Standing on the island of tenure: a response to Stephen Balch

It's taken me a long time to get around to it, but I do want to respond to this Stephen Balch piece that appeared at the National Review more than three weeks ago:

The otherwise poignant Inside Higher Education story about Professor Yves Magloe, dismissed from Pasadena City College as a result of misunderstandings arising from his bipolar condition, contains a tangential but revealing comment. Another Pasadena faculty member, Hugo Schwyzer, reflecting on his role as one of Magloe's defenders, notes apropos tenure, that it allowed him "to be an advocate without risk."

Most academics and observers of academe view tenure in its putative role of allowing professors to speak freely about issues of general controversy. Tenure does, of course, sometimes facilitate such freedom. But as a device promoting wide-ranging intellectual discourse it has clearly been a failure. Debate in almost every other intellectual marketplace—including the mass media for all its tilt and spin—is far more open and diverse despite tenure's absence. Either the protections of tenure are overwhelmed by other stultifying factors, or it actually promotes stasis, conformity, and group-think.

Well, I suppose I'm pleased that Balch can find poignancy in the Magloe case (which, by the way, has gone to litigation.  The original story is here).

I'm mystified, but not surprised, by Balch's assertion that as a device promoting wide-ranging intellectual discourse it (tenure) has clearly been a failure.   In the case at hand, I talked about the protections of tenure that allowed me to reveal my own struggles with mental illness in my early years as a professor, and to make the point -- loudly -- that organic mental illness and excellent, responsible teaching were not mutually exclusive.   Balch seems to think this is somehow evidence of tenure's failure rather than its success.

In my professional life, I see the tremendous value of tenure.  Were it not for the protections of tenure, would I have dared develop and offer a highly successful course on Lesbian and Gay American History?   I'm sure it does me no credit to say that I wouldn't, and my readers can feel free to call me a coward (y'all have called me worse).  But with a spouse and a mortgage and all of the other middle-class encumbrances, I'm keenly aware of my responsibilities to provide for my family. I also remember that my initial decision to teach the course (back in 2001) was unpopular with a number of my colleagues and at least two of the trustees who oversee the college; if I hadn't had the protection of tenure but instead had been working on some sort of rolling contract, it's not a stretch to suggest that in the aftermath of offering the course, that contract might not have been renewed.

The best image I have for tenure is that of an island on which to stand.  Tenure gives me the firm ground beneath my feet that enables me to take genuine scholarly and pedagogical risks. I can innovate in the classroom, offer new courses in gender studies -- and, obviously, I can blog under my own name.  The academic blogosphere is filled with grad students and the untenured who, wisely, choose to blog using clever pseudonyms.  This blog is called "Hugo Schwyzer" both because I'm not smart enough to come up with a better title, and because I can be public about my identity without risk of repercussion within the academic community in which I work.

In the case of Yves Magloe, a colleague who was unjustly fired for his struggles with bipolar disorder, tenure did indeed allow me to be, as I said in the article Balch quotes, "an advocate without risk."  If I hadn't had tenure, I might have quietly seethed at the injustice of terminating a man in the midst of a serious manic episode.  I might even have signed a petition protesting the college's action.  But I would I have come forward, as others have now done, and "outed" myself as a professor who also has struggled with mental illness?  No, I wouldn't have.  If I were a better and braver person with fewer obligations and responsibilities, perhaps I might have done so.  But in an uncertain academic job market, in a world where prejudice against folks with backgrounds of mental illness is still pervasive, to let my colleagues, the administration, the trustees, my students, and the blogosphere all know that I have been hospitalized half a dozen times following breakdowns would be a genuinely self-destructive and foolish act.  To share the same information -- and the same promise of the possibility of full recovery and symptom management -- with tenure was infinitely easier.  It was less brave, of course.  I plead guilty to a distinct lack of heroism!

Does tenure protect some "dead wood" here at Pasadena City College?   Sure.  I can think of a few, a very few, of my colleagues who are clearly passing the time until they are eligible for a nice pension.  Their efforts are, to put it mildly, disappointing.  But for every professor who sees tenure as some sort of comfortable hammock in which to relax and avoid serious research or impassioned teaching, I can think of three who stand on tenure as on an island, using its firm support as a platform to teach prophetically.  Tenure affords us the chance to be even more zealous in our commitment to our students and their learning.  In my case, I'm a far better professor since I got tenured compared to the young, green, and decidedly irresponsible fellow I was a decade or so ago.

I don't mean to imply that there aren't adjuncts and tenure-track profs across this country who are doing great things.  It's clear that for a few, the absence of professional security does not hamper either their research or their teaching.  Tenure is not the sine qua non of academic excellence.  But tenure is not without merit, either.  The firm island it provides enables those of us who are perhaps not naturally bold to create, innovate, push to the margins.  It enables us to speak truth to power, and to intervene in gross injustices (like the Yves Magloe firing) without fear that we may be next. 

In the final analysis, my faith in God and His love for me is my surest protection.  But in my day-to-day life as a teacher and a colleague, the safety of tenure is a key component in helping me become the best faculty member and mentor I can possibly be.

Comments

[The Happy Feminist]

I agree 100%. It is for similar reasons that I support the lifetime appointment of judges (or appointment until suitable retirement age) rather than elected judgeships.

[Liesl]

Now you're up to second hottest in the North America on RMP! Are'nt you excited??

But Hugo in all seriousness I disagree with you about tenure. You don't slack off at all, that much is evident to your students. But so many of your fellow colleagues are not competent, boring, unfair, and they are compleetely protected. Tenure hurts students more than it helps.

[Hugo]

Liesl, you are loyal about keeping track of these ratings. On the tenure issue, when you and I have spoken in my office I recall that two of the faculty members about whom you complained were adjuncts, meaning without tenure...

Happy, indeed. We need more tenure, not less. Then again, I'm a fan of statist, job-for-life economies like those of continental Western Europe. Of course, people with protected jobs end up turning out shoddy products like Mercedes and Porsches.... another topic.

[elizabeth]

Personally, I find tenure to be the hurdle of conformity. Essentially, if you can learn how to confirm, blend in and somehow appear safe enough or some part of the majority long enough, then you will get security to finally be you? The road to tenure is the closet, and I have a hard time finding advocacy that being closeted as an individual is a GOOD thing. Because like gay and lesbains who simply CAN'T fit into the closet, many original and creative teachers will be unable to mainstream themselves enough to fit the unspoken prejudices to pass tenure.

I think the security that tenure provides is great, but why can we not fight to ensure that discrimination within academia doesn't come in two flavours?

As for mental illness and academia, a read of the book Fire in the Mind or even An Unquiet Mind will show that without the societal jumping insights of people with mental illnesses there would be little to study in many departments. It seems absurd that while President Lincoln, with all of his mental troubles, is worthy of hundreds of academics life work, having someone with the same troubles instruct is assumed to be without value?

[Mr. Bad]

Hugo said: "Were it not for the protections of tenure, would I have dared develop and offer a highly successful course on Lesbian and Gay American History?"

Well sheesh, is this a trick question? Of course you would have 'dared,' and likely would have recieved the Dean's support - financial and otherwise - on most U.S. college campuses. I daresay that GLBTQ, feminist, etc., groupthink is the norm on most campuses in the U.S. Are you seriously trying to make the case that being pro-GLBTQ is somehow risky and not the mainstream? If so, you're not fooling those of us who have worked in academia for decades. IMO a much more risky venture would have been to, e.g., develop a course on conservative perspectives vis-a-vis gender, race, religion, affirmative action, etc. The fastest way to be denied tenure and shown the door is to go against PC-ness and leftism in general. In general, the folks who are compelled to remain 'in the closet' on U.S. campuses are the conservatives - faculty, staff and students alike.

To me, the Balch article is more a commentary on the ideological homogeneity on the typical U.S. college campus than it is one re. Magloe and you. After all, he made it clear that your support of Magloe was a "tangential" issue relative to his commentary.

[Hugo]

Mr. Bad, at some progressive institutions, it might be less risky. But PCC is still led by a conservative majority on the board of trustees, and Pasadena as a whole is culturally well to the right of other parts of Los Angeles. Not all academic environments are equally inviting of courageous scholarship that challenges traditional ideas about sexuality.

[Stentor]

I think you and Balch are talking about different risks. You make an excellent case that tenure gives you shelter when you take risks in institutional politics -- things like criticizing the university for its treatment of Magloe, or creating courses that the board of trustees wouldn't be so keen on. But what Balch is talking about are intellectual risks -- creating and advocating ideas that go against the academic conventional wisdom. Tenure doesn't give much protection with respect to those risks, because the fear of getting fired (or other institutional retalliation) isn't the major mechanism for enforcing ideological conformity, even among untenured professors. Much more important in that regard is rejection by the community of scholars -- nobody will publish you, cite you, or fund you. (I do, however, think Balch greatly overestimates the degree to which such conformity is produced.)

[Hugo]

Perhaps, Stentor. On the other hand, there's no evidence that not having tenure would increase intellectual risks. British universities don't have tenure any more (not since the Iron Lady); there's no clear evidence that scholarship has improved enormously since its eradication.

[Paul]

There’s much to unpack here!

[Oriscus]

I think Elizabeth is on the right track, here. Tenure does give one a place to stand, and security which might allow one to take risks. The process of *gaining tenure, on the other hand, is one of excessive conformity to the expectations of one's immediate colleagues, be they conservative, liberal, or what-have-you. One must not, in order to have a chance, arouse either jealousy or opposition of one's colleagues in a department. The comparison of tenure-protected Academia with fields where tenure does not exist is simply disengenuous. Frequently, the very ends of the enterprise are different. Academic tenure provides the security to focus on obscure, personally interesting aspects of a subject, and not only to "rock the boat." It serves to sever the academic enterprise from the short-term focus of everyday life. Hell, it even allows people who really have no vocation for scholarship to get on with *teaching after they've squeezed out their requisite number of referreed papers...

The only other alternative for the committed scholar is to work a day job and be the creepy old guy at the library at night...

[Mr. Bad]

Hugo wrote: "Mr. Bad, at some progressive institutions, it might be less risky. But PCC is still led by a conservative majority on the board of trustees, and Pasadena as a whole is culturally well to the right of other parts of Los Angeles. Not all academic environments are equally inviting of courageous scholarship that challenges traditional ideas about sexuality."

Sure Hugo, I gladly acknowledge that at some conservative institutions there might be some resistance to LGBT issues, advocacy, etc., - especially at private conservative Christian schools. But I think that you pay a disservice to conservatives - from my experience they're mostly decent, open-minded people who are not the stereotypical Bible-thumping rednecks many on the left think they are, and they most definitely are every bit as tolerant and decent as leftists and other "progressives" (there are intolerant extremists on both sides of the ideological spectrum). Indeed, in my experience in many ways conservatives are more tolerant of divergent viewpoints than leftists. Also, I think that if you consider academia in the U.S. and other western nations as a whole, you'll find that conservative institutions of the type you allude to are a very small minority, thus, the general rule is that most of academia in the U.S. is left-leaning, not right-leaning. There are surveys and studies to back this. Therefore, I believe that making the argument that addressing GLBTQ issues is a "courageous" venture is based on the exception, not the rule, and thus is a tenuous one.

Are you saying that you encountered hostility, or at least significant resistance to developing your courses on sexuality, etc.? I find that hard to believe. Pasadena may be to the right of "other parts"of Los Angeles, but it's nowhere near Hicksville, USA, not by any stretch. And if so, was the resistance based on hostility to GLBTQ issues or on more pragmatic concerns, e.g., demand for such courses, etc. I notice that PCC is typical of community colleges elsewhere, i.e., it provides Associate Degree (60 units - ~2 years - and a minimum GPA of 2.0) and is also a feeder school for 4-year colleges. Therefore, I would think that women's/gender studies would not be an especially high priority vis-a-vis its primary academic mission, as such topics would apply to only a very small subset of student's degree tracks.

Perhaps if there was restistance to you developing your GLBTQ courses it was because there likely isn't much demand for them from the majority of the student body. All schools are faced with budgetary challenges and must prioritize their faculty's time so as to optimize resource utulization by the students.

[Liesl]

No one has rated you for a while on Ratemyprofessors. Watch out or you might lose your hotness ranking. R U worried hot prof Hugo??

[Professor Zero]

There are indeed problems with the degree of conformity and politicking which can be required to *make* tenure. But the real political minefields in higher ed are about office politics and institutional policy, not state, national, or international politics.

One of the important, but often overlooked reasons we hire tenure track faculty, and tenure them, is that we want their expertise--not just in their fields, but on what we should do as an institution. And we want them to have the freedom to actually contribute this expertise.