I mostly read science-oriented blogs these days, where I get to hear again and again about how awful the treatment of academic scientists is, and how physics departments are horrible Kafkaesque operations dedicated to crushing the souls of postdocs and junior faculty. Which makes the train wreck that is the Philosophy department at William and Mary particularly interesting to see:
The norm in academe is for junior faculty members to sit out departmental votes on tenure decisions. Such matters should be handled only by those who have already earned tenure, the theory goes.
When it comes to another key personnel decision — whom to hire for new positions — tenure-track professors who haven’t yet earned tenure are generally included, not just in discussions, but in actual votes. At the College of William & Mary, this bothered two senior professors of philosophy. They argued that including junior faculty members in actual votes on new hires was bad for the department (on the theory that they would hurt the department’s quality by voting for candidates to whom they would compare favorably when coming up for tenure) and for the junior faculty members (who might feel pressure to vote in certain ways to please powerful senior professors who would soon be voting on their tenure bids).
The two professors feel so strongly about the issue that they have pulled out of participating in departmental votes on new hires. And their actions were among those cited by an outside review team in blasting the department’s treatment of junior faculty members. That team’s report, in turn, prompted college administrators to take the rare step of removing the department chair, bringing in an English professor to lead the department.
I have to admit, my initial reaction contains an element of schadenfreude. It’s nice to see that smarmy humanities types can be just as unpleasant to their younger colleagues as us nasty science types…
Beyond that, the story is a hugely tangled mess of he said, she said, this other guy said, somebody sent me an email that said, etc. that I don’t really feel like I can say anything sensible about the specifics of the case. I’m just glad I don’t work there, because damn…
Regarding the actual policy under consideration, I think it was covered pretty well by Robert Kreiser of the American Association of University Professors:
Kreiser scoffed at the conflict of interest issue raised at William & Mary and said that senior faculty members could have their own sets of conflicts. “You could argue that senior faculty like things the way they are, so they might not want to bring in people who would challenge them,” Kreiser said. “Why not exclude entrenched senior faculty members from votes on new hires?”
I think it’s entirely appropriate for junior faculty to have a say in hiring decisions. Not only are they the people who are in the best position to know what’s “hot” in a given field, they’re the ones who are potentially going to have to work with the new hires for the next forty years. I agree that it’s not appropriate for junior faculty to vote on tenure cases (to avoid any “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” wheeling and dealing), but they absolutely need to be involved in hiring new colleagues.
The larger lesson here is pretty much the same as it’s always been: Some people are assholes. They show up all over the place, in academia and out, and when they end up in positions of responsibility, they create horrible messes for the rest of us.