The Iron Ring

Although it does not seem likely that my DP readers will find their way to the Iron Ring, I nonetheless feel it is my only outlet to respond to the myriad of comments my last column received. I am not permitted to post on the DP website. So perhaps an Iron Ring reader will post a link to this on my column online wouldn't that be nice???

For starters, one major criticism of tenure (at least from these Penn students) is that it does nothing to increase the quality of teaching. In nearly every school, tenure is based loosely on three main criteria: research, service and teaching. Each school, and possibly each department within schools, ranks the three different. I asked Dean Bushnell directly in what order she, or Penn, would rank the importance of the three and she assured me that they don’t give tenure to poor lecturers. A strange response considering I did not ask if someone with poor teaching skills could still obtain tenure. Clearly this criticism hits close to home.

Frankly, I believe Penn ranks teaching last on that list. The fact is, we are a large, research-based University and I don’t believe it is a priority of the administration to find the best lecturers. That being said, I don’t think the answer is to abolish tenure. I think the answer is to ask different responsibilities of different faculty. What if we hired faculty either for teaching or research but not both? As any graduate student can tell you, some people are more inclined to explaining and interacting and others are better off in the lab thinking and testing.

Personally, I think it ties in with a discussion on grade inflation. In a column last spring, Gabe Oppenheim declared it was professor’s personal fault that grades were inflating at Penn. He wondered just how much they care about student rankings and why. Well I believe those student rankings are used when considering who gets tenure. And as Oppenheim noted, more difficult professors (those who give lower grades) get lower rankings from students. Hence, if a professor wants tenure, they may have to lower their grade standards.

A second major criticism of the column was that in the “real world” there is no such thing as job security, and that professors are crazy left-wing “wackos” (yes, someone used the word “wacko”) who should not be teaching at all.

To this, I stand by my assertion that tenure is sacrosanct. Frankly, a truly wacko professor would never receive tenure. Suppose a history professor was a holocaust denier. Wouldn’t you be appalled if they taught your child? Sure. But when it was time for that holocaust denier to be considered for tenure, they would be hard-pressed to find others in their field who would consider their work in any way scholarly or valid. Stringent evaluation by peers is a cornerstone of the tenure process and ensures that such wackos do not teach crazy ideas to students.

And if you think you heard something crazy in class, I offer this bit of trite advice: Columbus thought the world was round. Our entire history of humankind is defined by people who thought about the world differently and many were scorned.

Finally, I am most disappointed that no one brought forth one of the greatest criticisms of tenure— one that hits particularly close to home at Penn. The fact that tenured professors seem to get away with things that would get any other sane person fired. Remember Tracy McIntosh and L Scott Ward? True, both left Penn eventually, but McIntosh did not leave until roughly 18 months after the incident and as we all know, Ward remained on at Penn after several incidents. Its certainly tenure abuse and university administrations are quite sensitive to it.