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2 responses to “Regental Committee recommends new tenure policies to full Wisconsin Board of Regents”
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Thank you for posting this Brian. You've been enormously supportive of colleagues in UW, and it's much appreciated.
The Education Committee apparently did not significantly alter the three documents. While there may be some language changes when these go to the full Board, I think the best we can hope for is additional policy allowing individual institutions to adopt policies that may add in some additional shared governance language or procedures. Having served on the Task Force as the only philosopher and with the longest tenure in UW, as the meetings went on, it was obvious that this really was a top-down, not bottom-up process. The drafts were all written with Regent input by System lawyers and assistants. Our input influenced the drafts, but we had no effective role in writing them. We in fact were barred from voting on issues or language–it was ruled that a Task Force did not proceed by ordinary rules of order. I warned the committee on record several times that we had best not render documents that provide either a two-tiered tenure system in UW or "tenure-lite" (which was picked up by media). But I fear that in fact we will have both when all is said and done.
Here are my final comments as posted on the Regents' site: https://www.wisconsin.edu/regents/draft-tenure-policies/
"First, as a member of the Tenure Task Force I laud the Regents' use of this site as a place for combination comment and public-access.
Second, the general proposed Regents' policy document on tenure rightly incorporates the language of former state statute 36.13, now deleted, presumably as a statement of solidarity with the past. The UW System, and Madison in particular, was built on strong traditions of academic freedom as laid out in the deservedly famous statement by the Board of 1894 that emphasized "the continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth may be found". This Board now has an historic responsibility: in the face of statutory requirements to subject tenured employment to budgetary and educational considerations, what role shall the Board play in upholding that tradition or ceding it to matters of "markets" and "societal needs"? Would such a concession recognize that, in fact, there is always a wisdom of a financial and popular-culture nature that surpasses all others? Or could there actually be a form of minority wisdom that requires protecting its source in academic freedom? Such questions led to the 1894 statement. They are here again. It is up to the Regents to decide which wisdom finally shall prevail.
Third, the Regents can only uphold the 1894 statement as perennial wisdom by inserting stronger language in the two other tenure documents protecting mechanisms of shared governance and/or allowing individual UW institutions to develop tenure policies that, while recognizing the inevitability of 36.21-22, also as strongly as possible allow that such policies reflect AAUP-type standards of tenure that are the backbone of UW's reputation in the world as a first-class institution of higher learning. It's that simple–and that difficult. I don't envy the Regents' place in the "hot-seat". But they are put there, and it is up to them.
Last. Look at us now–assessing what we might and should do measured against the actions of Regents over a 120 years ago. I urge the Regents to think: 120 years from now, what will be thought of their statements on tenure in 2016?"
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At some risk of my own ignorance of the actions of peers–look, I'm not exactly part of the axis around which my profession rotates–I have to confess that I'm pretty confused and even angry by the lack of commentary of what is happening to tenure in Wisconsin. Oh, I understand the reluctance of my Madison colleagues given their own circumstances–firing tenured faculty due to potential modification and closure of programs from financial or educational concerns is not so much the wolf at the door for them given that they possess the vast majority of what the Republicans have trashed the entire UW System for–significant cash reserves. But, on the other hand, I had to have a very uncomfortably hard talk with a colleague yesterday as the chair of my local curriculum committee at my minor campus of the System facing a 5 million dollar shortfall thanks to the legislature. Hired just three years ago on the tenure-track, this faculty member was forced to teach classes that this faculty member was uncomfortable with and was not part of the original job-description–online classes. This faculty member petitioned and was supported by the department to refuse such on-line instruction. Administration simply said–no. So the academic freedom of my colleague to teach as seen fit for the position hired for was dismissed, and for purely economic reasons. And this is even before the UW Regents have finalized the new tenure policies, which portends worse for the future.
We in UW System will soon have what I called in the Tenure Task Force meetings "tenure-lite". Madison seems to be content with this only because they know that they will, for some future time-frame, be financially isolated from these attacks. So by withholding loud protest of the Regents' documents they thus throw the rest of the 25 campuses under the bus–but ultimately at their own peril.
Tenure ain't just about money for public institutions. It's about what society is willing to fund in terms of that classic 1894 WI Regents "fearless sifting and winnowing " to find the truth. Apparently some in UW–the silence of Madison colleagues is almost deafening here–are willing to tolerate a certain amount of "*fearful* sifting and winnowing " for others in UW–so long as it does not touch their own well-financed "sifting and winnowing" thus insulated for them.
Well, I have to say to Madison–as the last line of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers had it–"YOU"RE NEXT!"
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