Academic Law
Mary Smith is an untenured assistant professor of political science. She is in her fifth year on the tenure track and will be evaluated for tenure beginning next month (it is now late June). Unbeknownst to you, the Oxford College Provost, although the faculty handbook requires all nontenured faculty members be evaluated at the end of each academic year, Mary’s department chair has evaluated her twice – once at the end of her first year and once at the end of the last academic year. In both cases, the written evaluation says that Mary is “making good progress toward tenure” but includes no specific discussion of strengths or weaknesses. Student evaluations of Mary’s teaching have been quite negative. The comments say that, in the sections of Political Science 101 that she teaches, she discusses her personal life at great length, bristles when students express conservative political viewpoints, and required all of her students to write a paper, worth half of the course grade, on “Why Bill Clinton was our Greatest President.”
The Dean of Arts and Sciences calls you for advice and recommendations on June 27. She has just learned from the chair of the Political Science Department that he has received an anonymous letter accusing Mary of plagiarizing her doctoral dissertation. The chair has told the dean that he doesn’t think Mary will receive tenure anyway because her departmental colleagues don’t like her, her student evaluations are poor, and despite the fact that she has published more than anyone else in the department in the past two years, he now wonders whether those publications are suspect as well, and thinks that this would be another reason to deny her tenure.
