The American Association of University Professors has received an unusual response to its plans to investigate the tenure practices of a university-affiliated cancer center: demands from the center that the AAUP first answer a long list of tough questions about its authority in such matters.
In a five-page letter sent to the AAUP last week, the University of Texas’ M.D. Anderson Cancer Center expressed concern that the association’s investigation “may not be conducted in a manner that ordinarily prudent people would consider either objective or considerate of our focused mission.”
The Houston-based center’s letter asks the AAUP more than 20 questions related to the validity and fairness of any such investigation, touching on subjects such as why no college administrators serve on the association’s investigative committees and just how much of the nation’s professoriate it counts as dues-paying members.
The center’s executive leadership “would greatly appreciate prompt, candid, and direct answers to our questions” to determine how to respond to the AAUP, says the letter, written by Dan Fontaine, the center’s executive chief of staff, on behalf of other officials there.
The letter, first reported by the Houston Chronicle, says “our concerns are not merely abstract, but result from our own fact gathering about previous AAUP investigations of other administrative actions taken by responsible leadership at other highly regarded institutions.”
The letter does not elaborate on the results of the center’s own investigation, but it evokes objections raised by other institutions that have been examined the AAUP, including the complaint that the association has failed to fully publish their written dissents to its findings.
Mr. Fontaine’s letter explicitly stresses that “we are not presupposing any lack of objectivity, and hope that candid and complete answers to our questions will alleviate our concerns.”
Nevertheless, several of the letter’s questions, asking about matters such as the AAUP’s political activities, appear less intended to seek assurances of fairness than to gather ammunition for alleging the absence of fairness in the AAUP’s investigation of the dismissal of two professors at M.D. Anderson.
Tough Grilling
Many colleges’ administrations have raised objections to AAUP investigations—especially investigations that have led to votes by the association to censure their institutions. Never before, however, has the group been subject to such an interrogation early in the investigatory process.
Jordan E. Kurland, the AAUP’s associate general secretary, joked on Monday that other colleges’ challenges to the association’s authority are “usually confined to two words: ‘Screw you.’” They might raise one or two questions challenging the association’s authority, he said, but not a long list of them.
In an email on Friday to Mr. Fontaine and other officials of the cancer center, Gregory F. Scholtz, director of the AAUP’s department of academic freedom, tenure, and governance, confirmed receipt “of the welcome letter that you sent us” and pledged to respond to the center’s questions by mid-August.
“Because of the seriousness and thoroughness that its many detailed questions manifest,” Mr. Scholtz wrote, “we will need a week or two to provide the response that the letter deserves. Given the nature of some of the questions, we will also wish to have our response reviewed by the AAUP’s general counsel, Professor Risa Lieberwitz of Cornell University.”
In an interview on Monday, Mr. Scholtz said “the questions they raise are legitimate questions, and they deserve legitimate responses.” He added, “We are not going to have difficulty addressing their concerns.”
Douglas Boyd, a professor of basic research at M.D. Anderson who requested the AAUP investigation of his institution, took a dimmer view of the center’s letter to the association. In an email, he said, “The attempt by the administration to challenge the authority of the AAUP is farcical—the real objective being to derail the upcoming investigation.”
“It is clear,” Mr. Boyd wrote, “that the administration is concerned with the potential ramifications of a negative outcome regarding future faculty recruitment, funding, and institutional prestige.”
Temporary Tenure
Some questions that the center poses to the association ask about the impact of AAUP censure votes on colleges’ efforts to hire qualified faculty members or obtain state or federal grants, but the questions’ tone suggests that the center is actually raising doubts about the impact of any AAUP censure vote. For example, the center asks the association to provide citation for any published study showing that an AAUP censure affects faculty recruitment.
Although the letter mentions how the center has looked into AAUP investigations of other colleges, the only institution it mentions by name is the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, which the AAUP censured in 2010 over its handling of more than 120 faculty layoffs following a September 2008 hurricane. The cancer center’s letter challenges the AAUP’s plans to put two people involved in the Medical Branch investigation on the committee investigating M.D. Anderson, arguing that their involvement would bias the new panel.
Jim Newman, a spokesman for the cancer center, declined on Monday to discuss the other conclusions of its investigation of the AAUP, saying “we prefer to allow the organization to respond to our concerns before making additional public comments.”
Much of the center’s letter focuses on whether the AAUP has any business investigating the unusual tenure practices in place at M.D. Anderson. The center considers tenure to be only temporary, granting it for seven-year periods, after which professors must reapply to renew it. The AAUP was asked to investigate it on behalf of two longtime professors whose tenure-renewal bids were rejected by the center’s president, Ronald A. DiPinho, despite being overwhelmingly supported by the institution’s Promotion and Tenure Committee.
The cancer center’s letter to the AAUP says M.D. Anderson has never directly signed two documents the AAUP cites in raising concerns about how the center handles tenure, the AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure and its 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities.
The letter argues that the center’s tenure system was “established through an open, shared-governance process” and is structured to achieve a reasonable balance between the institution’s academic interests and its need to promote accountability in serving its patients and the broader public.
“We submit,” the letter says, “that the success of our institution in caring for the patients it serves is compelling proof that the balance has been appropriate.”