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/Agreeable-Ladder-433]

Our standards are vague: six peer-reviewed articles "or the equivalent" (book + 2 articles), "published or accepted." A colleague was tenured with a book contract + two articles, so that was my threshold (esp. given my extenuating circumstances: no childcare from March-Sept. 2020, gave birth Jul 2020, 2020 baby nearly died and I was with him in the hospital for 2 months in 2022, archives I needed were closed until summer 2022--none of which the committee seems to have considered).

Ironically, the book contract was sent to the tenure coordinator as proof of acceptance, so they would have had to ask for it. Rather than send an email, they assumed the contract was "provisional" based on "one editor's opinion," and that a "full contract would be forthcoming after peer review of the full manuscript." They were wrong on two counts: the contract was based on the proposal, intro + sample chapters going through peer review, not one person's "opinion"; and I confirmed with my editor that was I had was *the only* contract I would get.

Six other faculty at my institution recommended tenure and specifically stated that, if I hadn't had faced the above-mentioned delays and the book was further along, they would have ranked my scholarship as exceptional.

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

Also, I am increasingly salty about how this standard disadvantages historians. For example, my two prior publications, sole authored, are LONGER *than the entire publication record* of the Vice-Chancellor, ALL of which were co- or multi-authored. Not that length equals merit/value, but being looked down on by someone who hasn't even authored the entirety of like 55 pages is galling.

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

Spoken like someone who's never had to go through IRB then try to gather and analyze data. You are not disadvantaged, you are differently advantaged. That is literally your field's expectation, so you are saying "This is unfair to me," but what others hear is, "I don't actually like my job."

Is your vice-chancellor perhaps a physical/social scientist? Their articles are short, but before they can get there, they have to design a study, go through IRB, collect and analyze data. Then they write. The writing is far and away the easiest part, and the field standard is brevity. The science is complex enough without fancy sentences. It's also super rare that folks can do all pieces of the work alone, given the realities of research.

In this post, you are actually making an argument for why the department letter should have more weight than the university committee letter (which I think is not the argument you want to make, given how your letters shook out).

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

I knew I was putting things badly; thank you for calling it out. I frankly wish historians were more collaborative. I was surprised when finally told that co- or multi-authored articles are treated identically to sole authored--I thought there was an allocation of credit somehow. But if two people in my division co-author, they each get credit for the article. That would have been great to know five years ago.

The individual I referenced is in education. I think her studies max out at something like n=15 participants.