Over the past year, Wayne State University officials have been taking the rare step of trying to strip tenure from five medical-school professors. The transcript from one former professor’s hearing offers an inside view into how that process plays out.
Administrators argue the faculty members in question haven’t been doing their jobs well for years and are therefore abusing their tenure. Faculty union representatives dispute that, and argue that the attempt to revoke tenure is a result of a perverse shift in priorities among the university’s leadership.
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Over the past year, Wayne State University officials have been taking the rare step of trying to strip tenure from five medical-school professors. The transcript from one former professor’s hearing offers an inside view into how that process plays out.
Administrators argue the faculty members in question haven’t been doing their jobs well for years and are therefore abusing their tenure. Faculty union representatives dispute that, and argue that the attempt to revoke tenure is a result of a perverse shift in priorities among the university’s leadership.
According to union leaders, M. Roy Wilson, the president, and several senior administrators drastically ramped up the pressure on medical-school faculty members to bring in outside grant funding a couple of years ago. Officials then deemed those who fell short “unproductive” and began trying to dismiss some of them.
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Union leaders say such an approach undermines academic freedom. But Mr. Wilson told The Chronicle that at most medical schools there’s an expectation that professors earn at least part of their salary by generating grants. He added that the academic-freedom argument was “nonsense.”
“In my view, we risk further eroding the public trust in higher ed if we continue to protect and pay tenured professors who check out and stop working,” he said.
The transcript describes the hearing of Richard Bruce Needleman, a molecular biologist who retired in August, before his case could be resolved. Two of the other four professors chose a phased retirement, during which they are teaching part-time for three years before leaving the campus. Two of the cases are pending.
Tenure is typically an indefinite appointment for faculty members. Revoking it is difficult, a standard that many in the profession believe is necessary in order to preserve academic freedom.
Last year, after a process of identifying faculty members who were “underproductive” and “unproductive,” Wayne State administrators decided that they wanted to begin dismissal proceedings against Mr. Needleman. His hearing took place several months later, in late March, Mr. Wilson told The Chronicle.
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Seven months after that hearing, the university is in the midst of the fourth faculty member’s hearing and has yet to begin the fifth one, Mr. Wilson said.
Mr. Needleman’s hearing transpired over two days and involved a panel of six faculty members — three from the medical school, and three others — who would decide whether to recommend that Mr. Needleman lose his tenure. Also in the room were the university’s general counsel and a lawyer for Mr. Needleman.
‘Hostile’ Conduct Alleged
The transcript of the two-day hearing, a part of which was obtained by The Chronicle, was first obtained by The Detroit News. It highlighted the tensions between faculty members and university officials in such cases. When Mr. Needleman first met with a committee of administrators about his performance, in 2016, his conduct was “hostile,” according to at least two deans who testified. They alleged “more than a 10-year period of time of nonproductivity.”
Virginia Delaney-Black, vice dean of faculty affairs at the medical school, also testified that “his CV was never kept up-to-date.” She continued: “He says in his CV that he doesn’t know exactly what he did, that the administration should be recording that. That’s not a competent way to maintain a record of what you have done.”
When Mr. Needleman was asked whether he had been told by administrators which academic duties he wasn’t performing competently, he responded that “I don’t talk to administrators.”
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Another point of contention between the university and Mr. Needleman was how much time he spent physically on campus. Asked to recall the last time he had accessed his lab, Mr. Needleman said, “Probably a long time ago.” He added: “I go to the lab when I need to go to the lab. … The whole notion that this is an industrial deal where I have to come in particular hours is antithetical to everything that molecular biologists do. This is not our culture.”
Mr. Needleman has publicly denied the allegations that he wasn’t doing enough teaching or research. He said that he had published recently in peer-reviewed journals and that his recent research, done with a colleague, was paid for with the colleague’s personal money, not grant money. (The colleague is William Brusilow, who, according to The Detroit News, is one of the other professors accused of a lack of productivity; he is doing phased retirement.) Mr. Needleman also condemned the hearing as “character assassination.”
In a letter sent on Friday to Wayne State’s Board of Governors, the former professor said that, at the medical school, “WSU lawyers, [School of Medicine] business managers, and administrators ignorant of science drive the process, and the scholarly production of a faculty member post-tenure is evaluated by hearing panel members who lack all relevant scientific expertise.”
After the hearing concluded, the faculty panel made a decision about Mr. Needleman, Mr. Wilson said, but he requested that he be allowed to retire before that decision was announced. If the former professor hadn’t retired, Mr. Wilson said, he would have taken the panel’s recommendation to the Board of Governors, which has the final say in such cases.
It’s unusual for colleges to try to take away tenure. It’s even more unusual for them to succeed.
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Before this year, Wayne State previously had tried to strip tenure from just two scholars, and in both cases, the professors won.
The university needs to have a more robust post-tenure review process, Mr. Wilson said. He’s also displeased that the detenuring proceedings take so long.
But even though Mr. Needleman was allowed to retire before losing his tenure, Mr. Wilson is satisfied.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” he said, “as long as we’re not paying him for doing nothing.”
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Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.