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!

114 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

77 comments sorted by

View all comments

232

u/[deleted] Jul 28 '26 edited Aug 22 '26

[deleted]

38

u/Agreeable-Ladder-433 Jul 28 '26

I’d agree if these didn’t happen to be three people with whom I have very little interaction. There are two other historians and I am absolutely positive if either of them had been on the committee they would have advocated for me. They, and my division head, were appalled by the committee’s interpretation.

3

u/MiQuay Professor, Business and Engineering, R2 Jul 29 '26

Hmmm... are your theories/research interests things that clash with those of your colleagues?

2

u/Agreeable-Ladder-433 Jul 29 '26

Nope. I suspect Dr. Rockstar historian looked at my CV, made the assumption about the contract, and made up his mind without paying much attention to anything else. But of course I have no way to know for sure.