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Disciplinary Group Says Junior Scholars Face Crisis
The president of the Modern Language Association (MLA), Stephen Greenblatt, sent a mass mailing to members in May urging them to be aware of what he calls a serious problem in the relationship of scholarly book publishing to academic tenure and promotions.
"Most departments of language and literature have come to demand that junior faculty members produce, as a condition for being seriously considered for promotion to tenure, a full-length scholarly book published by a reputable press," Greenblatt wrote. He noted that at the same time declining university support for scholarly presses and for library budgets has led presses to cut back on the number of books they publish. Junior faculty members are caught in a "maddening double bind," according to Greenblatt, between inflexible tenure timetables and standards on one side and slow-moving academic presses which often cannot afford to publish their books on the other side. Greenblatt offered some proposals for easing the situation, including changing the expectation that a book is necessary for tenure, developing other ways to evaluate scholarly achievement, and subsidizing junior scholars' book publications. He urged members of the MLA to write him with their suggestions.
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