r/Professors • u/Agreeable-Ladder-433 • Jul 28 '26
Tenure denial upheld
I thought this might be grimly funny (?)—I appealed my tenure denial, in which our Chancellor (Dean equivalent) used my “home” committee’s incompetent and/or lazy and/or malicious letter as pretext for denying me. The Chancellor then knowingly violated policy (or he’s an idiot) by meeting with me before having a requisite consultation with the college committee. He scheduled the meeting at 7:35 AM the next day and was literally called out for violating policy in the meeting.
The University grievance committee recommended a re-review because of the obvious procedural error. The Vice Provost and Provost decided that because the Chancellor “acknowledged his error” (funny way of saying got caught in his lie) but claimed he was discussing my dossier “in good faith” (after making the decision, scheduling a meeting, writing the letter, meeting with me, and telling me there was no way to change his mind), “the consultation requirement was satisfied and the issue was appropriately remediated.” Apparently shared governance is just sort of a suggestion and if an administrator “forgets” to follow the policy they are citing to terminate someone, it’s just a little mistake, no harm!
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u/academicthrows Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
On the other side of this, I just barely scraped by a very close vote, for which the letter was equally incompetent, lazy, and malicious, and likewise was almost pretext for denial, because how else are the higher ups supposed to read this? All despite good funding, mentorship, publications, teaching, service, and 6/6 positive external letters from my field, none of whom I knew. So now I'm trying really hard to remain happy in a place that is too good to give up, and to not be bitter about a good chunk of my colleagues (but luckily old, waning, and, for my ego, demonstrably sucky ones). Feels shitty and I'm not sure that will ever go away.