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CHARLOTTETOWN, a. E. l.

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By NAT HENTOFF reprinted from The Chevron

In the course of an academic year, I lecture at a different university at least one a week, more often twice. On the basis of conversations with students, faculty, and administrators more often twice. On the basis of conversa- tions with students, faculty, and administrators throughout the county —— and my own observa- tions —— I am convinced that those most resistant to fundamental changes in the American univer- sity are the tenured professors, the ones who have “made it” in the system and therefore op- pose basic changes in it because they are, after all, the system’s resplendent products. Protected for life through the sanctity of tenure, they cul- tivate their academic gardens — many of them quite tiny and specialized indeed.

u

Control of education is held by a privileged

hierarchy of teachers.

Are the students dissatisfied? Is the univer- sity out of touch with the needs and frustrations of the surrounding community? These are tran- sient squalls to most tenured professors, for they know that only death, retirement, or assassinat- ing a member of the boards of trustees can ever threaten their security.

Again and again, I have heard of thwarted plans for authentic student—initiated independent study, for really breaking through “disciplinary” boundaries in restructuring courses, for working together with community groups to liberate the resources of the university. In the way of these changes have stood the tenured, faculty, among them division chairmen, who have the essential decision—making power.

Again and again, I hear of and meet young, untenuredl faculty who. with students, have been energetically involved in formulating such chang" es. Some, besides, have been active with stud- ents in protests against the war, against racism, against university insular-ity. Repeatedly, it is these faculty members who do not get tenure be- cause the one who have already made it regard them as exacerbating, as “unprofessional,” as disturbers of the peace of the university.

The rigidity, moreover, of faculty bureau— cracy is beyond parody. An example: I was in- vited to give a freshman orientation lecture at an eastern school, located in a black ghetto. Until this year, the school’s admission policy had func- tioned almost as if there were no ghetto at all surrounding it. But finally, after disruptive pro~ tests the preceding spring, a markedly larger percentage of black students were to. be admit ted. A few days before I was to arrlve, a new faculty member wrote me that there were some things I ought to know if I didn’t want to walk into an ambush. The faculty committee that chose me as speaker, composed mainly of tenur- ed professors, was all white. The black students

had! not been consulted. But now the black studi- ents insisted on having their own speaker as well. The faculty committee, having already made its decision, was reluctant to give the black stud- ents" speaker any time on the program and they certainly wouldn’t pay ?him anything. All funds for freshman orientation day had already been allocated.

I called up the man on the committee who

had first contacted me and proposed that my fee be split in half with the speaker whom the black students had selected. “Sounds like a fine idea,” he Said.

Some vesitgial instinct about the nature of the senior faculty mind prompted me to make another call the day before I was to come.

“You’ve told the black students what I sug- gested,” I said to my original Contact at the school.

“Well, no, we haven’t,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Well, you see,‘ we have no procedure by which we can communicate with them.”

“How about the phone?” I asked.

“You don’t understand. There is no preced-

ent for changing the program in Ithsfi way. Nor V

is there a precedent for consulting a particular group of students about the nature of the pro gram.”

“OK. You either tell the black students what I’ve suggested or this will be the subject of my freshman orientation lecture.”

I didn’t take any chances though. I got the name of a leader of the black students, calledl [him directly, told him what was going on, and my proposal turned out: to be not so impossible to implement after all.

Two weeks later, at another school, I was told of a carefully worked out plan to bring a sizable number of the “underachieving” young people in the local town, white and black, into the college. It would require considerable extra work by faculty, but there were young teachers willing to do it. And it would require changing a number of the college’s venerable admission rules. The man who had worked out the design is a member of the administration. In his thirties, he is an energetic, knowledgeable educator, familiar with The Work of Edgar Friedenberg, John Holt (Chevron) and other figures who are subverting the “convetnional wisdom” of professional educa- tion.

“When does it start?” I asked him.

“It may not start at all,” he said. “The son.

ior faculty is very suspicious. This sort of thing has never been done here before. Some are also afraid it might make them do more teaching than they like to do, and teaching with unpredictable, sometimes quite forceful kids. My only chance is .to convince the senior faculty that for them noth- ing will change. Their fiefdoms, their preroga tives will remain exactly as they are. But the odds are against us.”

You don’t have to take my word concern- ing the degree to which tenured! faculty are a massive obstacle to change. Their obsession With

precedent—and their own manifold deficiencies as teachers—pervade the literature of criticism of the academy. And I don’t mean only the radi- cal critics. Clark Kerr, for example, writes that “few institutions are so conservative as the uni— vers1ties about their own affairs while their members are so liberal about the affairs of oth- ers; and sometimes the most liberal faculty member in one context is the most conservative in another . . . The faculty member who gets arrested as a ‘freedom rider’ in the South is a flaming supporter of unanimous prior faculty consent to any change whatsoever on his campus in the North . . . (And!) when change comes it is rarely at the instigation of this group . . . (the faculty) is more likely to accept or reject or comment, than to devise and propose.” ‘

Richard! Desmond, dean of faculties at Illi— nois State University, is more blunt: “The career interests of the faculty are pitted squarely against the educational interests of the: stud; ents.”

Why is this so? Look at how faculty mem- bers get promoted, at how they achieve tenure. Aside from the necessity of playing it cool on campus, of not becoming controversial (“Obse-

. quiousness to senior faculty is a great help,” a

maverick member of one university tenure com— mittee told me), an instructor on the way up knows he has to publish to make it. And to pub~ lish you have to do research. Teaching and other contacts with students become decidedly second- ary.

Because of this preference among the ten- ured faculty for research, the system is rigged against those who like to teach undergraduates and do it well. A young instructor quickly disL covers that the way to get ahead in. the aca- demic world is to find a position with the lightest possible teaching load in order to devote his: ma jor energies to research . . . If hegdevotes his energies to teaching and becomes and! excellent teacher, he will gain only a local reputation. Since such a reputation will be with students rather than with faculty colleagues, he is not likely to- be offered new appointments and may be denied tenure and promotion within his own situation. '

Only joint student— ‘

faculty committees ,

Should, have power of

promotion. Tenure

must be abolished.

To hell, then, with the students. And the quality of research? Look at it, if you can stand the. tedium, in the professional journals. Much of it is research engaged in only to get enough credit cards for tenure. Or, as Jacques Barzun