UNC-CH Board of Trustees’ decision to deny Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones tenure over the explicit recommendation of the university’s faculty and administration dramatically illustrates the danger of giving Boards authority over academic hiring. (They offered her a five year position, with the possibility of a tenure review during that period.) In my last post, I stressed that Faculty Senates across the country must confront the inappropriate power Boards of Trustees enjoy over academic decision-making. The Chair of the Faculty at UNC-CH Mimi Chapman spoke to the Board of Trustees about its decision. With Associate Dean Chapman’s permission, I excerpt from her remarks here. She offered her comments to the Board in the spirit of educating members about how hiring decisions are made within a university. “Tenure decisions are never made lightly,” Chapman said, “and I’d like to briefly take you through the amount of faculty time that is devoted to any one tenure decision.” She continued:

First, letters are solicited from faculty members at other universities. Usually between four and six letters are solicited. Those faculty members, at other institutions, review a candidate’s file and compose a letter outlining strengths and weaknesses. When I do this type of review for other universities, it usually takes me at least two full days of work to complete the process. Six letters x 2, eight-hour days = 16 hours per letter x 6 = 96 hours of faculty time, which includes faculty from other universities; they help us as we help them. Next the full professors in a school or department review and come together to discuss a candidate. Let’s imagine, conservatively, that there are 10 full professors that meet to discuss. They each likely spend three hours reading the letters above and reviewing the candidate’s file prior to that meeting. 10 professors X 3 hours, plus meeting time = 32 hours. Next the file goes to the Appointments, Promotions, and Tenure Committee, a 12-member, elected committee that meets monthly for two to three hours. Each file is reviewed by a sub-committee of those twelve, in addition to a review from the whole group. Again, conservatively, it takes at least 3 hours or so to review one file. 12 members x 3 hours for one file = 36 hours. At that point, a final recommendation is made to the Provost about tenure for a given candidate. My back-of-the-envelope, conservative calculation means that approximately 164 hours of faculty time go into any one tenure decision. Divided by 8, that gets us to 20 plus, 8-hour days of faculty work for any one tenure decision. That excludes the time of the dean or department chair, staff time, and the time of the Chancellor and the Provost.

Finally, I want you to know that I speak to you as a great granddaughter and grand-niece of confederate soldiers. My father, who died this year at 99 years of age, lived with his Grandpa John, and loved him deeply. But the victory of Grandpa John’s life came, not from sweeping difficult truths under the rug and pretending bygones were bygones. Instead, through his faith—a faith that said “love your neighbor as yourself” and answers the question of “who is my neighbor with the return question of who is not” —he became a peacemaker and devoted himself to knitting his deeply divided community back together. Healing, and indeed light and liberty, lux et libertas, happen through deep listening to those we disagree with, through opening our minds and hearts to history that we don’t know or feels too threatening to believe. As faculty, we cherish these conversations; we are not afraid of them; and we know they make our world a better place over time. When we recommend tenure, we do so with a deep conviction that the person being tenured has ideas and work that are life changing and life affirming, even if that work and those ideas are controversial or difficult to sit with.

As Chair of the Faculty, I am inviting you to trust us in the exhaustive work that we do to make tenure recommendations. For me, I would choose to be your partner, and not your adversary. But partnership requires respect and at this moment, the faculty is not feeling that.