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Tenure As a Perk
Jill Hanifan
To The Editor:
Leave it to an English professor to make tenure sound like incarceration. In a letter published in the March-April Academe, James McCormick reacts to the tenuring of "faculty specialists" at Western Michigan University by envisioning two scenarios that he describes as undesirable. Tenure, he warns, could mean that faculty specialists will "be forever doomed to teach (without health benefits) lower-level, work-intensive 'grunt' courses, to work in temporary and crowded offices, and to be denied funding for research and conferences." On the other hand, it could mean that faculty specialists (lecturers, clinical instructors, and academic professionals) might poach on some of his prerogatives, like teaching upper-level courses and participating in committee work. The latter scenario, he asserts, means "departmental need, committee input, and university interest will be subverted."
Apparently, academic freedom isn't worth mentioning. When armies of nontenured faculty publish books and articles and teach thousands of courses without tenure's protection, how important can arguments for "academic freedom" really be? For McCormick, tenure seems entirely a matter of job security and rank privilege, and he openly expresses what tenured faculty are usually too embarrassed to admit publicly: that tenure might be less about defending academic freedom than it is about defending status, power, and perks.
For decades, fiscally strapped administrations have made permanent a "temporary" faculty. Although universities claim they need the flexibility offered by nontenured faculty in order to respond to changing programs and enrollments, the demand for a "special" faculty to teach "grunt" courses is deeply entrenched. Far from subverting institutional interests, faculty specialists are meeting a demonstrated need. However, our pervasive exploitation is a consequence of shortsighted, long-term ethical and managerial failures by both faculty and administration.
Does McCormick actually believe job security will worsen the situation? Having worked as a per-course instructor for several public and private institutions, I found his bleak, Dickensian portrait of the working conditions for faculty specialists familiar. However, institutions vary widely in the support and professional respect they offer non-tenured teaching faculty. This year, the State University of New York at Albany established a special category in its President's Awards for Excellence in Teaching to recognize the contributions of part-time faculty and teaching assistants. Last year, a joint committee of union representatives and university administrators created guidelines outlining policies for hiring, evaluating, and reappointing part- and full-time lecturers (who, incidentally, have excellent health benefits). At the very least, these guidelines represent a more broadly collegial and professional attitude toward faculty specialists than McCormick musters.
Jil Hanifan
English and Writing
SUNY at Albany
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