"Stripping a Professor of Tenure Over a Blog Post"

[TakeruK]

Speaking for the university is one thing, but mentioning your creditials is different.  Part of your credentials is where you work. Mentioning them is different than saying that the whole school agrees with you. Universities are full of differing, sometimes crazy, opinions.  (It may be different in planetary sciences, but take a walk down the hall to the sociology or history departments if you don't believe me.  I've grown up on a university campus) 

If you are writing something, and happen to have a position at Harvard, you are going to mention it because hey, it may make you a more credible source.  Professors at Harvard generally have some expertise, even if it isn't in the area being discussed, it is part of your resume.  The reason we have tenure is because professors have a greater need for protection to explore unpopular opinions.  You can't say they can only publish them as a private citizen, when part of their job is to explore these issues.  They must have protection to research and publish without fear of retribution.

 

 

Kinda. "You may not express these opinions here, but you are free to discuss them with me in private"  is a valid way of dealing with many issues in the classroom.

 

 

I am not so sure I agree with this. A professor should be able to state that he or she is a professor in their public non-academic life without fear of censure. 

 

The example you give is not quite the same. A person who holds an administrative or representative post and signs with that post, as your university's rector did, is tacitly asserting that he or she is speaking ex cathedra and thus is liable for censure.  

 

I would offer the example of "Sarah Q. Academic, Professor of Mathematics, Bigname University" and contrast it with "Sarah Q. Academic, Chair, Department of Mathematics, Bigname University".  The former is a simple statement of Dr. Academic's job, whereas the latter implies that she is speaking in her administrative role. In a more extreme example, contrast the difference between "Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, Professor of History, Harvard University" with "Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, President, Harvard University".

 

I think these are great counterpoints to my argument. And I definitely agree that my example was perhaps not the best, because the Rector is a representative of students, not simply a student. 

 

That said, I would still feel very uncomfortable as a student of University X to see a professor at "my" (I know it's not really "my" school) school write opinion (non-academic) pieces and attributing it to "my" university name. For example, if a professor wrote an opinion piece about an issue I care about (e.g. "gay marriage is bad!") and signed it with "my" University affiliation, I would definitely join other students in taking action against this professor. I would argue that professors associating the University name with opinions like that hurt the University's reputation and would offend many students at the University and this action should not be accepted by our community.

 

However, the conversation about academic freedom here has made me question these beliefs. I'm starting to see why it might be important for a professor to be able to communicate unpopular views and be protected. Especially what if I turned it around and the professor wrote an opinion piece supporting a thing that I care strongly about (but the University did not). So this is something I think I will have think on further.

 

But one small part that still nags at me. I don't think a person should ever use their employment affiliation unless they were acting as a representative of that affiliation. I think that if I sign a letter as "TakeruK, University X Graduate Student", I am making this statement as a graduate student of X, instead of my personal opinion. Similarly, if a professor signs as "Dr. ABC, Professor, Harvard University" then either the professor is writing it as an official statement/opinion as an employee of Harvard University, or the Professor is using his employment/scholarship to put extra weight behind his opinions. In the first case, I believe that employees of Harvard University should not sign work as a private citizen with their employment status. In the second case, I think it is an unethical use of the professor's status to use his academic credentials to bolster support for his non-academic work.

 

That is, I believe academic freedom should only extend to official academic work that the Professor does on behalf of his/her employer (i.e. protection solely to items in their job description), not to all opinions/work expressed by said Professor. I think currently academic freedom might extend beyond this at some places and it is my opinion that this academic freedom should be removed and protection restricted to academic work on behalf of an academic's employer.

[Cheshire_Cat]

At a university you are always going to have people with opinions that are different than your, and they deserve to have their opinions heard just as much as you do, even if it isn't in their area of expertise.  And I think it is ok to use your credentials to bolster your opinion, because even if you are speaking in an area that isn't your expertise, it at least means you might have some critical thinking skills to get this far. Also, in Planetary Sciences, you may have a pretty small area that you can speak on(I dunno, I only took one weather and climate class in undergrad)  but other areas may have a broader spectrum.  I know my dad, a marketing professor, actually has a huge publication on the philosophy of science, which at first glance you would think has nothing to do with marketing. Part of scholarship is branching out to areas that may be unusual for someone with your degree to show interest in, and see how it could affect your discipline. And sometimes you need to recieve unofficial feedback before deciding to dig into the issue further.  To do that, you have to publish it somewhere, which I think is why we see a lot of professors with blogs.

But let's take it out of academia for a second. 

Suppose you were reading an article titled

Why Accounting is Ruining Free Markets

By Cheshire C. CPA

(or something like that.)  At the end of the article, there is a blurb about the author

Cheshire C. Is a Certified Public Accountant, and works as a staff accountant at Ernst and Young, LLC.  In her spare time, she eats green eggs and ham, and plays with her pet alligator, Alice.

 

Would it seem unusual for part of the blurb to include her place of employment?  I don't think so.  Even though obviously her employer would never endorse saying that accounting is ruining free markets, it is part of her her background.  You just have to get over the fact that other people at the university may have opinions that make you uncomfortable, and may share those opinions with large groups of people.

[TakeruK]

Although I used an example of an opinion that would make me uncomfortable, it's not really that part that makes me uncomfortable with signing as "Professor of X". As I said above, I would agree with you completely that there are lots of differing opinions in the world and everyone should be free to share their opinions and be protected in doing so.

 

What I don't feel comfortable with is when people use the reputation of their employer to bolster their own opinion. I think it is misuse of your academic (or professional) title to attribute it to work that is not in your field. In addition, I think it is a poor argument when you try to use your expertise in one field to appear an expert in another field. To me, this is similar to a celebrity using their popularity and fame to endorse political issues. I say similar to, because, yes, you correctly point out that a Professor in X would likely have critical thinking skills that would enable them to make logical arguments in Y but I don't think that justifies mentioning that they are a Professor in X. I don't think our society is still at the point where Professors are the only learned academics capable of critical thinking. 

 

But I want to point out that I am only uncomfortable with this use if the work in question is not connected with the work they are supposed to do for their employer. For example, had Prof. McAdams simply wrote his blog post about his concerns with the way some classes at his University/department are run (i.e. some instructors are not letting all opinions be heard), without naming any names, I think that would have been acceptable. And it would have been acceptable for him to sign with his position at his University, because it is part of his job to worry about how instruction is carried out at his University/department (and really, at Universities everywhere). Similarly, it sounds like your dad would fall under this category too, i.e. he is writing these articles as part of his scholarship, which is part of his job. 

 

However, if a planetary science professor just wanted to write to the world about how he or she thinks "Starbucks coffee is better than Dunkin Donuts coffee", I don't think it is appropriate for them to sign off with their position at their University. I think it would be okay for them to sign as "Dr. Smith" or "J. Smith, PhD", or "Professor Smith", etc. but there's a big difference, in my opinion, between "Prof. J. Smith" and "Prof. J. Smith, Harvard University". The former is an accreditation earned by the individual, the latter is a position of employment held by the person (which carries certain privileges and responsibilities).

 

I am not familiar with how accounting firms operate to know whether or not it's unusual to include for your example bio to include the place of employment. I know I worked for a tutoring company** once before and our employment contract clearly indicates that we were not to use our employment status for non-work purposes. For example, I would not be able to write an article on anything (even tutoring) and sign it with my employment position. However, it might not be useful for us to discuss our interpretation of academic freedom in non-academic environments.

 

(** This is a non-profit student-run tutoring company owned by my undergraduate university's student government)

 

Overall, I think in modern society, we can reduce the amount of academic freedom granted to scholars. I believe that protection should only be granted for academic work within their employment responsibilities. I think academic freedom for professors to write about anything is outdated and old fashioned. It might have been necessary in the past when University professors represent the majority of society's most educated populations, but that is no longer the case. You don't need to be a professor to have strong critical thinking and analytical abilities. That is, I don't think a professor requires academic freedom beyond the scope of their employment responsibilities because professors are no longer a unique class of citizens capable of providing thoughts and analysis that are indispensable.

[Cheshire_Cat]

Well, I agree with you on mentioning names, I think that was completely unacceptable.

 

However, I think sometimes not mentioning where you work could be dishonest.  For instance, a professor at ABC Tech school may have a Ph.D, but even if he is speaking in his area of expertise, he probably doesn't have the same expertise as someone from Harvard.  The only caveat is that you have to mention your discipline too. I think if you write that you are a professor of XYZ when you are discussing coffee then you are a pompus ass, but there are a lot of cases where your purview isn't clearly defined. I just don't think we should be able to punish people or revoke tenure when they mention their employment. Sometimes they may use it to manipulate things, but sometimes it can be a useful piece of information.  I guess as an accountant I always think the more information, the more transparency, the better.  People can look at someone who signs their academic institution name after discussing coffee and think "Well, that's stupid, planetary sciences has nothing to do with coffee" whereas if he just signed it Dr. X, then they may think "hey, he's a doctor, obviously he knows the healthier coffee..."

 

But like I said, there is a difference between writing it *as* an employee of somewhere, and mentioning your employment as credentials.  I can't say anything about healthcare as an employee of my company, even though my project has to do with accounting and healthcare, and Obamacare implementation is a huge topic of discussion.  However, I can say that I'm working in that industry at X&Y firm, and my opinion is...  I just can't say it is the opinion of the firm.  But it is relevent information.

[Arcadian]

These encounters happen at nearly all institutions. No need to compound the problem of anti-gay bigotry by adding a dash of anti-Catholicism.

 

In the text that you quoted, I said "you can expect to encounter people like this anywhere in society." However, there is a higher probability of encountering them at an institution that is affiliated with a related train of thought, such as Catholicism.

 

Additionally, so as to indicate that I'm not just picking on Catholicism in particular, I followed that statement by saying that I would never take a job at any religiously-affiliated university. And I maintain that anti-religion is a position that can be rationally defended. If there is an idea that gives rise to bigotry towards other ideas, then that is the idea we ought to oppose.

Edited February 18, 2015 by Arcadian

[lifealive]

In the text that you quoted, I said "you can expect to encounter people like this anywhere in society." However, there is a higher probability of encountering them at an institution that is affiliated with a related train of thought, such as Catholicism.

 

Really? Because I've encountered a lot of anti-LGBT and anti-gay marriage students at large public land-grant institutions. It's unclear to me on what grounds someone could make sweeping claims about their disproportionate presence at Catholic institutions. By googling around a little, I discovered that Catholics actually support gay marriage at a much higher rate than other Christian denominations. Moreover, a lot of non-religious students attend religious institutions.

 

Whether you agree with religion or not, your post singled out students in Catholic schools as holding anti-gay attitudes. I would push back on that assumption because it seems, quite frankly, pretty baseless. It's true that the Catholic Church can be hostile to same-sex couples ... but so are a lot of non-religious and civic institutions and state governments. The people affiliated with them don't always share their views, and it's wrong to assume that they probably do.

Edited February 18, 2015 by lifealive

[juilletmercredi]

In the text that you quoted, I said "you can expect to encounter people like this anywhere in society." However, there is a higher probability of encountering them at an institution that is affiliated with a related train of thought, such as Catholicism

 

Actually, a lot of Catholic-affiliated universities are quite liberal and the Catholic link that the school has has little influence on the every day functioning of the college. Some examples are Villanova, Providence College, DePaul, Duquesne, and Notre Dame.  This is especially true of Catholic Jesuit colleges, which include Boston College, College of the Holy Cross, Fordham, Georgetown, Loyola Chicago, Loyola Marymount, Gonzaga, Santa Clara University, and yes, Marquette. Some of these are very well-reputed colleges with lots of cutting-edge research, scholarship, and teaching, and where the Catholicism is unlikely to affect the every day life of the student. So no, I don't think you're more likely to find a bigoted student at a Catholic institution than an institution with a different or no religious affiliation. It would totally depend on what kind of Catholic institution we were discussing.

 

There are also hundreds of colleges and universities in the country that were begun by religious folks and maintain nominal religious affiliations without being affected by that affiliation. That includes American University, Boston U, Duke, Emory, Brandeis, Kenyon College, DePauw University, Davidson College, and Macalester College. Most of these places are actually pretty liberal places that don't require faith statements from faculty or serve any particular religious mission - their affiliation is primarily historical, and has to do with the way they were founded. It's quite different from working at Liberty, Bob Jones, Brigham Young, or Baylor, or another one of the small Christian colleges that define themselves by their dedication to a religious mission and require things like convocation, a strict honor code, and statements of faith from faculty.

 

That said, I agree that the TA handled this less than artfully, but her advisor dealt a low blow by publicizing it and using her name.

[Karoku_valentine]

The Catholic schools are so conservative that they decided to fire a professor who exposed a TA because of her liberal ideas.