The Tenure Crisis at Minnesota

Kinley Brauer
Copyright © Organization of American Historians

The crisis at the University of Minnesota over revision of its tenure code should concern faculties in colleges and universities throughout the United States. On September 5, the Board of Regents of the University of Minnesota presented the faculty with a revised code, prepared by the Washington law firm of Hogan and Hartson, that threatens the very basis of academic freedom. Although the Regents invited faculty comment, they clearly intended to adopt the code unaltered at their next scheduled meeting on October 10. As the chairman of the Board of Regents proudly announced, of all the university and college governing boards around the nation, only the Minnesota Board had the "guts" to get rid of outmoded and restrictive tenure codes. Governing boards across the nation, he implied, were watching Minnesota.

The hostility with which the faculty greeted the Regents' proposed tenure code was unprecedented both in its vehemence and its unanimity. From far left to extreme right, from beginning instructor to Regents' Professor, faculty members rose in unreserved opposition. The president of the university, Nils Hasselmo, openly denounced the Regents' proposal. Colleagues who had been trying without success for years to establish a collective bargaining agent for the faculty had no difficulty securing enough signatures within a week to call for a union election. Many and perhaps most of those supporting the union call did so in the explicit understanding that if enough signatures were collected, the Minnesota Bureau of Mediation Services would issue a "cease and desist" order preventing either the Regents or the administration from changing the "work conditions" at the university, thereby barring the Regents from imposing their new tenure code on the university. On September 13, the BMS accepted the union petition for election and issued its order preventing action until after the union election, which might not be until January or February.

The Regents' decision to revise the university tenure code stemmed from impatience with the university's inability over the past several years to respond effectively to shrinking revenues and its apparent difficulty in dismissing unproductive, unneeded, or troublesome faculty. Attempts by the administration to close campuses, departments, and programs produced only minimal savings, since the current tenure code obliges the university to relocate or retrain tenured faculty whenever possible. University proposals to close the dental and veterinary schools led to an uproar in the state that forced a retreat, and when the university recently attempted to close its General College, which is redundant in the community, expensive, and largely ineffective, the cry of "elitism" welled up from sectors of the community, and the Board of Regents voided the effort.

Central to the immediate crisis were problems in the scandal-ridden University of Minnesota Medical School and hospital, units in the university Academic Health Center (AHC). The hospital provides nearly 20 percent of the university's revenue, and much of its income is used to fund the salaries of the medical school faculty. Seriously declining revenues seemed to call for drastic action. In 1994, the university appointed William R. Brody of Johns Hopkins University as provost to help resolve the Medical School's difficulties.

Brody was determined to "re-engineer" the AHC along a corporate model. With the aid of the CSX Index consulting group and a team of lawyers, he lobbied the Regents and state legislators for fundamental changes in faculty governance and the promotion/tenure system. His goal was nothing less than moving governance from faculty to administration and removing all obstacles (including peer review) to dismissing tenured faculty. Brody was persuasive, and although the problems lay in the Medical School and hospital, he aimed at the destruction of tenure throughout the AHC. In January 1996 the Regents, not wishing to have different codes for different parts of the university, instructed President Hasselmo to begin a major reconsideration of its Tenure Code, and Hasselmo established a Tenure Working Group to review the current code. He promised to improve code's clarity, flexibility, and efficiency.

Unfortunately, Brody's continued criticism of tenure and his heavy-handed tactics in AHC, combined with the Regents' pronouncements on the desirability of restructuring the university along a corporate model, and individual Regents' incautious, ill-advised, and ill-informed criticism of tenure and "overpaid, underworked" faculty, created considerable anxiety on campus. Although the chair of the Tenure Working Group and Hasselmo went out of their way to assure the faculty that all discussions would be open and aboveboard and that academic freedom would not be weakened, few were convinced. When the Tenure Working Group suggested that some method had to be found to reduce the percentage of tenured faculty from 84 percent to 60 percent, that compensation had to be separated from tenure, that the maximum probationary period had to be extended, and that the university might need to hire more faculty on non-tenure lines, resistance mounted. In April, the Faculty Senate responded to considerable discontent and disbanded the Tenure Working Group. (At about the same time, Brody announced his resignation from the university to accept appointment as president of Johns Hopkins University.) The Faculty Senate decided to take over revision of the tenure code itself.

The Faculty Senate sought to meet the Regents' demands without weakening faculty governance and jeopardizing academic freedom. After several weeks of intensive effort, on June 10, 1996, the Senate adopted a "compromise" draft for the Regents' consideration. The Senators went a long way to appease the Regents. Among other things, the Senate draft called for post-tenure peer review, reduction of the salaries of non-productive faculty at 10 percent per year to a total of 25 percent of their base salary, and the option for colleges to extend the probationary period for tenure up to nine years. The Senate also accepted the requirement that the faculty Judiciary Committee, the chief guardian of academic freedom, appoint a legal consultant from outside the university to participate in committee deliberations. In all this, however, faculty members had full rights of appeal, and the authors of the Senate code carefully defined the procedures for termination or suspension of faculty in order to protect their academic freedom.

The Regents did not like the Senate compromise, which they believed did not go far enough. They hired the Hogan and Hartson firm, recommended to them by Brody, to draft a code more to their liking. The firm presented a new code to the Regents at a retreat last August, and the Regents accepted it without change. It is this tenure code that is the center of the present controversy. Authors of the Senate compromise present at the retreat were shocked to learn that several of the Regents had not even bothered to read the Senate code revision. The Washington lawyers had accepted all the concessions the Faculty Senate had offered but made no concessions of their own and had added a number of other provisions and changes that entirely altered the character of the tenure code and effectively destroyed its basic purpose. It appeared that "the experts" had scoured the nation for the most regressive policies and self-serving phrases in existing tenure codes, wrenched them out of context, and added a few variants of their own to the new draft.

Also upsetting, Hogan and Hartson had contacted the Regents individually when they prepared their revision, presented the copy without time for serious discussion or consideration, and delayed providing a copy to Hasselmo, whom the Regents then instructed to keep silent. The Regents chose to ignore Hasselmo's immediate warning of the consequences of adopting the document.

The major objections to the Regents' proposed tenure code relate to faculty compensation, post- tenure review, external control over research and teaching, discipline, and the character and authority of the all-important faculty Judiciary Committee.

  1. The proposed revisions permit administrators at the University, Collegiate, and Unit levels to reduce base salary of the faculty 10 percent per year without limit for individual faculty members as well as for defined groups of faculty, and faculty members may be suspended without pay and without prior warning. Justification for such action need only be the statement that there are "compelling reasons" for such action 3there is no requirement that the "compelling reasons" be made explicit. Faculty redress is restricted to the grievance process, which excludes consideration of academic freedom issues. As many critics point out, the ability to reduce salary without proper guarantees and safeguards renders all other pledges to preserve academic freedom meaningless.
  2. The Senate compromise provides for post-tenure review and emphasizes protection for faculty academic freedom and procedures for aiding non-productive faculty and those in trouble to improve their work and begin anew. The Regents' code shifts the approach from collegial help and support to punishment. Peers can not participate in annual reviews, and peer participation anywhere in the process is vague and ambiguous. There is no protection of academic freedom in the post-tenure review.
  3. The Regents' code empowers administrators to discontinue teaching and research programs that may be defined as narrowly as the work of an individual faculty member. Discontinuance requires 60 day notice. If the university decides it would be "impractical" to relocate faculty in a different program, it could dismiss the faculty member after one year's notice. The burden or proof is placed on a faculty member when the administration deems such retraining or reassignment impractical.
  4. Perhaps the most infamous and alarming section in the Regents' code is the provision that permits unlimited salary reduction or dismissal of tenured faculty if they do not maintain "a proper attitude of industry and cooperation with others within and without the university community." This extends University authority over faculty engaged in activities outside the University and in the community. "Proper attitude" is never defined, and the university is required only to state that "adequate cause" exists for disciplinary action.
  5. The Regents' proposed revisions effectively undermine the Judiciary Committee by requiring the committee to appoint a lawyer from outside the university to preside at its hearings. Furthermore, all committee procedure and rule changes must be approved by the Regents, and committee decisions are advisory to the President who is free to ignore them without explanation or justification.

Opposition to the Regents' revised code began with the faculty but now has spread to the broader community. The local press, which is not noted for its sympathy or support for the university, has questioned the proposals, and a large number of alumni/ae have protested directly to the Regents. Members of the state legislature have strongly criticized the Regents, and the Regent initially most instrumental in setting up the revision process and most determined to push the proposed code through has now appealed to her colleagues to withdraw it. Meanwhile, union organizers have merged into a broadened American Association of University Professors (AAUP). If collective bargaining is established, the faculty agent will be the local AAUP, which has the full support of the national office.

It now appears that the Regent's tenure code will not be imposed immediately on the university. The threat remains, however, and the thrust toward re-engineering universities along corporate models, toward removing or weakening tenure protection for academic freedom, and generally toward reducing the scope of faculty governance will continue whatever happens at Minnesota.

Those interested in the details of the tenure controversy and the texts of the two tenure codes may find them on the Internet at:

Kinley Brauer is chair of the History Department at the University of Minnesota .