Tenure at the modern research university

A loyal reader asks that I write about tenure. So some thoughts:

First, tenure is constantly evolving. The system that we have in the United States, created with the notion of protecting academic freedom, has become multi-threaded: the version at many academic medical centers (at large research universities with a  medical school) has less to do with guaranteed salary and more to do with faculty prestige and rank. The version at large public research universities without medical schools is often backed by the tuition of students and carries with it, an implied teaching load with the potential for “course buy-downs” from research grants (although almost never to zero). At liberal arts colleges we find that tenure often brings the promise of salary growth (albeit slow and often non-meritocratic), substantial course loads and an explicit obligation to play a personal role in undergraduate education above and beyond the classroom.

Tenure in some countries in Western Europe resides nationally and can involve being assigned to a university in a potentially inconvenient town or city.

Finally tenure in some places is being rolled back to things like rolling 5 year contracts, with the general expectation of renewal, but no guarantee.

But the function of tenure, from my viewpoint, is now much more connected to the ability of institutions to retain talent and reward merit, than the original intent of protecting academic freedom–at least here in the States. That is not to say that tenure isn’t still invoked to protect the free expression of scholarship in the academy–it’s simply to recognize the reality that those occasions are quite rare.

One of the most interesting aspects of tenure is that it seems to be transferable within academia. This isn’t explicit, but by and large, having earned tenure at one institution of higher education, subsequent employment at a new school usually carries the old tenure decision forward (perhaps with promotion). This is both an aspect of a competitive market (it would be difficult to recruit a tenured faculty member without the promise of keeping their tenure at the new place) and the notion of tenure as an earned academic badge of merit (as for example the doctoral degree is also a badge).

By and large, I think tenure is a good thing. It allows an institute like Krasnow–which is able to grant tenure within George Mason University–to have a competitive edge against elite stand-alone centers which may not. But it is essential to keep in mind that tenure is not a license to dial back and become the proverbial dead wood.

Tyler Cowen’s view of the medium-term future for the US

Is here.  He heads towards Kurzweil I think with this:

People will write profound books and papers on how and why “status quo bias” has strengthened, and then one day some new technological development will change everything.

Read the whole blog entry, it’s really good. I sure hope he’s right about his version of “The Singularity“, because otherwise, I’m afraid climate change or nuclear war will bite us badly enough to rule out a technological fix.

Mount Holyoke College has a new President


Yesterday I had the honor of representing George Mason University for the inauguration of Lynn Pasquerella as its 18th President.  I have family roots in the Nation’s oldest women’s institution of higher education (1837) and it the pageantry was wonderful. But more stirring was Dr. Pasquerella’s speech which eloquently called for global social justice for women–and for MHC’s alumnae to lead that effort.

As an aside, the Fall Colors are just starting to burst forth in the Pioneer Valley. New England is just weeks away from its annual spectacular show of autumnal brilliance.

Anthony Gottlieb on the limitations of Science

A fine short essay from the Blog More Intelligent Life can be found here. Anthony is the former Executive Editor of The Economist.

His central point, which is well-taken, is that while the scientific method may be flawed, it’s the only game in town….Somewhat in the spirit of Winston’s Churchill’s view of democracy.

I would only add, that issue of publishing negative results he raises is somewhat overblown. Negative results that are truly paradigm-breaking, are newsworthy, and hence will find a scientific (and usually public) audience.  So for example the famed 1919 test of Einstein’s theory, not withstanding Einstein’s famous quote, would have definitely have been published even if the result had been negative.

The critical role of a scheduler

My scheduler is fabulous. So as I read Tony Blair’s new book, I thought the following quote just about sums it up:

“Kate Garvey was the gatekeeper, the custodian of the diary. There is a whole PhD thesis to be written by some smart political student about the importance of scheduling….to call it being ‘in charge of the diary’ is like calling Lennon and McCartney people who ‘wrote songs’.”
Tony Blair, My Journey, p. 22

Advanced Instrumentation Support at Research Universities

I’ve been thinking lately about the various mechanisms that research institutions use to both acquire and then subsidize advanced instrumentation such as MRI’s, Mass Specs, or Two Photon Microscopes. Obviously there are the direct charges to research grants, but in practice, that may not be enough–especially when there are technician salaries, depreciation costs and service contracts to worry about. So here’s a bleg: how does your institution support such shared equipment?  Are there cross-subsidies such as start-up packages?

Ending meteorological summer and the State of Krasnow

Here in Washington, we can already see the orange and red of leaves on the streets of our neighborhood. This weekend in the mountains, the passing of summer was even more abundantly clear with crisp temperatures, and the velvet Milky Way extending across the night skies, Cygnus nearing the zenith. This has been the hottest summer I can remember in Washington. But it also was the snowiest winter on record. A year for extremes I guess.

This past week I got a hardhat tour of the new Phase II construction including a harrowing trip up to the new roof. What a view! The new Krasnow will have have many more wet laboratories to complement our computer modeling. I hope to expand greatly on our translational research partnership with Inova Health Systems, to continue our investment in integrative neuroscience using the full spectrum of methods from molecular and cell biology, and to move into new model systems (for us) such as zebra fish. At the same time, we keep our eyes firmly on our bread and butter–the scientific opportunities that have already brought us success–in neuroinformatics, computational neuroscience, cognitive sciences and a massive integration of all of these areas with the computational tools for studying complex adaptive systems.

A week from this Monday, I’ll be giving the academic year’s inaugural Monday afternoon lecture on the State of the Institute. To telegraph a bit of my remarks, Krasnow is thriving, two decades following its founding.

As Earl Bears Down…we consider meritocracy

My favorite New England village, Woods Hole, hasn’t face the likes of this since Hurricane Bob visited us on August 19, 1991. That was a very exciting day.

In the meantime, I can recommend to loyal readers this wonderful post by Conor Friedersdorf while guest blogging at Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish. Conor, like myself, grew up in Southern California. His perspectives on the Ivys reflect my own conflicted ideas regarding the elite schools in the Northeast–yes, they are meritocratic, but no they don’t adequately serve as a good filter for membership in our society’s decision-making elite.