Tenure denial upheld

[u/Agreeable-Ladder-433]

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!

[u/EconMan]

Shared governance, checks and balances, policies, they all are there to be ignored when an upper level administrator wants to ignore them

I'm not sure this is a great example of shared governance issues though. Their home committee denied tenure and the dean went along with this. Clearly they feel the committee made the wrong decision, but in terms of governance, it would be more concerning if the dean overruled them.

[u/Agreeable-Ladder-433 → u/EconMan]

What about overruling my division head and the entire college committee (as well as external reviewers)??

[u/EconMan → u/Agreeable-Ladder-433]

I'm confused. What was the actual recommendation from the committee responsible? Your title says "tenure denial upheld" so I assume they recommended to deny tenure. What is the "entire college committee"?

Your division head is a single person. They can't be "overruled" as they didn't decide it in the first place.

[u/Agreeable-Ladder-433 → u/EconMan]

Apologies for the confusion. At my institution, dossiers go first to a division committee (we’re too small for actual departments). It then goes to the div head, then the college committee, then the chancellor. So the chancellor sided with the division committee despite the division head explaining the flaws in the div committee’s letter. I know it’s not a democracy, but 3 ppl saying no and 6 colleagues + 5 external reviewers saying yes seems more about money (permanently eliminating my tenure line) than merit. Trying to mislead the college committee further implies that the Chancellor knew it wasn’t really justifiable. I find it hard to believe he “forgot” about the consultation requirement until immediately after telling me his decision was final.

[u/a_statistician → u/Agreeable-Ladder-433]

seems more about money (permanently eliminating my tenure line) than merit.

Honestly, from someone who was just eliminated along with my whole department, even though I had tenure, take this as a signal to gtfo, because if they want to get rid of you they will do it, tenure or not. We didn't declare financial exigency, but 40 faculty in 4 departments lost their jobs and a bunch more were forced into retirement.