Finkin, Matthew W. (1996). The Case For Tenure.
Ithaca, NY: ILR Cornell Press.
211 pp.
$29.95(Cloth) ISBN 0-8014-3316-9
Reviewed by Peggy Brandt Brown
University of North Texas
July 13, 2001
In December 2000, Bennington College settled a five-year-old
legal battle over academic freedom and self-governance. The
battle began in June of 1994 with the firing of 26 faculty
members. The college agreed to pay $1.89 million to 17 of
the professors who were fired and to apologize to them.
Bennington had justified the dismissals as part of a
reorganization plan needed to deal with severe financial
problems and to attract more students. The actions of the
college president and governing board lead to the college
being place on the American Association of University
Professors (AAUP) list of censured administrations in June
of 1995. Mary A. Burgan, the general secretary of the AAUP,
said in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education,
"[the Bennington College statement] validates our
opinion that faculty were mistreated and abused in
1994" and the statement would not get the college off
the censured administrations list (January 12, 2001, p.
A12).
In The Case for Tenure, Matthew W. Finkin uses the
Bennington College case to illustrate the continuing need
for academic tenure in the United States. Direct quotes
from the report of AAUP's ad hoc investigating committee
occupy more than 23 pages of the book's first chapter
entitled "The Meaning of Tenure." The use of
direct source materials from investigative reports, court
cases, judicial opinions, institutional studies, economic
analyses, speeches, and personal essays is one of the
strengths of this book. Finkin ties it all together with
personal commentary to support his belief that "the
case for tenure rests on a firm understanding of what it
[tenure] is and what it is not" (p.2).
Matthew W. Finkin is both a professor of law and a professor
in the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at the
University of Illinois. He served on the AAUP's Committee A
on Academic Freedom and Tenure. He believes "that
academic tenure is good for America: that it is essential
for the protection of academic freedom, that it is necessary
to attract the intellectually gifted to the academic life
and to create conditions that allow first-rate scholarship
to flourish" (p.1). He wants to persuade the reader to
his point of view and uses the chapters in The Case for
Tenure to deal with the different aspects of the system.
However, the quality of the book is uneven from chapter to
chapter.
Chapter One, "The Meaning of Tenure," is arguably
the strongest. In it Finkin quotes the work of William Van
Alstyne and Fritz Machlup to discuss what tenure is. He
illustrates his points with AAUP investigative reports from
the Bennington College case and from Rollins College, which
was completed in 1933 and is the only material in the book
not from the 1980s or 90s.
In Chapter 2 he examines the long probation that is required
of faculty before they can be granted tenure.
One of the shortest chapters in the book is Chapter 3,
"Dismissal and Due Process," with six pages. For
someone who has spent years dealing with court or labor
cases that involve due process, this brief reminder of how
the process works will be enough. For someone less versed
in this essential element of the dismissal process, there is
not nearly enough explanation. In fact, for some people,
the large amount of information relating to specific cases
and the limited amount of explanation given throughout the
book can make very boring reading. For people interested in
legal cases and works of investigative committees, the
balance of material is much more pleasing.
"The Economics of Tenure," Chapter 4, consists
primarily of an economic analysis of the financial role and
consequences of tenure by Michael E. McPherson and Gordon C.
Winston. The analysis is not centered on academic freedom,
but on personnel and employment issues. Although Finkin
rejects the industrial analogy given, the points made by
McPherson and Winston concerning analytical labor economics
and key features of academic employment policy that tenure
supports are enlightening.
Chapter 5 is a discussion of "Tenure and Resource
Allocation." The weakest part of Finkin's case for
tenure is in this area. The arguments for keeping tenure in
the face of institutional need seem lacking and self-serving.
The connection to academic freedom is not made and
Finkin's reasoning seems circular when discussing the issue.
Finkin's only example of the successful use of financial
exigency, "the condition that would permit an
institution the drastic act of abrogating a tenure
commitment" (p.129) in the case of demonstrably bona
fide need, is a situation where three tenured faculty out of
total of five were terminated because their department was
eliminated. In this chapter, Finkin uses as the large case
study the situation at San Diego State University in 1992.
The circumstances there were not at all compatible to the
first school's. In addition, the record shows that tenured
faculty at San Diego were given the chance to direct the
change, but were dilatory and unresponsive to the magnitude
of the problem. After reading Chapter 5, one can be left
with the idea that it really does not matter how desperate
the college's or university's financial situation is or how
the demand for a particular type of scholarly knowledge has
changed over 20 years or even if the university is sincerely
trying to move into a new direction, the tenure decisions
made years ago must hold and any drastic change will meet
with "entrenched faculty resistance, in the cause of
job security" (p. 129).
Chapter 6, "Tenure and Retirement," Chapter 7,
"Posttenure Review," and Chapter 8, "The New
Criticism," are all covered in 18 pages. Although the
treatment of these topics is limited, there is good
information and interesting insights in the chapters.
However, throughout the book there is a puzzling and
disappointing lack of attention on the use of tenure to
insure academic freedom of thought as opposed to providing
freedom from job loss because of disagreements about
governance or resource allocation.
For the new professional in any area of higher education,
The Case for Tenure will give a detailed look at the
system of tenure as it was commonly practiced in the late
20th century. It will provide a background to the arguments
for or against tenure. For anyone, the book can be a
stimulating look into the workings university governance and
AAUP investigating committees. But does Finkin prove the
case for tenure? I am not sure, but the book is fascinating
reading about the practice of tenure in "the realities
of academic life as it is lived" (p. 26).
About the Reviewer
Peggy Brandt Brown is with the Program in Higher
Education, College of Education, University of North Texas
in Denton, Texas. She is a licensed professional counselor
with the State of Texas although her license is inactive at
this time. Her areas of interest are higher education
administration, grant writing for student affairs and
student development interests, and college students with
especial interest in higher educational institutions'
response to college students' suicides.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment