Tennessee System Renews Call for Post-Tenure Review. Faculty See a Threat.

Professors at the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus are wary of a systemwide proposal that calls for tenured faculty members to go through post-tenure review — a process that many faculty see as punitive and a tool to potentially strip them of tenure.

“What this amounts to is the end of tenure at this university,” Monica Black, an associate professor of history and president of the campus’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, told the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Faculty members at the Knoxville campus met on Tuesday night to discuss the proposed change.

When institutions began implementing post-tenure review in the 1990s, the hope was that it would rid departments of “deadwood” by periodically taking stock of professors’ teaching, research, and service to gauge their productivity. It’s an evaluation tool that has long been viewed as ripe for abuse by administrators eager to get rid of tenured faculty.

This isn’t the first time Tennessee faculty have pushed back against proposed changes to tenure. In 2015, the Tennessee system’s Board of Trustees called for tenure policies to be revisited as part of a cost-cutting plan that included a reference to the potential “enacting of a de-tenure process.” That language was later retracted.

The current proposal, put forth by the system administration, follows a two-year review of the methods used to evaluate tenured faculty that was put forth in the 2015 plan, the News Sentinel reported, and it led to a new process that was put in place last fall.

A system spokeswoman told the News Sentinel that the system is still taking input from faculty and that the proposal could change.

Other public institutions have recently proposed changes to their tenure policies. The University of Arkansas system is considering changes that include allowing “a pattern of disruptive conduct or unwillingness to work productively with colleagues” to be among the reasons a professor can be fired. Faculty at Arkansas say that collegiality — or a lack of it — shouldn’t be grounds for termination.

Audrey Williams June is a senior reporter who writes about the academic workplace, faculty pay, and work-life balance in academe. Contact her at audrey.june@chronicle.com, or follow her on Twitter @chronaudrey.