Tenure process under fire at panel discussion

By Sangeetha Ramaswamy

PATRICK MCGARVEY/YH Panelists debated tenure issues on Wed., Feb. 18.

TAC was formed last spring when "we got the news that both Diane Kunz and Sylvia Maxfield, two brilliant, well-known Yale professors, hadn't gotten tenure," student coordinator Tassi McKay, TD '00, said. In addition to fighting "institutional racism, sexism, and homophobia," the group also aims to promote several interdisciplinary studies to departmental status, which would make tenured positions available.

Among the panelists at the discussion were Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72, and several professors, including Lynne Huffer, a French professor who was denied tenure earlier this year. In addition to teaching in the French department, Huffer also taught a class in women's studies. She complained that the current tenure system "works against the development of innovative, risk-taking disciplines," and she described Yale as a "profoundly undemocratic institution."

McKay noted that in a recent Harvard study, Yale ranked 15th out of 17 Ivy and Ivy-type schools in the percentage of tenured female faculty. Currently, only 6.2 percent of Yale's tenured faculty is of minority background, and just 11 percent is female. Panelist Hazel Carby, chair of the African and African American Studies Department, complained that "most minority faculty are hired in relation to minority subjects, disciplines, and spheres of knowledge," leading to what she called "isolation" of minority professors.

However, Brodhead emphasized the need to "work with the system to make it produce outcomes." In response to Brodhead, Rachel Deutsch, ES '00, a TAC student coordinator, challenged the necessity of working within the system "if the outcome is so clearly restricting the high quality of education Yale promises." Brodhead maintained, though, that a "separate appointment process for women," would be "insulting and would certainly be resented."

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