H 32°, L 7° | Tomorrow: 
H 17°, L 4°Everyone can remember a particular teacher from his or her educational history that simply wasn’t cut for the job. My otherwise outstanding Wisconsin public high school, where I received a full and rigorous preparatory education, had one particular egregious veteran of the classroom. We all know the stereotype: couldn’t keep control of the class, couldn’t keep lesson plans organized, couldn’t challenge students with difficult concepts, or just outright didn’t want to be in front of a score of teenagers for hours each day. In my particular instance, guidance counselors and school administrators admitted privately to several of my peers and their parents they knew the particular teacher shouldn’t be in a classroom, but did so with a look that combined pity with indignity. The school was hamstrung from taking action, as WEAC’s (the state teachers’ union) collective bargaining power prevented dismissal unless overt misconduct could be established. Plain sloppiness was not a sufficient pejorative to meet due process in terminating an ineffective teacher, in spite of the fact that so many unspoken lines had been crossed and students were being shortchanged.
Similar situations are present on this campus. Though the TAA will never admit it, all undergraduates will study under a Teaching Assistant who isn’t up to snuff during their careers at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Whether ill versed in the material, unhelpful at exam time or just plain lazy, the bad TA is a universal bane of the undergraduate existence at this university. But the true tragedies are that the remarkably slim possibility for recourse by students shortchanged by poor TAs and that the rewards for being an excellent TA, working hard on behalf of students day in and day out, are almost non-existent. Thankfully, with the nature of graduate work, TA turnover rate is relatively high compared to high school teachers. A bad TA can ruin a course but can’t sour a department.
Not so with tenured professors. Student regent Beth Richlen concedes the one aspect of university life upon which the regents are most unwilling to interfere is the tenure process. When UW-Superior professor John Marder was dismissed in 1998 under vague allegations of uncollegial misconduct, faculty committees from each campus in the state rushed to condemn the circumstances of his dismissal. It is no coincidence University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill’s faculty peers at institutions across the country failed to condemn him where political leaders leapt at the chance. The power to grant tenure and the protections for academic freedom tenure provides are worth dogged protection from political interference in the name of academic freedom, especially at state universities. When legislatures start mussing in the particulars of classroom speech, their efforts must be so intrusive as to be destructive to the honest consideration of difficult or unpopular ideas.
But Churchill has left CU with an image problem extending far beyond his ludicrous political commentary, which taken alone can’t proscribe termination. If unrealistic political views were cause for termination from this or any university, faculty lounges would quickly go the way of the buffalo. More difficult are Churchill’s now-confirmed acts of plagiarism and academic misconduct that have CU’s vultures circling about his head. The university has appointed a task force to make a comprehensive review of Churchill’s viability at the school. University President Elizabeth Hoffman has already announced her resignation over the matter.
The Denver Post reports a buyout of Churchill’s contract is in the works. Rather than fight the battle of tenure revocation and establishing guidelines for misconduct that can be universally applied as points of law, CU is flirting with soliciting private donations to finance Churchill’s early retirement. Clearly, paying off erroneous behavior in the academy sets a dangerous precedent. What might we hear out of some professors’ mouths if the pot at the end of the rainbow can be found with a little politically incorrect commentary? This is the difficulty with political intrusion into the classroom.
The bottom line: public employees are hard to fire by the letter of the law, and even more so when a tenure committee or union bargaining unit stands behind their employment status on principle alone. Turning a blind eye to standards in the classroom assures only a more universal low and saps the power of the student. To borrow from Ralph Nader, consumers must be empowered.
All students fill out the obligatory TA and professor evaluation forms presented them at the close of each semester. Most seem to go about the ritual casually, always unsure if the next 10 minutes of their lives might be better spent enjoying the warmth of spring on a walk down Bascom Hill. How much more seriously might students take those surveys, in their present or a more formal incarnation, if some quantitative assurance on how the given department handles personnel decisions could be clarified? One wonders if students might find office doors cracking open, lectures a touch crisper and if Churchill might not have been exposed long ago.
Eric B. Cullen ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in history.
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Marder’s termination wasn’t because of “vague allegations.” He went to NYC with a 19 year old undergrad, got drunk, and tried pushing an “erotic novel” on her; he had similar romantic leanings towards a 20 year old foreign exchange student of his; and he violated UW System financial policies. Whether or not that rises to a level worthy of loss of tenure is a legitimate point to ponder, but dismissing it all as “vague allegations” certainly don’t convey the truth of the matter.
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Pardon me, I meant “doesn’t.” Unless of course, “don’t” gets me more cred.
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Interesting article…not original, but important to get out there. As for the comment about “cred” above…well, I guess pretense and prejudice can be funny sometimes.
Course/teaching evaluations could be one measure, but it’s important to note that studies have found a strong positive correlation between high evaluations and high grades. I know there are exceptions to this — yes, some students do give high evaluations to teachers who give them bad grades because they appreciated the challenge and respected the grade, etc. — but those are exceptions/outliers. If tenure/post-tenure review was influenced by student evaluations, more grade inflation might come with it…and, perhaps, less integrity, less learning…
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Cullen, you make one significant misstep in this article. After arguing that academic misconduct is what makes Churchill unviable as a professor, then you argue that perhaps professors will become more politically incorrect if they want their tenure bought out. That’s a logical inconsistency, since you were arguing that it wasn’t because Churchill is a flamethrower, it’s that he plagarizes that is getting him in trouble. Look, most thinking people find Churchill’s comments a bit off the map. However, as has been rehashed in these pages, that doesn’t mean he can’t say them as an academic. However, if he’s plagarizing, then he can go, tenured or not. He did invite all this scruitny by getting as much attention as he does. Still, you do the standard conservative two-step here. You argue one sound point (tenured professors shouldn’t be allowed to be shitty teachers) and replace it at the last second with something else (shitty teachers might get shittier to get out of their jobs with a big paycheck). I just don’t see that happening, and this is simply one more of those “Awww, we’re poor conservative students,” type screeds.
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Bottom line: while there are many good teachers at UW, the system rewards research, not teaching. No one gets tenure because they give 120% rather than 100% in the classroom (or 75%); you will if you write extra publications instead. The incentive system is the major problem, IMO, but it’s standard for major universities, and I don’t see it changing.
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All in all a solid article, I believe. I think we have long since passed the point where the negative aspects of tenure have outweighed the postive. The process puts strain on both ends of the system- because tenure is so important, many potentially good professors are passed over, and many proven poor ones are kept on after they have been protected.
The unions in primary education and tenure in secondary have made firing incompetent people nearly impossible, sad commentary on such an important profession.
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I hope the fourth poster will rise up in defense of summers from harvard, because his only transgression was questioning the validity of the politically correct assumptions behind gender differences in scientific achievement.
He never actually encouraged the murder of more americans, as churchill did.
What you are doing is the Liberal two step, it is free speech when it hurts people I don’t like or maybe I agree with it. But then when it is not politically correct or supports a republican idea then it is no longer free speech.
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Americans deserve repression and a little bit of facism. They don’t value what they have.
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I think we should just fire any professors that say anything liberal. That way we only have to hear what we already believe. Since the media is conservative, the gov’t is conservative and the business world is conservative, if we get rid of the academics we can only be taught and listen to things that we already believe in the first place. I don’t go to classes to be challenged, I go there so I can get my diploma and get out of here and make some money to buy a new $3000 HDTV and a BMW.
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^put down the crack pipe for a second. The media is liberal, corporations are out to make money and conveniently donate to whatever candidate they think will win, and universities are off the charts to the left.
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The media is NOT liberal. It is owned by the same corporations that are inherently conservative-using conservative here to mean a conglomerate of big money using hotbutton issues that are socially conservative to promote a pro-business,anti-citizen agenda. If corporations are out to make money, why are they going to allow their news bureaus to print/broadcast content that would get in the way of their bottom line? They won’t thus they are not highlighting the miserable lies and failure of Bush’s administration: spiraling deficits, ridiculous SS plans.
THE MEDIA IS NOT LIBERAL (If you think it is, please explain to me how it possibley could be is in any shape or manner. Why would GE allow anything to be said against the War in Iraq when it is making billions and billions of dllars off of it?)
The gov’t is controlled by conservatives because the corporate run media will not print/air stories that show the American public how they are getting screwed by the neocons.
Some academics are “liberal”, it depends on the dept, but they are liberal in a liberal humanist way, not a kneejerk liberal way. If they are knee-jerk nonthinking liberals then I have as much contempt for them as for a kneejerk conservatives, like you.
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Academia is totally lacking in intellectual diversity! For example, only 1% of professors at Stanford believe in telepathy as compared to 36% of the rest of the population; only ONE professor there claimed belief in astrology - TOTALLY out of whack with the 25% of America that believes the position of planets and stars influences their lives. It’s worse than you think!