in violent disagreement. It is here that the defense under- goes an amazing metamorphosis - changing from a "defense for tenure" to a "defense for nontenure" - contend- ing that we should maintain less than full academic due process for those in our midst who have put in "less lengthy service." It is in defense of equal tenure for all

members of the teaching profession, the guarantee of full due process for us all, with the concomitant removal of our second and inferior class of citizenship, that this present letter is written.

The AAUP finds itself in the anomalous position of not supporting full academic due process for all teachers, of actually needing to defend the unseemly motto from Animal Farm: All teachers are equal in their academic freedom, but some teachers [v/z., those with tenure] are more equal than others! To defend the position of having only "minimal due process" for some but "maximal due process for others" (put this baldly it sounds as though I must be making up these words and stacking the deck, but I just checked p. 332, and that is what he says) appears to me to be a most inconsistent position for the AAUP to take. Not only is it inconsistent, but it is also illogical, as the strained arguments mustered in defense of this position make it clear. I shall deal with each argument as presented (pp. 332-333) in defense of this essentially indefensible position.

The first argument raised in support of giving full academic due process to only some of us in the contingency of dismissal of a teacher by his employer was rather surprising to me after I had just read the carefully worded ideological foundation in defense of tenure: Van Alstyne says that hardship is greater for the person with a "greater commitment to a given discipline and a longer period of service in a particular institution." Hardship becomes his number one argument! It is amazing to me that such a point should even be brought up at all, as I did not notice it in the preceding carefully phrased and well-reasoned presentation of ideological reasons that support the con- cept of tenure. But this is really not surprising when one realizes that people who are forced to defend an essentially indefensible position frequently grasp at any straw in order to bolster their position. According to the ideological reasons Van Alstyne presents in the defense of tenure, the dismissal of a teacher is not to be decided upon the basis of whether the dismissal will or will not work a personal hardship on the individual. Dismissal is, rather, to be based on whether "adequate cause" regarding the faculty member has been demonstrated by his employer. What "adequate cause" consists of is admirably spelled out in the first part of the presentation and need not be reiterated here. If "hardship," and not incompetence or the termination of academic programs, and so on, were to be the basis for deciding dismissal or nondismissal, then the question of tenure would be an entirely different matter from what it is. Although dismissal from one's position always means hardship in one way or another for anyone who is so dismissed, the question of hardship is not the issue in deciding whether one should be dismissed or not. The question, as so well stated in the earlier part of the article, revolves around such things as competence and termination of academic programs - but not hardship. This is not to deny that hardship should be a humane consideration in dismissals, but if hardship were the issue, then we should immediately institute a new class of our citizens with this as the basis.

inn U U AAUP BULLETIN



I really don't think, however, that Van Alstyne is serious in this part of his defense of nontenured status. He is simply trying to find points with which to bolster his position, but I am certain that he cannot be serious about hardship as any basis for providing tenure for any particular class of our membership. If this were so, then we younger professors can easily turn this argument around and demonstrate in any number of ways (such as our indebtedness because of government loans that we used to get through graduate school, payments on our furniture, our considerably lower income, the larger number of years our children still must be dependent, etc.) that hardship because of dismissal is not only not unique to the tenured, but it is, at least in many ways, greater for the nontenured. If, however, it were true that there is less hardship on us younger faculty than on our older

faculty during times of dismissal, it is our nontenured status that contributes to its being "easier": to wit, our insecure nontenured status frequently prevents us from

buying homes, and it is protecting this equity that fre-

quently leads to the hardship that is so inherent in forceful

uprooting. Nontenured status for us all might lessen the

hardship - or tenured status for us all might distribute that hardship among some of us, who would eagerly accept this burden.

Additionally, if, as Van Alstyne maintains, the tenured

faculty are those who are "excellent" in the profession while we nontenured are merely questionable in our performance and for that very reason the so-called probationary period is necessary for us, the very "excellence" of our current tenured faculty should lessen their hardship since their "excellence" should make it easier for them to secure jobs. However, such arguing detours us from the main point, and I would like to stay more with the issue of the AAUP's defending position of refusing to make maximal due process available for all. I have only taken this side track because Van Alstyne presented it as his first defense for unequal protection. His shift in the

argument - from that based on the principle of the defense of freedom in both professional and civil life as the reason for tenure, to that of hardship - is merely a red herring thrust before us in order to throw us off the track. It must be since it was not presented as one of the theoretical reasons behind tenure. If I don't draw this conclusion, I would then need to think that "avoiding hardship" and not the protection of academic freedom is

actually the reason for tenure! Van Alstyne further reasons that "exactly to the extent

that dismissal is more portentous than nonrenewal, the

chilling effect on the individual's exercise of academic freedom may itself also be greater." If I understand this

correctly, he is saying that those with tenure (those who face dismissal and not nonrenewal) are less inclined to exercise their academic freedom because the threat of

punishment is that much greater. Accordingly, he con- cludes that "a more deliberate form of academic due

process may be required" for the tenured than for the nontenured. I find this thought process most difficult to

follow, that tenure tends to "chill" the exercise of aca-

demic freedom. It should accomplish the opposite, but, if true, I suppose it should follow that if we wish to increase academic freedom that we should eliminate tenure!

Van Alstyne has probably noticed that the younger members of our profession tend actively to exercise their academic freedom more than do our older members, but I would suggest that this is not due to the "warming" effect of not having tenure, but probably more to both the outspokenness that characterizes youth and the more radical ideas that are now filtering upward into our profession. It appears to me that the lesser inclination of our more established and older professors to speak out is because of the entrenchment of this age group into the Establishment (co-optation as we call it in sociology) and not to their being protected by tenure. If we desired to determine which view is correct, we should give tenure to our currently nontenured faculty and see if they maintain their exercise of academic freedom, if they continue to be outspoken in the classroom on relevant subject matters and to engage vigorously in activities outside the classroom regarding society and the administration of their institutions. By granting them tenure, those who are currently nontenured would also face "dismissal" in- stead of "nonrenewal," and, accordingly, they should also feel the "chilling effect on their exercise of academic freedom." I have no doubt whatsoever regarding the outcome of such a test.

It is, however, exactly because of the more "radical" nature of our younger teachers and the impetuousness with which they sometimes speak that they perhaps have the greater need of having their academic freedom protected. It is they, after all, who are more frequently subject to negative sanctions by their administration, fre-

quently in the form of dismissal - or as it is called in the less innocuous terminology chosen by Van Alstyne, "nonrenewal."

The second point put forth in defense of maintaining dual citizenship is a more telling one. Van Alstyne says: "Surely no institution ought to be held to have made a

judgment on the long-term professional excellence of a first-time appointee to its faculty in view of the fact that

frequently the appointment will represent the individual's first experience in teaching and there will have been no reasonable opportunity in fact so to determine his professional fitness." This is well taken. It should be noted, however, that there is really no way of judging the "long- term professional excellence" of anyone, of even those who have already served their "probationary status" in the institution. There are indications that can be utilized, to be sure, but as we all know, many such "judgments" are erroneous. Most of us can readily indicate "dead wood" on our faculties, and in my limited experience the

majority of these cases are persons who have already achieved tenure.

Granted that an institution would face difficulties if

they granted tenure at the time they hire a teacher. If

tenure, however, is actually only the full guarantee of

academic due process (with the institution having to ini-

SPRING 1972 10*



tiate the dismissal, the institution having to prove adequate cause, and there being "heavier" formality in the total procedure [p. 332]), I see no reason that the institution should also not have to demonstrate that the newer teacher is also unfit for his job. Why does the newer professional not also deserve the right of full due process when he is being dismissed (excuse me, nonrenewed)?

Tenure, to be honest with one another, is not granted on the basis that Van Alstyne presents, that of "excellence." Certainly many "excellent" faculty members do receive tenure, but I think that we all are also well aware of cases of "excellent" faculty members who do not receive tenure. Excellence is really not the issue in tenure. The use of the term "excellence" is merely an ideological trapping that is utilized in order to maintain the status quo, that of maintaining a dual citizenship among our

membership, with our second-class citizenship not having "professional rights" equal to our first-class citizenship. To take the matter out of the "ideal" and to place it more

squarely in the "real," I think we all know why tenure is

ordinarily given faculty members: it is because of satisfactory performance of duties plus getting along with one's administration. It seems to me that this is a much more honest position than flying the ideological flag of excellence as the basis for tenure.

It should be well noted that those of us who want what is disapprovingly called "instant tenure" are merely asking for the same rights as those who have greater longevity: the continued right to discharge one's duties satisfactorily and to be liable for dismissal for unsatisfactory performance of duties - such that "unsatisfactory performance of duties" cannot be equated with the expression of professional and personal freedoms.

To guarantee these basic rights to all of us, the hiring institution must of necessity build in greater safeguards concerning hiring procedures. They would have to be more careful than they are at present concerning refer- ences and other evaluatory procedures when they hire. If, however, their decision turns out to be erroneous, as it sometimes will, and the teacher does not satisfactorily perform his duties, he can still be removed for cause. But if "cause" is not there, then why should he ever be removed? !

The third reason given in defense for continuing the nontenured status for some of us is more easily dis- pensed with. Van Alstyne says that there is currently more reason to suspect that dismissal proceedings are more likely to have ulterior reasons violative of academic freedom than are nonrenewals of appointments. If this is true, then the way of eliminating this objection is simply to provide tenure for all of us. If we all had tenure, we who are currently nontenured would share this burden which the tenured seem to feel is uniquely theirs. Or perhaps (and some of us think it is more than perhaps) "ulterior reasons" are already also operating for those of us who are nontenured, and we would then also acquire fuller academic due process as a prerequisite for our termination.

I don't in any way buy the view that dismissal proceed-

ings are more likely to involve reasons violative of academic freedom than are nonrenewal notices. Nonrenewal is the typical way of getting rid of those of us who express more radical ideas, and this is certainly a direct violation of our academic freedom. If anyone doubts the truth of this statement let them look at the situation at Simon Fraser University and its combined Political Science, Sociology, and Anthropology Department and the cen-

suring of Simon Fraser administration by the Canadian Association of University Teachers on May 13-14, 1971.

(Cf. The American Sociologist, August, 1971, p. 273.) The final point made in defense of maintaining non-

tenure for some of us is also very weak. Unbelievably enough, Van Alstyne says that it is worth a greater cost to give greater protection to those persons who are more

expert in their specialty than those who are mere begin- ners in theirs. This is, he states, because the more expert persons (the tenured, of course) are more likely to make an original contribution. This argument appears to me to be so weak that it hardly needs rebuttal, but it does lead us into a major issue. What is the "cost" of academic freedom "worth"? For Van Alstyne, who must obviously be a tenured professor, if one judges from the vested interest that he defends, tenure is for "the more expert" obviously worth much. But he feels that it is worth much less to us peons, those of us who unfortunately find our- selves in this less privileged class of professional citizen-

ship. If full academic due process is worthwhile for any of us, it is worthwhile for all of us.

In this light we might note that Van Alstyne closes his biased, parochial position with a sop to us younger teachers by saying that our "lack of seasoning and fa- miliarity with our subject is more than offset by our freshness, creativity, or lack of debilitating conventionality." Indeed! And we who are so fresh, so creative, and so lacking in debilitating conventionality also deserve and need full academic due process, sometimes especially because of our freshness, our creativity, and our lack of conventionality. Just as much, I would say, as those who are not so fresh, not so creative, and who are perhaps possessed by (not my words, mind you!) debilitating conventionality.

James M. Henslin Sociology

Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville

In reply: An insistence that tenure be conferred automatically

upon initial appointment, with no opportunity whatever to ascertain the excellence of the individual in terms of his work within the institution, seems to me to be so im- plausible on its face as to carry a considerable burden of justification. So far as I know, it is a position not pre- viously asserted by the strongest labor unions even in connection with the most routine and unskilled work. Nonetheless, Professor Henslin vigorously urges it as an immediate organizational objective for the AAUP to press upon all of higher education. Indeed, he finds himself in "violent disagreement" with any other view. Respect-

!02 AAUP BULLETIN



fully, however, his arguments for instant tenure scarcely seem compelling.

First, Professor Henslin suggests that there is no reason to postpone tenure even for those without prior teaching experience, because, as he says: "there is really no way of judging the 'long-term professional excellence' of anyone, even including those who have already served their

'probationary status' in the institution." This argument, ignorant of an undistributed middle, is a simple non sequitur. It holds that because not even a substantial

experience with a person's work is sufficient for infallible

judgment (which is doubtless true), no first-hand experience is just as good as substantial first-hand experience (which is clearly false). Thus, those not having pre- viously taught or published are equally entitled to the same degree of favorable presumption as those whom the institution believes, on the basis of substantial experience with their work, to warrant the presumption. A most

interesting point of view. . . .

Second, according to Professor Henslin, even assuming that an institution may not have an adequate basis to declare that it has found one new to teaching already to be as competent a teacher and scholar as others whom it has granted tenure only after several years' opportunity to assess their work within the institution, it is really a matter of no consequence: "to be honest with one an-

other," we are reminded as practical people, published institutional standards for tenure are not conscientiously applied and are all too often merely "ideological trapping."

Granted that infidelity to published tenure standards is not unknown to some faculties, it is surprising to suppose that the situation would be improved by a system of instant tenure. Rather than render the standards of the

university incapable of conscientious application by in-

sisting that tenure be granted without regard to the lack of opportunity to assess a faculty member's work within the institution, presumably the profession should call for additional measures strengthening tenure procedures to assure that published institutional standards are not dismissed as mere ideological trappings.

But perhaps I have misconstrued Professor Henslin's

argument in this respect, and he is not at all concerned to

encourage the conscientious use of professional standards in determinations of tenure. Rather, his observation may be that awards of tenure are already so carelessly and

corruptly conferred that we can do little additional harm to universalize it through instant tenure for everyone.

There are, however, at least three difficulties with this

position, beginning first with the observation that the

major premise (that tenure is too frequently granted without being earned) more logically appears to support current administrative and political proposals to abolish tenure rather than to extend it. Second, the proposal contemplates the fulfillment of its own cynical premise, a phenomenon which Professor Henslin's discipline of

sociology has usefully identified as the fallacy of the self-

fulfilling prophecy: were we to insist upon instant tenure, we could then be certain that tenure would not be granted

on the basis of demonstrated excellence as conscientiously determined from the individual's work within the institution. At least with respect to faculty members with no

prior experience, the award of instant tenure would itself confirm the claim that tenure is not earned and that any claim of demonstrated excellence is indeed a mere ideo-

logical trapping. More troublesome still, if we repudiate tenure as not

at all constituting an institution's express recognition of demonstrated excellence extended only after a suitable

opportunity for informed judgment (and instant tenure

implicitly constitutes such a repudiation), it is difficult to see how faculty members may reasonably hope to draw from this "new tenure" the same degree of protection which its favorable presumption currently provides. Instant tenure is so palpably inconsistent with defining tenure as a statement of confidence in the demonstrated excellence of the faculty member, that it may shortly deserve to be treated with diminished significance within each institution required to confer it so mechanically, as a mere matter of course. The paradox of instant tenure is thus the same as that of any proposal which seeks to

gain some unearned advantage. Should it become the

way of life in American higher education, it may "suc- ceed" in the long run only to weaken the foundation of tenure even while providing fresh evidence to our political critics that the profession seems to be far more concerned with its own security than with the further development of excellence in higher education.

Nonetheless, I would agree with Professor Henslin that

there are circumstances where the institutional use of a

full seven-year probationary period is unwarrantedly long and where a decision within a shorter time should be

required. Some of these circumstances are already re- fleeted in AAUP standards (e.g., prior service at other

institutions), but others also need attention. An institution may be an excellent teaching college in which few

if any of the faculty are expected also to be publishing scholars. As the need may not exist to provide the longer time for new faculty to demonstrate a capacity for

scholarly publication, a shorter period than six years is

surely adequate fairly to resolve the benefit of doubt re-

specting other qualities the institution is not unreasonable

in wishing to ascertain before extending an appointment of indefinite duration. Under these circumstances, I be-

lieve the case for requiring a tenure decision well before

the end of the sixth year is extremely compelling; to

postpone that decision cannot be justified in light of its

potential cost to academic freedom and to professional

security. Whether the time should be moved back to the end of

the fourth, the third, or even the second year, however, seems to me to depend upon the overall character of the

particular college, the degree of prior experience of its

faculty, the nature of the tenured position under consider-

ation, and a number of other circumstances. A single, nationwide rule, moving the date back to the end of the

second year regardless of the actual tenure criteria of the

institution, for instance, would seem to be forgetful of

J04 AAUP BULLETIN



the fable of Procrustes and his infamous bed. It would

simply ignore a great number of very real differences that do in fact exist among the more than 2,500 accredited institutions of post-high-school education in the United States. Similarly, the insistence that tenure be conferred at the point of an individual's very first appointment and

irrespective of all other considerations, seems to me to be quite unjust.

William Van Alstyne Law

Duke University

Tenure on Arrival?

In the Report of the University of Utah Commission to Study Tenure (AAUP Bulletin, Autumn, 1971, pp. 421-32) the question was considered, "Does the existing tenure system . . . prevent academic incompetence or

mediocrity and assure adherence by faculty members to

acceptable standards of professional responsibility?" In arguing that it does, two safeguards to the granting

of tenure were mentioned. (1) Persons ordinarily achieve tenure only upon the

completion of a satisfactory probationary period. (2) Tenure results from the affirmative decision of six

reviewing agencies: the student advisory committee, the

departmental advisory committee, the department chair-

man, the college committee on tenure, the college dean and the university tenure advisory committee. The president then makes the final decision.

Despite this elaborate fail-safe mechanism it then adds, "In highly exceptional cases, tenure may be granted at the time of appointment"!

After viewing the academic jungle for over thirty years, I have observed that this is the route to the tenured ranks taken by a majority of the academic dead-heads. They come from government, industry, research institutes or

colleges and universities who do not mourn their depar- ture. They are either first-class salesmen or have administrative friends and they come as professors, deans, or

department chairmen complete with tenure. Their tenure is recommended not by their colleagues on the faculty but

by the administration and they serve no probationary period. Rather than being "highly exceptional," these cases tend to be rather common.

This route can be blocked by ruling that tenure can

only be granted at University A after a probationary period at University A and that recommendations for tenure can originate only from the grass-roots, from students and faculty colleagues.

Harold E. Enlows Geology

Oregon State University

The Strike at San Francisco State

Because of absence abroad, I have only now had an

opportunity to read Dr. John Bunzel's article on "The

Faculty Strike at San Francisco State College" in the

autumn, 1971, issue of the Bulletin. I wish to commend him for writing it and [the Bulletin] for publishing it.

My own experience confirms what he says to the hilt. In connection with my efforts to organize a chapter of

University Centers for Rational Alternatives, 1 visited the

campus of San Francisco State College twice in late Janu-

ary, 1969. I observed several scenes of violence, inter- viewed members of the staff, and talked with the pickets of the Teacher's Local on strike. Although a past Council

Member of the AAUP, I have always been sympathetic with the American Federation of Teachers in their efforts

to unionize teachers in the elementary and secondary schools. Because of unhappy experiences with the College Teachers' Local in New York during the '30's which had

fallen under the political control of the Communist

Party, I had strong reservations about the unionization of

college teachers. But I was always ready to reconsider

my position. As a result of my conversations with the pickets, eager

to explain why they were on strike, I was aghast to dis-

cover that the underlying strategy of that strike was to

support the extremist student demands, to solidarize with

the student strike, and to help close down the college. Some of the pickets appeared to believe that the teachers'

strike would be the crucial final push that would insure

capitulation to the non-negotiable demands of the students.

Since it seemed to me that the politically inspired action

of the local was compromising the cause of trade unionism

and collective bargaining, I wrote both to the head of the

Labor Council and to President Meany expressing my

judgment and urging their intervention. For my pains, I

received a letter of denunciation from the head of the

Union asking me to mind my own business.

Nonetheless, in fairness to the American Federation of

Teachers, I wish to say that the action of the local at San

Francisco State had little sympathy among leading Union

officials and members with whom I spoke in the East.

Some of them referred to the leaders of the strike as "wild

men." In justice also to many members of the Teachers

Local at San Francisco State, it should be observed that

they did not go along with the leadership. The fact that a

long-standing member of the Union like Dr. Urban Whit-

taker, full of good will and human trust . . . felt it neces-

sary to resign from the Union, speaks for itself.

In view of the dangers of the growing politicalization of

university campuses - and, unfortunately, of professional associations including the AAUP- Dr. Bunzel's article

deserves careful thought by all university teachers.

Sidney Hook

Philosophy (Emeritus) New York University

The article by John Bunzel, "The Faculty Strike at

San Francisco State College," which appeared in the

autumn, 1971, issue of the Bulletin was a great disappoint- ment. I have learned to rely on the objectivity of material

presented in the Bulletin, discounting somewhat for

attitudes expressed in articles depending, I suppose, upon some of my own biases.

105 SPRING 1972



Documents

Correspondence: The "Haves" Versus the "Have-Nots": The Case for Tenuring the Nontenured