Stanford Report, April 1, 1998
Sawislak to appeal denial of tenure to Advisory Board
BY DIANE MANUEL
Karen Sawislak, assistant professor of history, says she will file a tenure appeal with university President Gerhard Casper for referral to the Advisory Board.
Sawislak's tenure appeal to Provost Condoleezza Rice, filed Jan. 7, was denied in a letter Rice sent Sawislak on March 18.
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"I am deeply disappointed by the provost's decision," Sawislak said. "Her action shows that it is possible for an assistant professor to have a promotion file that contains extremely enthusiastic evaluations of scholarship and teaching by professional peers and students, to win the overwhelming endorsement of that record by senior colleagues in a first-rank department and still be judged unworthy of tenure at Stanford by the administration."
Sawislak said that although Rice's decision "has severely undermined my hopes that the grievance process can lead to a fair or just result," she will take her appeal to the Advisory Board.
Tenure cases generally are considered confidential, and Rice declined to comment on the specifics of Sawislak's case. But the provost addressed two issues that she said have been raised recently in the press.
"The first is one of university governance," Rice said. "Under Stanford's long-established system of tenure review, the dean is the principal university officer with responsibility for faculty quality in the school. Tenure is granted to those who have achieved true national distinction in research and excellence in teaching. It is a very tough standard, and the dean must decide whether it has been met and make certain that the standard is applied evenly throughout the school. A departmental vote, even a unanimous one, does not usurp the dean's role in this regard.
"The provost and, in turn, the Advisory Board, assure consistency across the university and recommend appointments finally to the president," Rice said. "On appeal, higher levels of review are not expected to substitute their substantive judgments for those of the decision maker. Rather, they are to make certain that there were no violations of procedures."
Sawislak, a specialist in American labor history, was unanimously approved for tenure by her department last winter, with one abstaining vote. The Committee on Appointments and Promotions, an advisory board to the dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, also voted to approve Sawislak for tenure, but her promotion was turned down by Dean John Shoven on April 10. Sawislak filed a grievance with Shoven in October which he denied.
Rice said the second issue that concerns her is the role of affirmative action in faculty hiring and promotion.
"At the time of tenure review, affirmative action considerations should not be brought to bear on individual cases," she said. "This is made explicitly clear in the 1985 policy document 'Procedures and Criteria for Appointment, Reappointment, and Promotion of Faculty in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford.'"
That document reads as follows: "Affirmative action, an important University and School policy, is focused on two aspects of a scholar's career: the time of search and appointment, and the assistant professorship years. Affirmative action does not include separate standards of evaluation at the time of review for tenure or of appointment to tenure from the outside."
After Sawislak filed an appeal with the provost in January, Rice appointed a grievance officer to review her case. The report of that officer is cited in the letter Sawislak received from the provost.
Sawislak said the grievance officer found that her case "pointed to a lack of clarity in the university's policies concerning affirmative action in general and the recruitment and retention of women faculty in particular."
However, the provost found that Shoven did not violate university policies in reaching his decision, Sawislak said. She said Rice "stated explicitly [in her letter of March 18] that Dean Shoven has no obligation to apply affirmative action concerns as he makes decisions about promotion."
That finding by the provost "once again raises grave doubts about the university's professed commitment to faculty diversity," Sawislak said. She also suggested that it "reopens important questions as to why women are so vastly underrepresented in the ranks of the professoriate."
"It is clear that such dangerous and unjust policies can only hurt Stanford in the long run," Sawislak added.
Sawislak said the provost concluded that Shoven's decision was reached by "applying the most negative possible reading to my tenure file, and that this is appropriate and reasonable under the parameters of Stanford's process."
The grievance officer assigned to her case found "that there is a lack of alignment between the history department and the H&S dean concering the criteria for evaluating scholarly quality and productivity in tenure decisions," Sawislak said, but "the provost rejected my contention that I had received what turned out to be inaccurate and misleading advice concerning these criteria from senior colleagues throughout my pre-tenure career."
Sawislak added that the provost's decision "appears to absolve the university of any obligation to offer correct advice and mentoring to candidates for promotion."
Senior professors in the history department expressed disappointment with the provost's decision.
"I deeply regret this decision," said George Fredrickson, the Edgar E. Robinson Professor in United States History and chair of the 12,000-member Organization of American Historians. "I think that it constitutes an injustice to the candidate and a lack of respect for the professional competence of the history department."
Estelle Freedman, professor of history and chair of the Program in Feminist Studies, said, "It will be a great loss to the history department and to Stanford for Karen to leave. I will lose an outstanding colleague and students will lose an outstanding teacher."
Sawislak's case has been the focus of intense undergraduate and graduate activism. Students organized the Coalition to Tenure Karen Sawislak last spring, and much of their effort has addressed issues of faculty diversity and teaching excellence.
Last month Sawislak was offered two prestigious fellowships. She was one of 35 scholars chosen from a pool of more than 600 candidates for a fellowship at the National Humanities Center (NHC), and she also was awarded a fellowship at the Charles Warren Center for Research in American Culture at Harvard University.
"The fact that Karen
managed to win one of these much coveted [NHC]
fellowships testifies to the high quality of her work and
the national recognition that work has earned," said
Paul Robinson, the Richard W. Lyman Professor in the
Humanities. SR