Uncollegiality, Tenure and the Weasel Clause

Collegiality plays an important role in establishing the identity of individuals within the academy and is a quality widely supported by institutions of higher education. While it may manifest itself within the academy in a multitude of different ways, collegiality is most clearly exemplified through actions such as working productively with others, treating one's colleagues as equals, respecting the ideas and ideals of one's colleagues (even if one disagrees with them), and taking an active and constructive role in the shared stewardship of the one's college or university. Collegiality is both a way of being in the academy as well as a productive and powerful force that may be utilized for the betterment of both individuals and institutions. When collegiality is present, individuals and institutions usually thrive; when it is absent, individuals and institutions often suffer.

Although there are a number of intriguing directions that a discussion of collegiality in higher education may take, of particular interest for those who care as well about the future of the tenure system is the important discussion that has developed in the past few years about denying tenure on the basis of "uncollegiality."¹ One of the major issues raised in this discussion is whether "collegiality" should be an explicit area of tenure evaluation in addition to teaching, scholarship, and service. Another issue is the current use of buried clauses in tenure policy to deny individuals tenure when they have met or exceeded requirements in teaching, scholarship, and service. These "weasel clauses" have been aptly described as "the often hidden clause in the university handbook that specifies that tenure and other appointment decisions need not be based on articulated criteria that can be objectively measured . . ." (Singer 2002, para. 3).

The latter use of collegiality is more pernicious to the future of the tenure system than the former. Whereas attempts to introduce collegiality as a fourth criterion of tenure evaluation positively establish the importance of collegiality in the institution, hidden collegiality clauses insinuate that collegiality is only relevant in a negative sense.

Introducing collegiality as a fourth criterion for tenure directly indicates the value of collegiality to the university in considerations of permanent employment and says that we should make an effort objectively to evaluate collegiality in itself, difficult though this may be. Hidden clauses, on the other hand, give the indication that collegiality is only relevant when all other means of dismissing an individual have failed, and that collegiality is an important subjective criterion that can override all objective considerations. It is important that faculty have faith in the objectivity of the tenure system, and the negative use of collegiality clauses gives one cause for doubt.

Though hidden tenure policy clauses may be disturbing, they should not be unexpected. Perhaps even more than the explicitly evaluated triumvirate of teaching, scholarship and service, these clauses protect universities against the procedural necessity to permanently hire people that they do not wish to accept into the power structure of their institutions. And, unfortunately, evaluations of scholarship, teaching and service do not always explicitly express the power relationships that the evaluated individual maintains with the other members of the institution, either locally at the program, unit, or department level, or more broadly with all the other members of the institution.

Collegiality, when it is raised seemingly ad hoc by institutions unwilling to tenure otherwise qualified individuals, is in part a statement about the power structure of the institution. Collegiality, in its most ideal and significant sense, concerns what might be called "collegial power": a power structure whereby each member of a college or university is vested with an equal proportion of power. One sense of collegiality limits the range of power to the institution with whom the individual is employed, whereas another sense of collegiality broadens the range of power to span colleges and universities in general. The former sense of collegiality might be termed the internal sense, and the latter the external sense. Given these two senses of collegiality, it is possible for evaluations of scholarship, teaching and service conducted at the college or university level to overlook entirely...