"From what I understand (second-hand info), personality not productivity drove this decision. He ran an unhappy lab, and he was arrogant even for MIT. I can definitely see that in the way he presents himself, so I can give credence to that explanation. Don’t know personally so he could be a great guy and I’m wrong, but there are valid reasons someone can be denied tenure even with research that goes above and beyond, and it isn’t hard to imagine that being the case here."
https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/sv34ez/tenure_d...
Well, let me tell you that the day I got a somewhat prestigious fellowship, one which comes with years of extra funding on the condition that the department gives you tenure, the secretary of the faculty came over and said "congratulations, but there won't be tenure for you". Next year, someone down the hall got the same fellowship, and they did promise her tenure immediately. It's terribly political, at least over here, and I've heard the same from other countries.
This is a topic very close to me and I could have responded to any one of a number of comments. I'm a little dismayed by some of the responses here; I think the comments speak as much in some ways to problems with academics and our vocational culture as much as anything.
I don't know the details of this case, and I'll acknowledge that there are slivers of the storytelling that strike me as odd. But what I can definitely say is that reading it, it seems very realistic to me in a way where it can be taken at face value.
In my former department, there were many cases like this, only with gender, and the department was sued. The university settled out of court for large sums of money, and faculty won tenure on appeal. Their cases sounded exactly like his.
Years afterward there were other problems that sounded very similar to this individual's situation, not involving gender. I've been on many promotion and tenure committees, and some outcomes were reasonable and some were absurdly biased and hypocritical. More problematic was the way people were treated after tenure. Over 1/3 of the faculty left, and 90% of the people in my area left. Another area basically vanished completely because they all chose to leave.
All of the people who were denied tenure and/or who left were very good, conscientious, socially skilled, cooperative people. In fact, as a whole, they were more reasonable, cooperative, and so forth than the department they left. That was the problem.
One of the things that's bothered me the most is in that time there have basically been zero consequences to the department. The university just chalks it up to internal squabbling, and wants to see the department do well, and assumes however they define that will be best. Hires are certainly not an issue because there's such an oversupply of very talented people that they can pick and choose, and people will go just because it's a tenure-track position finally. There's almost certainly a group outside the university who sees it as becoming a better department, because they are similar to those left behind.
What bothers me about some of the comments is this weird assumption many still have -- and I'm aware of this because it's how I used to see the world -- that it must be this person denied tenure who's the problem. That they're not cooperative, that they didn't do good enough research, and so forth and so on. And that might be the case. But sometimes departments are just ridiculously dysfunctional, so much so that basic assumptions you have about how workplaces should work just don't apply anymore. A lot of the responses here strike me as this typical case of "my life experiences have been that departments on the whole have been reasonable, so therefore everywhere is like this, and if anything suggests the contrary, it's a threat to my worldview so I'll just choose to reject it."
Maybe this happens everywhere, but I still feel like we haven't absorbed it into our vocational culture, that institutional environment matters. With academics in particular, I think the problem is amplified 100-fold, that the whole structure is based on these completely incorrect assumptions about what's going on, based on what was happening in the 1990s or something, and everyone has their heads in the sand about everything.
I'm not even sure where to go with my comments, because there's so many directions. Academics is so completely broken and dysfunctional I don't even know where to start.
Did the faculty member decide to stay, or go elsewhere? Most people would probably feel very uncomfortable about the lawsuit and outcome, even if it was ultimately vindicating.
Out of curiosity, what was the settlement in terms of multiples of annual salary? Are we talking 5x or 20x?
Having seen people go through the tenure process at peer institution, this sounds right. Your department writes up an internal assessment of you and solicits letters from faculty at other institutions. They can stack the deck in your favor, and to some extent against you, by choosing favorable or unfavorable letter-writers. The people who review a tenure file that the department writes up can push back or ask questions, but it would be difficult for them to undo the effect of a department's framing — if the department worked hard to shade it one way or the other.
> I finally got “an answer.” The president of MIT told me that tenure was not about research, productivity, or merit. It was about office politics & being liked by your department.
I don't think conclusion is warranted. Even if the people in a department don't want you around, if you have outside interest they would look like fools to have not tenured you. If you are sufficiently excellent to get outside interest from peer institutions, your home institution will be pressured to grant you tenure as well. They might not make you the most compelling offer to stay, but you will get tenure.