I am reading some sources that go along with a manuscript I am writing about Hallway Conversations. Some of the work in the field spills over in various ways into other areas of interest to academics. One of them is tenure, and the role that personal networks in the tenure process.

Mine own experience with tenure and promotion has been fraught, so please accept this as a (potentially cynical) counter-point to what has been said elsewhere.

  • If the tenure decision is made based on merit, the contents of the CV shall suffice.
  • If the tenure decision is made based on published criteria, there should be no misunderstanding related to too much here, or not enough there.

Yet, the pre-tenure period in academia is almost as much gaslighting as it is meritocracy. It shouldn’t be the case that a person feels less than confident about their portfolio of accomplishments, or feels like “Maybe I don’t have enough scholarship or high-enough teacher ratings?” or “will my devotion to the department, as seen by my willingness to design courses for the new specialization, count toward anything?”

I understand from a intellectual-thought-experiment point of view why the University would not publish its criteria for tenure, something akin to a checklist. I’m told its so people don’t feel constrained to do things “one specific way”, yet I don’t know how successful a person has been in the past when treading the “road less traveled by.” I’m also told that it prevents folks from doing just the minimum and expecting to get tenured.

Well, dear friends… If the guidelines are written as acceptable minimums, the word “acceptable” is right there. So, yeah, you are obligated to accept them, because they are ahem acceptable.

If there is a published set of guidelines, but everyone knows that another set of advice is better advice to follow, that is gaslighting. Look it up, kids. It’s a mind game.

And the one that makes me the sickest to my stomach is “Yeah, the document says that scholarship is important, and getting published in top-tier journals is the aim, but what they mean is that publishing in lower-tier journals is a strike, and your name needs to befirst or solo on that work. Everyone knows that. Even though scholarship is 20% of your documented workload, it counts for substantially more than that for the tenure decision. The absence of this high-quality level of solo or first-author scholarship actually counts more against you than anything.”

I know folks that have it worse. Folks who did all the proper things like getting published in good journals, and doing service, and being a great teacher. But, putting too much attention on the (“wrong”, yet still “official” sub-discipline) in the field… c’mon, don’t you know better?

Yes, it’s frustrating. Yes, it seems unfair. “You just haven’t earned (tenure promotion) yet, baby.”

Comments?