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    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

“Industry standard” on tenure and promotion reviews?

Brian Leiter

A colleague elsewhere asks on Facebook (with permission to repost the question here):

What are one's duties with respect to being an external reviewer for promotions?  They are a TON of work.  How often and under what circumstances do I need to say 'yes'?  I just got a request and if I say 'yes' it will be the third I do this season.  Is that low? High?  I need help here!  I know how to self-moderate appropriately when it comes to referee requests, but I have no sense of the industry standard on this…

We touched on some aspects of this several years ago, but it's worth airing again, especially since some new issues are raised here.   Thoughts from readers?  Signed comments strongly preferred.

 

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14 responses to ““Industry standard” on tenure and promotion reviews?”

  1. Kathryn J. Norlock

    I have been thinking about this, and for many of us, it may be the case that no more than three a year is a good standard. After all, most of us only stand, ourselves, for such promotion twice in our entire careers. If we don't ask external-reviewing of more than three people in any given year then perhaps a rule of thumb is only to do three a year. Does this make sense as a form of reciprocity? (I admit this is colored by the fact that I've only ever done three a year. Perhaps I'm merely justifying previously established habits.)

    I'm a rather average Jane, though, and I work in ethics, which has a wide population and room to distribute the work. Famous types and leaders in very narrow fields will inevitably be asked more often. So my max of three may only work as a very general rule. And I admit that as I assume department chairship this year, I'm cutting back on wider professional service. It depends on one's burdens.

    Reply
  2. Mark van Roojen

    Kathryn's response seems to me to display supererogatory tendencies.

    Three a year can be a lot of work. I've done it, but hope not to do it again. Typically you are reading all or most of what a person has done in their career up to that point. Depending on whose work one is reviewing, even one can be a handful (More than one book and more than a dozen papers, for example). And it isn't just that you are supposed to read that much; you are also supposed to talk about it in such a way that you show you've read and thought about it, and at the same time to educate non-philosophers who may be in the chain of decision why any of this matters, how it fits in with professional standards and such. So I would think this is too much to ask as a baseline.

    In any event, my guess is that we shouldn't think of the obligation as best assessed year by year. I'd suggest a better minimum would be based on how much work one causes others over the course of a career. I know that roughly 6 people reviewed my file each time I was promoted. Thus I owe at least twelve such reviews to the world. Of course not everyone gets tenure or is asked to to these. So we really need people to review more than just as much as they themselves have been reviewed. Probably double the number would be closer to what's needed. Doing more than that is better yet, but I suspect beyond the minimum we can ask. But again, I think that is over a career. One can reasonably say no in a given year even when one hasn't reached that number yet, if one's other commitments and such get in the way in any given year.

    FWIW . . .

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  3. Margaret Atherton

    Tenure and promotion reviews are indubitably a lot of work. But I have always been very reluctant to say, even to myself, after agreeing to write a certain number, I get to say no for a while, because I know that refusals are known to the department and reported out to university committees and that they can be taken as a negative judgment on the candidate. This makes the request a rather different animal from requests to referee papers, where a cut off point seems perfectly acceptable.

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  4. V. Alan White

    As a distinctly "R-none" member of the profession who has been tapped for tenure/promotion/grant review for both US and Canadian professors, and so in my case I have never done more than two per year, I wish to urge R-1 departments to look beyond the usual suspects (their R-1 peers) to farm out that work. I've read whole book manuscripts, endless articles, grant apps, etc. etc. and I know what work it is. But if the person's work is what I know about–and her/his department is at least aware that I have some published standing in her/his field–then I should be competent to evaluate work and pronounce on it. My colleagues at the R-1s are overloaded on such requests. People like me–competent and reliable philosophers but not R-1 stars–are available and willing to contribute. There should be a recognition in the profession that a much larger segment of the professoriate "gets" what matters than is reflected in high-profile blogs and well-known resumes. (I know the default is to resort to external-reviewer pubs to assess that; here's where recommendations from the review committee could inform that decision beyond that mere fact. The six degrees of separation of appreciation of suitable peers might expand the pool of available reviewers considerably; I assume I have been asked to review on such a basis.)

    Margaret's remarks disturb me about the effect of refusals. Is that true? If so, then that would justifiably weigh against using just pubs and R-1 associations to assess refusals to adjudicate their place in decision-making about tenure/promotion. Most likely those people are just overworked, and that should be recognized as a factor in refusal, and so mitigate it.

    BL COMMENT: Professor White raises a very important issue. My impression is that (1) R-1 university administrations tend to insist on R-1 peer reviewers; even though (2) in many fields, esp. those not in 'hot' areas, most of the most competent referees are not at R-1 universities. Many of the best younger people in the fields I know best are not at R-1 universities, since departments in those universities are not heavily invested in either philosophy of law or 19th-century German philosophy (sigh). I never do more than one full tenure review per year, and I am sure I'm not atypical.

    Reply
  5. Jon Cogburn

    This is a great discussion. Kudos to Brian for hosting it.

    I don't have intuitions about quantity (I do about one a year I think).

    I do think it's really important to not agree to do it unless you think there's a non-trivial chance you will be able to recommend the candidate.

    The second thing is that I've now chaired a few tenure committees, and I have to say that one of the things that makes me proudest to be a philosophy professor is the huge amount of care and decency manifest by external reviewers. I've never had a case where the reviewer didn't do a tremendous amount of work getting conversant in the candidate's publications and then carefully and charitably explaining and assessing the work for administrators who have no idea what philosophy is. It's just incredibly humbling. Nor have I had a case where the reviewer has manifested some of the unfortunate traits that sometimes infect journal reviewing.

    As philosophers, at our best we're very self-critical. Still, when we're doing something right we should be happy about that too.

    Reply
  6. Christopher Morris

    As it is uncoordinated, requests to evaluate candidates for tenure and promotion can come in small and large numbers, changing for no apparent reason om year to year. Some years it is impossible to accept them all. But I thought it'd be useful to say that if one is going to decline an invitation to review someone, one should do so very quickly and attach a note of explanation. This note will often be part of the dossier, as the department may have to explain the refusals, especially if there are a number of them. In other parts of the university, declining a request to evaluate may be interpreted as signaling a low opinion of the candidate. I have seen a promotion turned down by a higher committee citing, among several other factors, the large number of refusals. So be sure to explain why you are not accepting the request.

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  7. Rebecca Kukla

    Jon C says that one shouldn't agree to do a review unless there is a non-trivial chance you can recommend the candidate. I guess I have always held to an even stronger principle; I don't say 'yes' unless I think I will probably write a positive evaluation. (Most places don't ask me to 'recommend' or not, but just to assess the work.) But (1) I am not sure why I think this or even Jon's weaker version is an appropriate norm, and (2) if it's any kind of norm, appropriate or not, it really underscores the point a few others have made above and on facebook: saying 'no' can be taken as evidence against the candidate. This makes it really hard to say 'no' for other kinds of reasons (too busy, research seems kind of distant from one's own interests/expertise) without guilt.

    I work in a lot of different areas in philosophy, and I am female and a full professor. I think that as a result I get disproportionately many requests. The multiple-areas problem is part of my punishment for my own philosophical ADD, and I accept that. I am not sure how to think about the female/full professor problem. I am glad that T&P committees often feel uncomfortable with all-male slates of reviewers and want to make sure some women are on the list; I support this. On the other hand, I resent having to do more service than my peers because there are so few senior women in the discipline. On the other other hand, I don't want a candidate's chances at promotion to go down because her/his review committee did the right thing and reached out to (overtapped) female reviewers.

    I suppose neither of the above paragraphs has a clear conclusion. I am not sure how to think about either issue and appreciate this thread. It would be nice if others could chime in with thoughts about the gender issue in particular.

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  8. Jon Cogburn

    Oh jeez that's a bad place to be in. You get someone who you would support, but it's your fourth or fifth file this year (and they are all due around the same time).

    At my institution we have to include in the packet that goes up to the college the actual e-mails where people decline to do it. Some decliners go out of their way to praise the person's work and to note things like how many other such cases they are already committed to. I think that this mitigates a little bit the negative impact with the college level committee.

    I'm very interested to see what people might contribute concerning the gender issue that Kukla brings up.

    Reply
  9. Michael Rosen

    Re: Alan White. It’s obviously true that deans “shop the label” and knowledge of this skews who gets asked to do reports. Still, what else can they do if they don’t know the field and the people themselves? At least, I have more sympathy with them than I do with philosophers who obsess about submitting their papers only to the most prestigious journals and then complain at how long overloaded editors take to make a decision.

    Re: Margaret Atherton. It’s certainly true that attention is paid to people declining to write. Nor is that inappropriate. There’s no question that people decline to write rather than being obliged to say in a letter that will be read by members of another department: “Actually, I don’t think the work of the person you appointed five years ago is very good.”

    So I strongly endorse Christopher Morris’s suggestion.

    Emails like the following — “I’m very sorry that I can’t write about X. I’m simply snowed under with other obligations at present. But I do know X and have read a bit of his/her work. From what I know it’s interesting work of high quality and s/he is the sort of person I would like to have as a colleague myself.” — get included in the dossiers that are sent upstairs at my university, at least. I’ve only just realized this but, in future, when I’m in that situation, I’m going to be sure I write at least a few lines.

    Reply
  10. Rebecca Kukla

    I think Michael Rosen's suggestion is a good one, IF one can write such a thing in good faith. I don't know how many institutions include the declining emails in the file. But here is a principle I am very sure should be followed: institutions should either include such emails, or not include information about who/how many declined in any form at all; also, institutions should make it clear when they solicit reviewers which disjunct they follow.

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  11. Kirk Ludwig

    To add to the data, in none of the tenure cases I have been involved in has anyone, at any level, evinced any interested in the number of people who declined a request to write a letter of evaluation for a tenure file. I am pretty sure that the information was not included in tenure files at one institution I've worked at. On the other side of the process, not infrequently I receive an informal query about whether I would be able to take on a tenure review before a formal request. I do not know whether information about informal queries is included in the tenure files at the relevant institutions. Tenure and promotion evaluations are of course a lot of work. While I will typically accede to requests, I have also declined because of time constraints, and that seems to me to be perfectly fine and not uncommon. If I were giving advice, I would say: take it case by case, take seriously your time constraints, and while being sensitive to the importance of contributing to the maintenance of the enterprise, don't in general be too concerned about the effect of declining a request.

    Reply
  12. Jon Coburn

    It looks like there's a wide range of policies at different institutions. I think LSU has more checks and balances than most places because of the history of political corruption in the state.

    At LSU every single e-mail gets put in the file, including all of my e-mails to the possible reviewers. Before you chair a committee, various people read you the riot act about all of this (as they should, you really don't want to do anything that might inadvertently hurt the candidate). But as a result, you can't legally make an informal query.

    Prior to contacting anyone, I have to write up an initial list of twenty or so people I might ask, including biographies for all of them, and get that list approved by the Dean's office. People who are too linked to the candidate's PhD institution are usually thrown off, and we have to make a special case for people in non-American universities and people at non-NRC ranked American institutions. At best we can usually get permission to ask at most one foreigner and one person at a non-NRC ranked institution.

    Again, I'm just writing this to note that there's some non-trivial chance that any e-mail you get and any response you make will end up in the candidate's file, depending on the culture of the candidate's institution.

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  13. Christopher Hithcock

    I do 3 -4 per year, pretty steadily (few big upswings or downswings from year-to-year). I try to accept if I can, given the importance of this for the profession. I will accept even if I think I will say something negative, since there is a need for candor in this process. I will, however, decline invitations if the area is too remote. I am also more likely to decline if the time-frame is too short.

    At my institution, all correspondence with potential referees is included in a candidates' file. I know at least some of my colleagues view it as a negative if someone declines with no valid reason, or with no comment on the candidate. I think the reasoning is that this is some evidence that the invitee was not already familiar with the candidate's work (which makes the job considerably easier). There is no official policy about what to make of refusals, but some people do draw inferences from them. So if you do decline, it is best to give a reason; and if you know and like the candidate's work, briefly say so in your response to the invitation.

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  14. Steven Gross

    Adding to the data: At my institution (Johns Hopkins), the emails of those who decline to serve as external referees go into the report. It does not look good if a significant number of folks decline. It makes a difference if those who decline are able to explain why they can't take it on and to say something positive about the candidate.

    Reply

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