ISU Chapter Newsletter
March, 1997

Tenure and Post-Tenure Reviews, Heimir Geirsson, Department of Philosophy
Post-Tenure Review, William F. Woodman, President, ISU Faculty Senate
Spring Conference to Highlight Post-Tenure Review Faculty Governance
Sexual Harassment Issue Remains Unresolved at Iowa State University
Sexual Harassment Guidance Issued by Office for Civil Rights
ISU Must Do Better, Joanna Courteau, Chair, AA UP State Conference, Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession (Committee W)

Tenure and Post-Tenure Reviews
Heimir Geirsson
Department of Philosophy

During the past two years the faculty at the University of Minnesota has been fighting to keep the tenure system. For now it looks like they won the battle although the war is still raging, for there is a mounting pressure nation wide to debunk tenure. The attacks on tenure take various forms. A recent criticism of a member of the Iowa legislature on university professors and their work, or lack there of, can be viewed as an attempt to undermine the publics opinion of professors' work. At the same time the attack plants the idea that professors, and especially tenured professors, are certainly under-worked and probably overpaid

Within the university community the attack is more likely to surface in the form of post-tenure review. The idea is to conduct a periodic review of tenured professors' work, usually followed by a set of goals if performance is found lacking. In some cases, as in the guidelines suggested for post-tenure review in Minnesota, the review is little more than a thinly disguised way for the university to rid itself of some of its professors. In short, tenure, as we know it, would no longer exist.

While some tenured professors are in favor of post-tenure review, the main support for the reviews comes from other sources. There is the pressure from above, namely from the administration, which sees post-tenure reviews as one more way to create and/or increase flexibility within the institution. For once post-tenure reviews are in place the door is open to make some cuts in the ranks of senior professors. And there is the less significant pressure from below, namely from young scholars who are seeking jobs and see themselves as more able and talented than many of the senior professors. The pressure from below therefore comes from some members of the ever-growing group of temporary professors; the group that now provides the administration with the much-desired flexibility it wants.

The AAUP certainly recognizes the problems facing temporary faculty, but believes that there are better ways to try to deal with the issues involved than to adopt post-tenure reviews with all they are likely to bring. The AAUP's position on post-tenure reviews is clearly stated in the Redbook.

The Association believes that periodic formal institutional evaluation of each postprobationary faculty mender would bring scant benefit, would incur unacceptable costs, not only in money and time but also in dampening of creativity and of collegial relationships, and would threaten academic freedom.

The Association emphasizes that no procedure for evaluation of faculty should be used to weaken or undermine the principles of academic freedom and tenure. The Association cautions particularly against allowing any general system of evaluation to be used as grounds for dismissal or other disciplinary sanctions.

Post-Tenure Review
William F. Woodman
President, ISU Faculty Senate

One of the hottest topics in academic circles these days travels under the innocuous rubric of "Post-Tenure Review," although a various institutions it is also caned "effort allocation review" and similar bureaucratic mumbo jumbo. In short, it is the move to require departments and institutions to apply the same review standards used for untenured faculty to tenured faculty. In some states this is coupled with a Draconian system, such as that found in Kansas wherein two negative reviews of a faculty member (or three in five years) automatically triggers a termination procedure which then allows for a year to two wherein the faculty member and department draw up and evaluate a remediation plan. Should that plan not be fulfilled, termination of employment is the result.

That this is being carried out in every state and at almost every state-sponsored institution seems hardly an accident. University administrators and even boards of regents hold annual national meetings to discuss policy and budget matters and this policy has been on their agendas for some years. On the other side there is no such national or even regional meetings of faculty senates (the membership of which turns over each year as an added complication), and consequently each institution and governing board is pretty much at liberty to propose whatever the traffic in their states win allow.

At a higher level of abstraction other forces are at work. The first of these is the general anti-government attitude afoot in the land This perspective, reinforced by nightly "Fleecing of Americas segments on television news, is part and parcel of Republican campaign ideology and is by far the more serious of the two. I should add that as faculty we are doing nothing about this serious threat to our future. The second factor at work is that of the erosion of job security and job protection in all Western countries. Corporations now argue with the magic incantation "global competition" that they owe workers nothing while workers owe the company their best every hour. Many feel that all organizations should be run on the same principle, and these people are often in political office such that they can make their will into fact. Post tenure review is one manifestation of this ideology.

How the post tenure review systems are enacted varies considerably, with some plans being fairer than others and some more sensitive to academic freedom and scholarship than others, but the key is not to be found in this area. The key thing worth remembering is that post tenure review is an attempt to render the idea of tenure meaningless by attacking its Achilles Heel, a strategy which is working very well. What we should be arguing is not that dead wood among the faculty should keep their jobs, but rather those procedures for getting rid of them already exist and that we simply require the guts to use them on our departmental peers. However, I am not sanguine that we are going to mount such a defense, for the path of least resistance everywhere seems to be to find a comfortable position before the inevitable takes place.

Spring Conference to Highlight Post-Tenure Renew Faculty Governance

The Spring meeting of the Iowa Conference of AAUP will be held on April 5, 1997, at the University of Iowa, in the Iowa Memorial Union, from 9 a.m. until noon. The national president of AAUP, James E. Perley, will deliver the keynote address: Adelphi and Minnesota: Case Studies in How Not to Manage." A panel discussion on post-tenure review will follow. Registration is free, and the meeting is open to the public.

Sexual Harassment Issue Remains Unresolved at Iowa State University

In last September's AAUP ISU chapter newsletter, we emphasized the need for the university to revise several aspects of its sexual harassment policies. The full text of that discussion of the AAUP position as it applies to Iowa State is available for you to look at through our Website:

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~aaup/

The Faculty Senate has been asked to consider these proposed changes, and we are hopeful that they will be taken under advisement in the near future.

A related story follows, from the Washington, DC, national office of AAUP.
Sexual Harassment Guidance Issued by Office for Civil Rights
Jonathan Alger, AAUP Associate Counsel, Washington, DC

The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued its long-awaited policy guidance on sexual harassment of students under Title IX today (Thursday, March 13) in the Federal Register (62 Fed Reg. 12034). The guidance replaces the draft guidance dated October 4, 1996. The guidance addresses the public comments that were received, and specifically incorporates many of the suggestions made by AAUP. We are pleased, for example, that the guidance includes recognition of academic freedom and free speech rights as well as the need for due process for those accused of harassment. It includes some helpful examples on key issues (e.g., on faculty and student expression in the classroom). Note that the guidance does not address sexual harassment of faculty members or other employees (OCR defers to EEOC guidance on that subject).

In addition to the Federal Register, copies may be obtained from OCR's Customer Service Team at 202-205-5413 or 1-800 421-3481, or from OCR's site on the Internet at URL http://www.edgov/offices/OCR/ocrpubs.html (please note that it might take a bit of time to get posted on the Internet). If you have questions about the guidance, you may contact me as follows: Jonathan Alger, Associate Counsel; (202) 737-5900, X-3015; jalger~aaup.org.

ISU Must Do Better
Joanna Courteau
Chair, AA UP State Conference, Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession (Committee W)

Recent events confirm that Iowa State University needs to correct its sexual harassment policy to include an explicit protocol for due process. The University of Southern California has been officially censured by AAUP precisely for disregarding due process. At Iowa State University we can and indeed must do better.

Last October, in her keynote address to the fall meeting of the Iowa Conference of AAUP, Linda Fisher, a law professor expert in this area, concluded that a broad interpretation of the concept of Hostile environment. results in restrictions on First Amendment rights to free speech and academic freedom. Instead, the AAUP policy states that sexually harassing speech must be "targeted and that this speech mutt be either Abusive, "severely humiliating," or persistent in the face of repeated objections. Untargeted speech that constitutes sexual harassment must be "reasonably regarded as offensive" and mutt "substantially impair the academic or work opportunity of students, colleagues, or co-workers. If [the offending speech or conduct] takes place in the teaching context, it mutt also be persistent, pervasive, and not germane to the subject matter."

To pursue this issue in a public forum, AAUP trill sponsor a reception and panel discussion on ISU's sexual harassment policy, to be held in the South Ballroom of the Memorial Union on April 3, from 4-5:30.