Stripping a professor of tenure over a blog post

[Solmyr]

I read an interesting article earlier today and since the tenure system is something we don't really have on this side of the pond, I am still unable to make up my mind as to whether what happened in the story is right or wrong.

Professor John McAdams is being stripped of tenure by Marquette University for writing a blog post that administrators characterize as inaccurate and irresponsible.

Academics all over the United States ought to denounce the firing of the 69-year-old, a Harvard Ph.D. who taught courses on American politics and public policy. If tenure can be taken away based upon one controversial blog post, what protection does it offer? How many tenured professors will censor themselves from participating in public conversation to avoid a similar fate? Marquette has violated core academic values, regardless of what one thinks of McAdams' commentary or the shabby treatment of the graduate instructor he was criticizing (who deserves sympathy for the horrifying torrent of misogyny others directed at her).

This is just the opening quote of the quite-lengthy article. There is also a story-within-the-story - that of Cheryl Abbate, whose actions McAdams was criticizing in his blog post.

So how sacred is/should tenure be and is revoking it appropriate in this situation?

NB: I realize that the nature of the article might provoke some discussion on the story-within-the-story too, but that is fine in my opinion.

[TrackerNeil]

Interesting. Seems like a lot went wrong here. Abbate stepped in it by, essentially, declaring it a pro-gay-marriage class. The student, in my view, provoked her, and given that he recorded the event, with the intention of causing trouble. Then McAdams threw oil on the fire by blogging about the matter instead of letting the whole sorry incident die a quiet death.

Still, I can't take Abbate too much to task, given that she's on the side of equality and the student was on the side of being an asshole.

[Arkhangel]

I think it's reasonable. That professor has a history of publicly naming students who disagree with his own personal convictions, exposing them to threats and hate mail. He sounds like a bully, frankly (not to mention a homophobe. Anyone who puts gay rights in quotation marks...) and that sort of behaviour is unacceptable in a teacher.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Yeah, it's called 'tenure', not 'immunity from the consequences of acting like a complete fucking lunatic.'

[Solmyr]

Still, I can't take Abbate too much to task, given that she's on the side of equality and the student was on the side of being an asshole.

I avoided expressing opinion on the Abbate-student part of the story, because I didn't want to purposefully steer debate in that direction. Imo, if the story can be believed* both Abbate and the student had some fault. But the story-within-the-story is not really that relevant to the revocation of tenure - that happened because McAdams blogged about the Abbate-story and identified her by name.

* there certainly are contradictions, depending on the source

I think it's reasonable. That professor has a history of publicly naming students who disagree with his own personal convictions, exposing them to threats and hate mail. He sounds like a bully, frankly (not to mention a homophobe. Anyone who puts gay rights in quotation marks...) and that sort of behaviour is unacceptable in a teacher.

Yes, his history of publicly naming students is definitely a smudge on his reputation. However, his tenure was never revoked in the past over these incidents. And in this particular case it could be argued that he was referring to a fellow colleague, not a student - something, which afaik is not against university rules.

As for his stance on gay rights, I am uncertain whether him putting the term in quotation marks is enough to brand him a homophobe - his quotes in the article include other material that is in quotation marks, apparently things he was referring to as direct quotes from the Abbate-student conversation. It could be that his usage of quotation marks was not meant as derogative.

ETA:

Yeah, it's called 'tenure', not 'immunity from the consequences of acting like a complete fucking lunatic.'

Ok, that doesn't really tell me (and other non-US citizens, I imagine) much. I am not familiar with how tenure works, besides the general idea that it's supposed to protect academic freedom and allow academic staff on tenure to express unpopular opinions.

[Arkhangel]

Yes, his history in publicly naming students is definitely a smudge on his reputation. However, his tenure was never revoked in the past over these incidents. And in this particular case it could be argued that he was referring to a fellow colleague, not a student - something, which afaik is not against university rules.

As for his stance on gay rights, I am uncertain whether him putting the term in quotation marks is enough to brand him a homophobe - his quotes in the article include other material that is in quotation marks, apparently things he was referring to as direct quotes from the Abbate-student conversation. It could be that his usage of quotation marks was not meant as derogative.

The fact that his tenure was not revoked the previous two times he's done it is not a good reason to let him retain it this time. If anything, it's the opposite. He's been given chances to change his behaviour, and he hasn't. Third strike, he's out and fair enough.

I think that's an extremely generous reading of the situation, but sure. His homophobia or otherwise isn't the core issue, nor is this a question of academic freedom. This is about a professor using a public platform to bully students.

[Solmyr]

The fact that his tenure was not revoked the previous two times he's done it is not a good reason to let him retain it this time. If anything, it's the opposite. He's been given chances to change his behaviour, and he hasn't. Third strike, he's out and fair enough.

I think you glossed over the core part of my argument - McAdams referred to Abbate as a colleague, not a student. Therefore this incident is unlike the previous two.

[DireWolfSpirit]

So how sacred is/should tenure be and is revoking it appropriate in this situation?

NB: I realize that the nature of the article might provoke some discussion on the story-within-the-story too, but that is fine in my opinion.

Ward Churchill recently waged a lengthy legal battle over this very issue.

Ward LeRoy Churchill (born October 2, 1947) is an American author and political activist. He was a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado Boulder from 1990 to 2007. The primary focus of his work is on the historical treatment of political dissenters and Native Americans by the United States government. His work features controversial and provocative views, written in a direct, often confrontational style.[1]

In January 2005, Churchill's work attracted publicity because of the widespread circulation of a 2001 essay, "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens". In the essay, he claimed that the September 11 attacks were a natural and unavoidable consequence of what he views as unlawful US policy, and he referred to the "technocratic corps" working in the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns."[2]

In March 2005 the University of Colorado began investigating allegations that Churchill had engaged in research misconduct; it reported in June 2006 that he had done so.[3] Churchill was fired on July 24, 2007,[4] leading to a claim by some scholars that he was fired because of the "Little Eichmanns" comment.[5] Churchill filed a lawsuit against the University of Colorado for unlawful termination of employment. In April 2009 a Denver jury found that Churchill was wrongly fired, awarding him $1 in damages.[6][7] In July 2009, a District Court judge vacated the monetary award and declined Churchill's request to order his reinstatement, deciding the university has "quasi-judicial immunity". In February 2010, Churchill appealed the judge's decision.[8][9] In November 2010, the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld the lower-court's ruling.[10] In September 10, 2012, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld the lower courts' decisions in favor of the University of Colorado.[11] On April 1, 2013, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case.[12]

And lost.

As for my opinion on the appropriateness of revoking tenure over

these Professors mildly controversial actions.

I think it's atrocious and a stifleing damper on the

freedom of discourse.

One could only imagine these institutions uncerimoniously

dumping a Socrates or Plato in the alley for waging

"uncomfortable questions and unpopular views."

It's horseypoo imho.

[mormont]

Yes, his history of publicly naming students is definitely a smudge on his reputation. However, his tenure was never revoked in the past over these incidents.

That's a poor argument. If someone does something wrong repeatedly, that does not mean they should be allowed to do it forever: there comes a point where the damage accumulates.

If the professor involved has a history of doing this, then it's likely he has had his tenure revoked in the context that history as a whole - not for a single blog post which exists in isolation and was atypical of his normal conduct.

And in this particular case it could be argued that he was referring to a fellow colleague, not a student - something, which afaik is not against university rules.

A graduate student*, even if employed to do some teaching, is not a 'colleague' of an established academic with a long career behind him. I deal with conflicts and problems between grad students and tenured staff frequently, and make no mistake: the academic staff member is in a position of considerably superior power and influence, both within the university and in academia more widely. Grad students tend to be very wary indeed of upsetting any member of academic staff, and sadly, they have some reason to be, in my experience. If that member of staff decides to do so, he can make starting out on their chosen career very difficult indeed. (It's very rare that this would happen. Most staff are not assholes. But it does happen.)

So the professor's behaviour here can't be excused on this rather flimsy basis. Given the power dynamic here, what he did looks very much like bullying.

*I'm using the American terminology for convenience, not through preference. The people I deal with are not referred to by these terms.

[Arkhangel]

I think you glossed over the core part of my argument - McAdams referred to Abbate as a colleague, not a student. Therefore this incident is unlike the previous two.

He was a professor with tenure. She was a graduate student. Whatever he called her, there's a significant power differential there. This incident is little different from the other two - and even if they really were colleagues, so what? He'd just be bullying his colleagues and his students.

[Larry of the Lawn]

I think you glossed over the core part of my argument - McAdams referred to Abbate as a colleague, not a student. Therefore this incident is unlike the previous two.

Abbate is still a student, yes she's a teacher too but calling her a colleague gives a false sense of equality between her and McAdams in the academic hierarchy.

As far as the tenure thing goes, yes, if you put in your time you should be able to have a secure job, and be able to express your opinion freely. But we all know that speech and expression of opinion do have real world consequences. If your employer decides that you're a liability to them, there has to be some kind of option. Yes, you have a right to earn a living, but it doesn't give you carte blanche to not be fired no matter what you do.

Beyond this specific example, there has to be a limit to the protection of any one person's position. You can't just grant someone blanket immunity from the consequences of their actions.

[Altherion]

The story-within-the-story is more or less irrelevant except for the fact that it is controversial -- the grad student was wrong, but this doesn't help the fired professor's case at all. He should have written the same blog post, but without any names. By explicitly naming her in relation to something controversial, he turned an academic argument into a safety issue. Universities really, really don't like it when they have to post guards to protect a student. Given that this is not the first time he has done something like this and they've asked him not to do it, they were within their rights to fire him.

That said, the dean also screwed up. He should have just stuck to the matter of safety and omitted that paragraph of "you didn't check with the student, your department chair, her department chair, etc.". It would have avoided a whole lot of criticism related to academic freedom.

Ok, that doesn't really tell me (and other non-US citizens, I imagine) much. I am not familiar with how tenure works, besides the general idea that it's supposed to protect academic freedom and allow academic staff on tenure to express unpopular opinions.

Tenure means that a professor cannot be fired for expressing controversial views or for academic work that most people believe to be worthless, distasteful or otherwise bad. It also means that professors cannot be fired for trivial matters -- otherwise they'd be fired nominally for technicalities like parking in the wrong spot, but really because of their views. However, it is not an absolute protection -- the professor has to do the tasks asked of him by the department (i.e. teach) and it there are offenses which are not trivial (e.g. endangering other people at the university).

[The Once and Future King]

I am torn on this issue.

On the one hand I completely agree with Prof. McAdams, however I also belive that tenure is a outdated foolish concept that is far too strong and protext many awful teachers who push thwir agendas mercilessly which coincidentally is what Prof McAdams was fighting

[Solmyr]

The thread is moving too fast for me to be able to respond to everyone

@mormont (and everyone who made a similar argument) - I do not disagree that there is a power difference, regardless of whether you treat Abbate as a graduate student, who also teaches, as a student or as university staff. But afaik it wasn't the bullying that got him fired, it was him mentioning her by name, specifically, that opened the can of worms. The key question, for me, therefore is:

If a person is employed by the university, are other employees of the same university allowed to mention him or her by name in public media?

and if the answer is "yes", then the follow up question would be:

If that person is also a student, which takes precedence - the anonymity protection offered by the university to its students or the freedom of one staff member to discuss the actions of another?

[Altherion]

Mentioning people by name in public media is not the issue -- faculty and staff do this all the time ("Students so-and-so and I did a lot of research on this-and-that") and usually people are quite happy to be mentioned. The problem is mentioning people by name in a context reasonably likely to inspire death threats. As a general rule, safety takes precedence over all other issues at a university.

[Solmyr]

Mentioning people by name in public media is not the issue -- faculty and staff do this all the time ("Students so-and-so and I did a lot of research on this-and-that") and usually people are quite happy to be mentioned. The problem is mentioning people by name in a context reasonably likely to inspire death threats. As a general rule, safety takes precedence over all other issues at a university.

If you had told me that student anonymity is sacrosanct and they cannot be mentioned by name by the staff of the university, I might have taken you at your word. But this just doesn't make sense. How can somebody be expected to foresee what context can bring about death threats, especially in this day and age - we've been seeing death threats flung about on the internet over supremely rational and valid opinions and criticisms. Should people, who reblog and give popularity to those opinions, be guilty of safety violation?

[Ormond]

I don't have time to read the article this morning. But it is possible that the university's rationale for revoking this man's tenure is related to FERPA violations.

http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html

If a university or college in the USA wants to be eligible for federal funds in any way (including federal loans for its students), it has to follow the privacy regulations of FERPA. The whole university could get into serious trouble with the federal government if it did not give professors any consequences for FERPA violations. And FERPA means that a great deal of what goes on between students and professors is indeed considered private and can NOT be divulged by the professor unless he or she has written permission from the student involved. For instance, I cannot share any information about a student's grades or other classroom performance with anyone, including his or her parents, without such express permission. I can tell athletic coaches how athletes on their team are doing because they give the coach the right to ask when signing up for their athletic scholarship. Otherwise I would get into trouble for telling anyone (except my own direct supervisors such as department chair or dean) such information.

A lot of the rules of FERPA seem rather odd. I can tell anyone if a particular student is enrolled in my class. I can NOT tell them what the gender of a student is, though I can tell them what a student's height and weight are!

Any way, if anything this guy was blogging about students could be considered a FERPA violation, the university would certainly be within its rights to fire him over it, tenure or not, if he had been warned about his previous violations.

[sologdin]

dude's comments about grad student are probably defamatory, for which she apparently suffered actual damages. that's probably sufficient grounds under most tenure agreements for termination. aside from that, busting up tenure is sucky and here has the added feature, at no extra cost, of an appearance of impropriety, as the antediluvian rightwing will turn this douche into a martyr for its arriere garde ideology.

[The Iceman of the North]

dude's comments about grad student are probably defamatory, for which she apparently suffered actual damages. that's probably sufficient grounds under most tenure agreements for termination. aside from that, busting up tenure is sucky and here has the added feature, at no extra cost, of an appearance of impropriety, as the antediluvian rightwing will turn this douche into a martyr for its arriere garde ideology.

Couldn't have said it better myself. In fact I couldn't have said it at all.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

At the risk of going too far down the rabbit hole on this issue, I've followed several additional links providing somewhat different perspectives on what happened.

Cheryl Abbate's blog is here and she is obviously rejecting the framing of the story as a professor being fired to one internet post. In defense of her position, she refers people to two other stories about the incident here and here trying to frame the issue in different ways.

The first of her links, "Beware the Pedagogy Police" I find completely uncompelling. The argument is essentially that "extramural" posts from McAdams that "harm a student, cause great emotional distress, precipitate egregious mob action e-mail insults and death threats" etc. and so on, you're not talking about Academic Freedom. On that, I wholly disagree, and disagree specifically that whether one's conduct falls within the rubric of the protected activities of Academic Freedom primarily depends on the extrinsic results of those posts. Whether or not McAdams engaged in conduct that should otherwise be protected under the rubric of Academic Freedom is not, I don't think, appropriately judged by how upset Abbate was by it, or by how much venom internet trolls spewed as a result of it.

The second of the links, "Marquette to Fire McAdams for Dereliction of Duty" makes a different argument, which is that the action against McAdams is justified not under principles of Academic Freedom, but rather because the manner in which McAdams criticzed Abbate violated some nebulous principle that "faculty members have a substantive obligation to foster student development" even when the student is a graduate student who is also a paid instructor for the university and even when there is no direct, hierarchical relationship between the graduate student/teacher and professor in question (McAdams and Abbate have no mentor/mentee relationship, he's not one of her faculty supervisors, and they aren't even in the same department), and further that this principle is so strong that, when in conflict with principles of Academic Freedom, this other principle should trump it, and McAdams' firing was justified on those grounds. I think my characterization of this position indicates where I stand on the issue. I'm unconvinced such an obligation, to the extent it exists, should ever stop any professor from criticizing another teacher's pedagogy.

I don't think Abbate handled her interaction with the student very well, and I think she is justifiably subject to criticism for that. That being said, I think McAdams is a jerk and his criticisms are fairly unhelpful. While I recognize a theoretical "power imbalance" between them, I don't think it's particularly relevant. Abbate is an instructor. She's a semi-public figure, and she shouldn't be insulated from criticism merely because she's a graduate student, even where that criticism is jerkish and unhelpful and coming from a full faculty member. From what I've seen from the AAUP and professors citing to it, it looks to me like McAdams' blog posts falls well within the conduct that had traditionally been protected under the rubric of Academic Freedom.

I could very well be wrong, but I expect McAdams to challenge the attempt to fire him in violation of his tenure, and predict that he will be successful in doing so.