A Black faculty member at the University of Virginia whose tenure denial became a cause célèbre last month has now been recommended for tenure by his dean.
Paul C. Harris, an assistant professor in Virginia’s counselor-education program, gained widespread support on social media and from prominent scholars last month after announcing his tenure bid had been denied, The Chronicle reported. An internal review committee told Harris that his denial reflected a lack of scholarly productivity, but the committee cited inaccurate publication data, Harris said.
And the professor and his supporters questioned whether those reviewing his dossier understood Harris’s discipline well enough to weigh in on his work. There were no people of color on Harris’s original promotion-and-tenure committee, and Harris told The Chronicle that he knew the identities of two of the three members of the internal review committee that evaluated his work, both of whom were white. That lack of representation, his allies said, amounted to racial bias.
Thousands, including many alumni and faculty members, signed a petition supporting Harris’s tenure case. On June 24, Robert C. Pianta, dean of UVa’s Curry School of Education and Human Development, informed Harris in a letter that he planned to “re-open” the case. Pianta wrote that he would add “two full Professors who can provide additional perspective on your work” to the promotion-and-tenure committee charged with reviewing Harris’s file. (Harris provided a copy of the letter to The Chronicle.)
On Friday, exactly one month later, Harris was called to a meeting with Pianta and Maite Brandt-Pearce, the vice provost for faculty affairs. (Harris requested Brandt-Pearce be present at the meeting.) In the meeting, Pianta told Harris he’d been recommended for promotion and tenure.
“I think there are systems and processes that can be improved, and I think my case highlighted that,” Harris said in an interview. “It took a lot longer than I would have liked for that decision to be made, but I’m grateful that it was made.”
The provost, M. Elizabeth Magill, who initially rejected Harris’s appeal, also signed off on the decision. “I was happy to support Dean Pianta’s decision to review professor Paul Harris’s appeal and grant him tenure based on the additional information he provided,” Magill said in a statement provided by a university spokesman. “Professor Harris is an excellent educator and UVa is fortunate to have him.” The recommendation will now be sent to the university’s Board of Visitors for final approval.
Harris said he wasn’t aware of any additional information presented in his appeal that was not in his original tenure dossier, or of the specifics of why administrators decided to review his case.
“I don’t know what happened, or what it took, or what shifted and where,” Harris said. “I just know that it took longer than we would have liked. But we’re grateful for the outcome, because it’s what we always felt was right.”
Now, Harris said, he and his family — his wife, Taylor Harris, initially publicized her husband’s case in an essay for Catapult and led a #TenureForPaul campaign on Twitter — will reflect on all that’s happened since Harris was told on January 31 his tenure bid had been denied.
“We’re now beginning to take inventory of where we’ve been over that seven months, mentally and psychologically,” Harris said. “I’m just happy to have heard those words of, ‘We’re recommending you for promotion and tenure,’ so that we can begin that healing process as a family.”
The systemic issues that he saw undergirding his case, Harris said, are also on his mind. “As happy as I am about me — and I am — I think the bigger picture is how many people could go through the same thing if nothing changes,” he said. “That turns my stomach even more.”
Harris said he’ll continue to advocate for equity in promotion-and-tenure processes, which he said must involve more robust pre-tenure annual reviews and an assurance that scholars’ work is properly contextualized by promotion-and-tenure committees. The latter, he said, “requires pushing back on what we would call standard indices that have guided people’s thinking around what quality means and how those metrics, many times, privilege some and marginalize others’ work.”
Pianta, the dean, also expressed a need for a change, in a memo to his faculty provided to The Chronicle by the university.
“I know I, and we, have gained a number of insights on the P&T process, both as our process intersects with emerging trends in academia and in part through the review of Paul Harris’s tenure appeal,” Pianta wrote. “I have begun to consider the effects of the changing shape of the publication landscape and the extent to which traditional indicators, such as impact factors and citation counts, may be more or less relevant for some fields than others.”
