Inside the Blackwood contract controversy

On Tues., Feb. 29, senior members of Yale's history department decided not to renew the contract of Assistant Professor and Russian and Eastern European Studies DUS Lee Blackwood, GRD '95. In an unusual and possibly unprecedented move, the department's full committee reversed the unanimous renewal recommendation of its own three-person review committee.

Blackwood, who was informed of the decision on Mon., Mar. 6, said he was "disillusioned"—and he's come out swinging. On Thurs., Mar. 23, he officially began to appeal the decision by taking his case to Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72, as outlined in the Faculty Handbook, and requested that the entire department—not just the senior members that rendered the decision—get to hear his case. He believes he is being punished for comments he made in a March 1999 memo criticizing the members and practices of the department. "At the heart of this decision lie not questions about my performance, but rather my sins against the accepted way of doing business at this place," he alleges in a column titled, "Confessions of a Junior History Professor," that will appear in the Yale Daily News on Mon., Mar. 27.

FILE PHOTO History professor Lee Blackwood feels that he was wrongly denied a contract renewal, and he wants to air his grievances with the department.

While the department's Tues., Feb. 29 deliberations were supposed to be strictly confidential, a Herald investigation into what went on behind closed doors has shed light on what factors led to the unusual reversal. Even though no professor would reveal his or her vote, several members of the department confirmed that Blackwood's professional conduct played a prominent role in the full committee's debate. And while different accounts of the impact of Blackwood's memo on the department's decision have surfaced, it's clear that the harshly critical document made a lasting impression on many department members.

Recommendation and reversal

The road to the department's decision on renewing Blackwood's four-year contract began in late January, when a review committee composed of Professors Ivo Banac, Frank Turner, GRD '71, and Frank Snowden began a standard third-year review of Blackwood's teaching, professional service, and scholarship. According to Professor Paul Kennedy, the bar for such a renewal is fairly low. "It's not a high hurdle, and in most cases it goes through," he said.

The committee met with Blackwood, considered several of his articles, and at the Tues., Feb. 29 department meeting, recommended renewal in an oral presentation. According to a Mon., Mar. 6 letter from Department Chair Jon Butler to Blackwood given to the Herald by Blackwood, the trio praised Blackwood's "often excellent teaching evaluations ...publication of several articles...and service."

While several professors emphasized that the review committee's recommendations are not given a rubber stamp, reversal by a full committee in assistant professor renewal decisions is rare. In fact, Henry Turner, a 42-year veteran of the department, Cynthia Russett, GRD '64, Nancy Cott, Butler, and Kennedy all could not recall a positive review committee renewal recommendation being overturned.

Those involved agree that Blackwood's renewal—not the only one up for consideration at the meeting—was carefully considered with arguments on both sides. "The tenor was one of thoughtful discussion and interchange—it wasn't conflictual," Cott recalled.

As Butler wrote in his letter to Blackwood, concerns in the full committee over "the prospects for realizing the promise of your dissertation as a successful book and about your professional service and performance within the department and the University" were responsible for its decision. But Kennedy said the former criterion wasn't really a matter of concern and that he even spoke on behalf of Blackwood's dissertation and scholarship.

The latter criterion, however, was. According to Kennedy, Blackwood's conduct was the primary complaint levied against the assistant professor. "I would say that there were worries about collegiality towards other members of the department," he said. He added that he was among those who voiced such concerns, but said that he didn't expect their effect to be so great. "I assumed that the rest of the department would go on and vote him through. [The outcome] was much to my surprise."

For Blackwood, this is where his memo enters the fray. Kennedy and Cott said explicitly that the memo itself wasn't mentioned at the meeting, but Blackwood alleges that Butler referred him to the memo in explaining the department's decision and believes that it caused the reversal.

"The recent decision not to renew my contract was taken under the influence of last March's memo," he said. In his upcoming column, Blackwood is even more explicit. "In my single-most egregious transgression, I confess to composing and circulating a no-holds-barred exposé on actions that violated even those fuzzy `rules' governing the status of junior faculty that do exist here....[T]his exposé broke the `golden rule': `junior professors are to be read, not heard.'"

Exposéd

The "exposé" itself is a scathing critique of the actions taken by senior department members in their search for a senior-level professor in post-1917 Russian history. The harshest words are directed at Kennedy, whom the memo alleges exerted improper influence on the search by writing a letter advocating the candidacy of Stanford University Professor Norman Naimark, even though Kennedy was not on the search committee. "Procedurally, it is a mystery to me how a senior-level search at Yale University can be obstructed, delayed, and twisted by the apodictic, unilateral steps of senior colleagues willing, at best, to circumvent, and, at worst, to trample on accepted professional standards," the memo states. Naimark was never offered the position.

(The search, the Herald has learned, is still ongoing. Butler confirmed that the department extended an offer to Sheila Fitzpatrick, a professor at the University of Chicago. But according to Kennedy, Fitzpatrick told the department that she decided not accept the position a few days ago.)

The memo also attacks Kennedy for his influence on junior appointments. "The employment of people sponsored by Paul Kennedy absent the requisite debate about qualifications and departmental needs has become all too commonplace," it reads. "We can hardly afford a situation in which the whims of a single colleague concerned about his own declining enrollments and the identity crisis afflicting his own field prevent us from attracting the best young minds."

For his part, Kennedy denied pushing Naimark's candidacy and did not take the memo too seriously. "I thought that since Lee started from the wrong premise and built up on that, that anyone who knew what was going on in the history department would know that it just didn't make sense," he said. "It seemed kooky." That said, Kennedy said Blackwood's decision to send it to the whole department was unprofessional. "It was not a good step," he said.

Without a doubt, the memo made a splash: every professor contacted for this story recalled the memo a year after it was written. "I was surprised when the memo came out," said Professor John Gaddis, a member of the Russian search committee and target of the memo's criticism. "It was unusual for a professor not on a search committee to send a memo like that."

Cott characterized the memo as intemperate. "The tone of the complaint was out of scale with what was going on, and the accusations were not correct from what I know about the search," she said. Russett reported that she "talked with Lee about it—as did others who were friends—in a way that I hoped would be helpful." The impact of the memo on professors' decision-making calculus remains unclear.

The road from here

The ball is now in Brodhead's court. While he would not comment on contact with Blackwood, according to the Handbook, Brodhead's role is to launch an informal investigation and try to reach a resolution in the next two weeks. He cannot, however, reverse the decision. Blackwood hopes that the whole department can review his case. "Because of the long-standing pattern of abuse, these matters need to be aired in a full departmental meeting with a transcript kept for the archives," he said. No history professor, however, could remember the department ever considering a reversal.

If Brodhead does not resolve the problem, Blackwood can appeal to Provost Alison Richard, who can attempt to resolve the matter informally or refer it to a standing committee for investigation before making a decision. Blackwood has not announced whether he would submit an appeal to the Provost.

In the meantime, some of Blackwood's former students have decided to take action. According to Jonathan Levy, BR '00, a history major who has taken two courses with Blackwood, he and some fellow students are writing a petition to deliver to Brodhead and Butler. "I heard Lee's contract had not been renewed, and other students and I thought it was basically ridiculous," he said. "Numerous people I've talked to are really upset about it."

If Blackwood is forced to move on, several colleagues said that he would be missed. "Lee Blackwood is a talented, energetic guy with lots of ideas, and in many ways I'll miss him as a colleague," Professor John Merriman said. Russett added, "He had skills that are not duplicated by anyone else in the department. In that sense, we will feel his absence."

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