Joining the Ranks: Demystifying Harvard's Tenure System

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Nicholas Pandos & Noah Pisner:Ten people carry 10 identical dossiers into Massachusetts Hall at 10 a.m. on select mornings throughout the academic year. The dossiers vary in size depending on the person under consideration for tenure--some are thick like a phone book, others are thinner. Each of the 10 dossiers opens to a special letter from the chair of the candidate's department outlining the tenure recommendation. Each contains a full-scale report on the candidate's academic history: published works, research summaries, peer reviews, course evaluations, a résumé. Each has been read in its entirety before the committee meeting begins.

After a seven- to eight-year track, every tenure case at Harvard ends at an ad hoc committee meeting chaired by the President and Provost of the University. The meeting lasts around three hours. No notes are taken. No votes are taken. In addition to the President and Provost, the dean of the school, the divisional dean, and the Senior Vice Provost on Faculty Diversity and Development sit in ex officio. Five others join them: three area experts from co-divisional departments within the University and two from outside Harvard. Depending on the needs of the committee, Harvard will pay for experts from around the world to fly to Cambridge to participate in person.

"The ad hoc process is greatly shrouded in mystery; remarkably little is written about it," says current Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Diversity and Development Judith D. Singer. She smirks wryly as she swigs coffee from her mug, as if this is something she's explained a hundred times before.

"What the ad hoc process does is it takes a recommendation that has come up out of a department, been through a dean, and says, 'Let's look at this with a fresh set of eyes. Let's look at the totality of the evidence and make a dispassionate decision about whether the recommendations that have come up are really in the best interest of the University,'" says Singer.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 16, 2013 2:27 AM
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