It's Up to Us, as Faculty Members, to Make Tenure and Promotion Judgments

It is our responsibility, as colleagues, to review the tenure and promotion case and make a judgment. The more important information is drawn from the faculty member’s own reading and assessment of the work of a tenure candidate. We can read the work, check out the work of presumed peers for comparison, and make sure the citation statistics are accurate. We cannot rely on the departmental committee, nor the statistics on citations provided by the administration. As I indicated in an earlier post, citation statistics are often misleading. And departmental committees may not be fair in assessing the letters or the work. It's up to us.

If we won't do it, the university committee will. They will check the citation stats, since one of the members will be curious enough to check. They will check if the committee report accurately reflects the record (letters, CV, etc). When they find that we have not been assiduous and in fact have been irresponsible, our credibility is likely to take a hit.

In general, we do not want to be known as used car salespeople, who know more about the car than the buyer, and are presumed to misrepresent its quality. [George Akerlok's Market for Lemons.] Hence the buyer offers much less than the dealer would like. Once it is discovered that we are like that salesperson, we won't be able to tenure those who are in fact good enough but not super superior.