Discontent Stirs at Harvard Over Difficulty of Winning Tenure for Junior Professors

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The academic year has hardly begun at Harvard University and already passions are stirring over the failure of three highly regarded junior professors to get permanent appointments.

The rejections, despite a new policy aimed at raising the school’s low percentage of internal promotions, have hurt morale among some instructors in the arts and sciences faculty and led one full professor to complain before 500 undergraduates that Harvard President Derek Bok had “effectively repudiated” the promise of tenure reform.

“I must frankly say that I think that any junior faculty member would be foolish not to look immediately for employment elsewhere,” the professor, Walter Kaiser, later told the campus newspaper, the Harvard Crimson.

No Preference Given

Unlike most American universities, which guarantee junior faculty members a review for tenure after seven years, Harvard conducts a “global search” when openings occur and no preference is given to home-grown scholars.

At Harvard, “lifetime professorial appointments are reserved for scholars of the first order of eminence” regardless of where they work, according to a 1983 university policy statement.

Candidates are judged by their department for teaching ability, research and scope of publications, and by specialists at other U.S. and foreign institutions. Then, the university’s president convenes a committee of outside experts for final judgment. The process can take a year.

Less than 15% of junior faculty get tenure, or lifetime jobs, said Assistant Dean Marlyn McGrath Lewis. But even that figure is misleading because the few in-house promotions granted were predominantly in science and math, said an assistant professor, who spoke on condition that he not be identified.

38% Succeed at Stanford

By comparison, a recent study showed that 38% of assistant professors at Stanford’s school of humanities and sciences get tenure. Twenty-four percent drop out of consideration before review, said Noel Kolak, the university’s assistant provost, and the remainder were rejected.

A. Michael Spence, dean of Harvard’s faculty of arts and sciences, last spring announced a new policy aimed at improving instructors’ chances of winning lifetime posts.

But the traditional selection process was not streamlined or otherwise changed, Lewis said.

Spence’s action came after concern was voiced when sociologist Paul Starr, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning study, was turned down for a permanent appointment.

Recently, Associate English Professor Robert N. Watson was rejected despite unanimous support by his department.

Historians Denied Tenure

And two well-regarded historians, Alan Brinkley and Bradford A. Lee, both associate professors consistently judged among the best instructors by undergraduate surveys, also were denied tenure in recent weeks.

Brinkley, son of TV news commentator David Brinkley, won the American Book Award for his 1983 work on Huey Long and the Depression.

“I don’t know of any other university with a system as rigid as this one,” Brinkley said recently. “I don’t know of any other university with so few senior faculty members who have received their promotions from within.”

The last internal tenure appointment in his Harvard department was a decade ago, and the last for an American history specialist a decade before, said Brinkley, 37, whose 20th-Century U.S. course is regularly standing room only. Last spring, a lottery was held for students vying for seats.