State of the Profession: A Hard Choice About Tenure

By Martin D. Snyder

Trusty-Murphy, a member of the Nevada Faculty Alliance, is a tenured professor of English at a small public community college in the middle of rural Nevada. She is a religious Jew who finds it difficult to live where she does. More than anything in the world she has wanted to move, to get her children into an environment where they could get a Jewish education, and where her family would not have constantly to fight anti-Semitism. When she was scheduled for an interview as a finalist for a position at Dean College in Massachusetts, it seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime.

There was one snag, however. Dean College has been on the list of censured administrations since 1992, and since 1973, the college has not offered tenure to its faculty. Trusty-Murphy was concerned. She contacted a faculty member at Dean who told her that the college "didn't need tenure" and that private liberal arts colleges and two-year colleges were doing away with tenure all across the Northeast. Shocked by the willingness of a potential colleague to dismiss tenure as a thing of the past, Trusty-Murphy made a painful decision. She withdrew her name from candidacy.

In her letter to the Association, Trusty-Murphy wrote: "Dean College, I am told, is stable, a beautiful campus, and they have wonderful faculty. But without tenure, it is all an illusion. I know their faculty has no security."

"I know," she went on to say, "that there have always been those who point to tenure and say that it promotes cronyism, that it allows 'dead wood' to exist in the education system-but I have never seen this . . . . I know that tenure protects and fosters academic freedom and high ethical values. I know that those of us who are tenured can worry about what our students need to know, and not what the administration wants our students to know. We can be more concerned about the legitimate and ethical pursuit of knowledge and inquiry. We can hold on to our morals and our ethics and our academic freedom."

Not everyone has the courage to make the decision that Trusty-Murphy made. Not everyone has the choice. For many, taking a position at an institution without tenure is a matter of survival. Trusty-Murphy was well aware of the dilemma. "I know," she wrote, "there are those of you who are out of work, who are struggling to support yourselves and/or your families. I know there are many who are working out of the trunk of your car trying to construct a living as an adjunct. You are not able to make the statement that I can make. You are not able to stand up for values and ethics right now because you are struggling to survive . . . . But please, when you get to a position where you can speak out; when you get to a place where you are protected by tenure and by reputation-speak out! Let everyone know the importance of tenure . . . . And if you can, don't take a position with a college that is censured. You are not only destroying your own future, but you are destroying the future of all academics who come after you . . . ."

Michelle Trusty-Murphy made a painful choice, painful for both herself and her family. It was a choice, however, she believed she had to make. She gave up the opportunity for a position that would have made her life easier and would have brought a greater measure of peace and happiness to her family. Because of its tenure policy, Dean College also suffered its own loss. It lost the chance to recruit a committed faculty member who could have strengthened its academic offerings and added passion and dedication to its campus community. The profession, however, has gained a small but significant victory.

Until the administrations of colleges and universities restore the full-time faculty lines that have been so severely eroded in recent years, and until all full-time positions are protected by tenure and adequately rewarded, individual, hard choices like the one made by Trusty-Murphy will still have to be made. Until then, we can all join Trusty-Murphy in her wish: "May there come a day when a faculty member at a small private two-year college says to me, 'Of course we have tenure! I wouldn't dream of teaching at a school that didn't, and neither would anyone else.'"

Martin Snyder is AAUP director of planning and development.

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