On the Front Lines in the War on Tenure: Wayne State and the Changing Dynamics of Tenure in Knowledge Factories

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2017)

When universities loudly proclaim a desire to revoke tenure en masse, both the cat and the proclamation (as theatre covering motives and agendas) ought to be the subject of some consideration.  That was what came to mind as I read the recent quite public efforts of Wayne State University to shed a large number of its medical school faculty. "In a move rarely seen in academia, Wayne State University is trying to fire multiple faculty members depicted as abusing their tenure by doing as little work as possible" (here). Of course the rationale is absurd but in a way that reflects the disconnect between reality and administrators: had these faculty really done as little work as possible then it would not have been an abuse of tenure--the abuse comes when they work less than the minimum expected.  Of course the true of phrase might merely be bad writing. I suspect the writing is true, but the motives it exposes are not--that what it reveals is the effort to invert the standards of tenure to capture greater productivity to the university without any corresponding payment. 

This post considers the recent move by Wayne State to remove a large number of its tenured medical school faculty for non or under productivity in light of the two motives that may underlie both the move and the consequential weakening of tenure: (1) money and (2) labor flexibility.

Presentation: "Diversity in Legal Education: Considering the Hollow Spaces Between Speech and Action"

It was my great pleasure to participate on a great panel at Penn State Law recently. The panel, All in at Penn State Law: Addressing Diversity & Implicit Bias considered issues of diversity from a variety of distinct perspectives. It was organized by the Penn State Law Diversity Committee on March 16, 2017. The program was covered by Penn State's student newspaper, Daily Collegian (Katie Johnston, "Penn State Law hosts panel on diversity in legal education," The Daily Collegian March 16, 2017).

I spoke to issues of institutional implementation and accountability of diversity projects for law schools specifically and large research universities more generally. I started with a consideration of the 2010 ABA Report “Diversity in the Legal Profession: The Next Steps” especially as they relate to “Recommendations to Law Schools and the Academy (pp.17-25). This was used as a baseline for analysis. I then reflected on their consequences for Law Schools in light of the work of Penn State's Joint Diversity Awareness Task Force and their Reports of 2016 adopted by the Penn State University Faculty Senate in 2016.

The presentation PowerPoints may be accessed HERE.

The video of the presentation may be accessed HERE.

A summary of the presentation follows and may be downloaded HERE.

How Not to be a Dean--A Set of Perverse Lessons

Academic middle managers increasingly find themselves in a bind.  On the one hand they, unlike more senior administrators, tend to be drawn from the ranks of faculty (though nor necessarily of the faculty over which they have been given dominion) and have been socialized  deeply in academic faculty centered cultures.  On the other hand, the emerging cultures of administration--autonomous of and quite distinct from that of faculty centered cultures--require the cultivation of sensibilities that draw middle managers into an increasingly adversarial relationship with the factors in the production of unit wealth that faculty represent.  

Most successful middle managers navigate this contradiction in time honored fashion.  They develop a rhetorics of solidarity with their staff while at the same time embrace the cultures of administration and its quite distinct approach to the management of the production of students through a transnational  web of knowledge dissemination and production.  However, as the cultures of administration and those of faculty increasingly diverge, and as faculty itself begins to fracture along worker class lines (tenured and nontenured full time staff, fixed term faculty, research or teaching faculty, adjuncts and graduate assistants) the natural solidarity of middle managers toward their colleagues will dissipate as well. 

In that context, it may be necessary to begin to think about the ways that this fissure between deans and faculties now shows up in managerial techniques.  This post considers some of the most interesting and telling examples of the perhaps inevitable break between faculty and those charged with their oversight.It is put together as  a set of lessons for the young manager on the emerging rules of managing faculty , the effects of which are likely to be the opposite of what is intended. 

Let folly reign!