OPINION

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Page 4 Sunday, October 11, 1981 The Michigan Daily

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University tenure practices off balance-.i

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By Andrew Chapman
The University needs to retain a strong and
vigorous faculty to keep itself among the ranks
of the nation's most competitive schools, yet its
current approach to the tenure system could
result in more damage than benefit.
Cutting the University's payroll costs is a
legitimate concern for the administration in its
efforts to meet shortfalls passed on from the
state. This concern, however, may lead the
administration to take measures that will,
given time, threaten the center of what makes
this University a top quality institution.
THE UNIVERSITY faculty is nervous, and it
has a right to be. Tenure, a system once con-
sidered sacred, has suddenly become just as
vulnerable to crisis as everything else at this
university.
But, by the same token, if the University
faculty assumes that their own tenure is en-
dangered by Michigan's current financial
crisis, then they assume 'too much. The ad-
ministration would surely never be so rash as
to fire tenured professors, regardless of the
University's financial situation. This would
prove to be too drastic a gamble for the Univer-
sity to take, and the administration realizes it.
Yet tenure is s'till not safe. There are ways in.
which the University can and will side-step the
outright firing of tenured faculty to cut costs.
THIS SUMMER the University's medical

school promoted four assistant professors to
the associate professor level, but told these
four professors specifically that their.
promotions were "promotions without tenure."
It is common practice at the University,
although it is not an absolute rule, that the
promotion from assistant professor to
associate professor is accompanied by the
status of tenure.
Tenure review usually comes after seven
years of teaching at this University, although it
can before that time. Tenure review is man-
datory after eight years, unless specifically
stated otherwise.
THE PROMOTIONS in the Medical School
were of this latter category. They were thus not
violations of any Regental by-laws or
guidelines.
Other schools of the University have also
engaged in this practice of conditional
promotion, though not in such large numbers,
an April 1981 SACUA tenure subcommittee
reported.
The idea of promoting University professors
to the associate level without tenure is a
dangerous one. It could, if given the chance,
comletely undermine the. tenure system at the
University.
TENURE WAS created to guarantee
professors at an institution academic freedom.
To promote professors to a supposedly secure
position and then deny them that security
would negate tenure's basic purpose.

Tenure allows a University professor to say
whatever he pleases about the government or
the administration or anything else for that
matter and still keep his job. Tenure allows a
faculty researcher to study whatever he thinks
is interesting, without worrying that the ad-
ministration believes he should do otherwise.
Promotion to associate professor without
tenure gives the administration a vice-like grip
over the lives of the people it employs. It allows
the administration to fire, without explanation
or excuse, any non-tenured professor they so
desire. An administrator can thus rule with an
iron fist, terminating the employment of any
objectors without causing intense objections.
THE UNIVERSITY administration can use
this promotion policy to make some subtle-but
very far-reaching-changes in the University
tenure policy.
Dr. Robert Reed, Associate Dean of the
Medical School, took a less sympathetic view of
the promotion issue when he said, "You can
either be out of the University altogether or in
with a job that doesn't have tenure security.
You'd have to make the decision as to which
you'd rather have."
To assume such a "take it or leave it" at-
titude can only cause the University harm.
There are plenty of other univesities around the
nation that are willing to grant tenure, or at
least the possibility of tenure, to a qualified
teaching candidate.
A QUALIFIED graduate student who is

looking for a teaching job at a highly regarded
university may very well look elsewhere if he
knew that The University of Michigan might
not even give him the chance to attain a
tenured status.
But tenure should not be a consideration for a
bright graduate student looking for a teaching
job at a university. If tenure has to play a part
in his decision on a place of employment, then
this university will lose out.
There are other, less practiced ways for the
administration to by-pass the tenure system at
the University.
THE UNIVERSITY can, as it is doing now,
reduce the amount of people it puts on the
tenure track.
A tenure track professor has, from the
beginning of his appointment, the ability to at
some time achieve a tenured status. A non-
tenure track professor is given this title
because at no time during his employment may
he be considered for tenured promotion.
LSA Dean Steiner announced at the Septem-
ber LSA faculty meeting that there would only
be 14 tenure track professors hired this year,
down 23 from the year before. In seven years
the incoming professorial class of 1981 will
have only 14 members to present for tenure
review. The incoming professorial class of 1979
will have more than 50.
THE LESS TENURE track people the
University hires, the less productive, sym-
pathetic teaching will go on. A non-tenure track

professor has no job security .goal toward
which he can work.
Tenure track professors can, with time, build
a loyalty and dedication to the students of.-4;
University and should be encouraged to do so.
Another way in which the University ad-.
ministration can by-pass the tenure issue is by
refusing to grant a tenure review, which is
what happened in the Jonathan Marwil case'of
1979. This type of occurrence is rare though;'
and could never become a regular practice.
The publicity and court battles would prove too
costly.
THE MARWIL case was a fluke. One hopis'-
that it had nothing to do with normal University'
policy and never will. '
The American Association of University
Professors guidelines state that a University
can fire tenured faculty if the faculty meft
ber's department has been discontinued or'if '
the University has declared a state of 'financiAl.
exigency.'
The university may, without realizing it, di
considerable harm to the quality and substance,;
of its faculty by side-stepping the existing
tenure system. Following a policy that'
maneuvers around the guidelines of the tenure
system will undermine the strength and growth'
potential of the University's faculty.
Chapman covers University faculty f'r
the Daily.

Edited and managed by students at-The University of Michigan

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Seeking justice in

Vol. XCII, No. 28

420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, M1 48109

Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board


Meeechigan's

return

EVEN WITH Michigan down 17-16
at the half, listeners all across
the Michigan Football Network
somehow had a feeling there was no
way the Wolverines would lose.
Why .?Not because University
P s1dent Harold Shapiro was to be the
guest on the half-time show, but
because the exuberant voice of Bob
Ufer had returned to the radio waves
for the game's play-by-play analysis.
And with what seemed to be some
slightly toned-down yelling but loud as
ever blasts of the air horn after every
Michigan score, Ufer brought to those
of us who didn't travel to East Lansing
another big Blue win.
We heartily welcome the Voice of
Michigan Football for more than 35
years back to the air waves. His ailing
health this season had prevented him
from announcing the first four games.
Despite advice from his physicians,
Ufer just couldn't stay away from his

command post high above the stands
any longer.
And Maize and Blue devotees across
the state, beginning to suffer signs of
withdrawal from constantly being in-
formed of the correct score of the
game, were saved as Ufer declared it
- was Michigan State 24, Michigan 20, in
the third quarter. (Note than the Spar-
tans never reached a score of 24.)
But Ufer's errors and overen-
thusiasm for the game don't really
detract from the listeners enjoyment;
they just make trying to figure out
what's going on down on the field a lit-
tle more fun.
Bob Ufer adds to the uncertainties
involved in Meechigan football. But he
also adds to the excitement surroun-
ding our perennial contenders.
And as the Wolverines try for
another Big 10 championship, we hope
Bob Ufer at least will be a certainty
behind the microphone.

By Frank Browning
NEW ORLEANS, LA.-"The
jungle," President Reagan war-
ned, "is always
there ... waiting ... ready to
take us over."
The jungle of which the
president spoke before the Inter-
national Association of Chiefs of
Police was not the dark tangle of
bureaucratic regulation, not even
the jungle of global superpowers
where only the mighty survive.
This was the secret jungle, he
warned, that dwells within the
human heart, that place where;
"the darker impulses of human
nature" reside.
UNDERLYING the details of
his address-which were little
different from the recommen-
dations of the Attorney General's
Task Force on Violent
Crime-there was a profound and
clearly articulated philosophical
expression of the ad-
ministration's social policy. Of-
fered at the beginning of the fall
congressional session, it may
well signal the launching of a
socially conservative program
which many of his fundamen-
talist New Right supporters had
feared was being neglected.
For Reagan's criminal justice
objective is not merely to
strengthen the nation's police
forces, but to reformulate the en-
tire public discussion of crime
and to see it-like terrorism-as
the direct result of evil forces
stalking the earth.
"From (the) statistics about
youthful offenders and the im-
pact of drug addiction on crime
rates," he told the 6,000 assem-
bled chiefs, "the portrait
emerges. The portrait is that of a
stark, staring face, a face that
belongs to a frightening reality of
our time: the face of a human
predator, the face of the habitual
offender, the career criminal.
Nothing in nature is more cruel
or more dangerous."
AND FURTHER, he con-
tinued: "The solution of the
crime problem will not be found
in the social worker's files, the
psychiatrist's notes or the
bureaucrat's budget. It is a
problem of the human heart, and
it is there we must look for an-
swers. We can begin by
acknowledging some of those
permanent things, those absolute'
truths I mentioned before. Two of
these truths are: Men are
basically good but prone to evil;
some men are very prone to
evil .. and society has a right to
be protected from them."
Like his Moral Majority sup-
porters and the fundamentalist
adherents of the biblical version
of creation, the president was
arguing that crime-evil made
manifest-is a fundamental part
of the human spirit, and that if it
is not suppressed it will consume

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RICHARD WOLK ,

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® MtCHW[AN ¢AIL4

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'IT'S STILL THE WAR ON POVERTY,
ONLY THE TARGET'S SEEN CHANGED'

IT IS THE faith of the Scarlet
Letter, the belief in fallen souls
which, gripped by evil intention,
choose to spread fear, violence
and chaos in the world-the ethnic
of' the jungle-rather than live
within the bounds of traditional
morality.
The president lashed out
specifically at "the social
thinkers of the 1950s and 1960s
who discussed crime only in the
context of disadvantaged
childhood and poverty-stricken
neighborhoods" and who were
committed to "a belief that there
was nothing permanent or ab-
solute about any man's nature."
Yet in his philosophical attack
on the notion that crime results
from social causes-and the con-
sequent belief that social justice
is the only real solution to public
crime-Reagan's assault goes
far beyond modern liberal
reformers of the last generation.
It was a forthright and total at-
tack on the key ideas of crime
control that have dominated law
enforcement since the founding
of the Republic when the court
replaced the church as the ar-
biter of social order.
'IT IS FROM ignorance, wret-
chedness or corrupted manners
of a people that crime proceeds,"
William Bradford of Philadelphia
wrote. in 1793. "In a country
where these do not prevail,
moderate punishment, strictly
enforced, will be a curb as effec-
tual as the greatest severity."
Bradford, like most of the
framers of the Constitution and
the inventors of the modern
penitentiary who came a few
years later, believed profoundly
that the amount of violent crime
in society was a direct measure
of the amount of justice and
equity that exists in society. Evil,
they argued, was a reflection of
the relations between men, not of
their inherent nature.
No one would have charac-
tedized the nation's founders as

evil as a conditio
that indeed is whi
development of t
in the 1820s and
country experienc
wave of profess
criminals.
The penitentiar
of Philadelphia Q
be a plain, well-
confinement whet
citizen might re
penitently, upon h
thereby be reforn
That prisons an
in fact became ant
graduate schools
crime-places ti
police agree tough
and provide nev
illicit opportunity
which has brough
the reformers or t
whose chief propo
trol of crime seer
expansion of the p
CRIME AND IT
however, is only o
fabric of evil w
Reagan has o
broadly, he and t]
to whom he spoke
ted his address so
applause-cast th4
into a universe of g
More even than
chword for that evi
of flaming terroris
Terrorism in ti
order has taken on
of a wild demon
across the moun
plains of the earth
the evil corner of

the jungle.
already grown large by the
collapse of moral authority. It.
spawns publid disorder and.
leaves us all trembling in the
jungle of rape, murder and
mayhem.
That was the broad message
brought not only by the president
but also by the half-dozen
speakers who led workshops for
the police chiefs on the likelihood
of increased terrorism within the
coming months here in the United
States.
"Nineteen-eighty-two will be
the Year of the Terrorist here,"
warned former CIA "terrorism"
expert Zach Fuentes, 'in *:cot 1
cluding session. Worse,:hea
predicted,-the likely hard timfs
brought on by economie'
recession and spending cutbacks
will bring a union of terrorism,
and violent street crime.
THE WEB of evil which theses
speakers portray extends stiill
further to the social reformers
n of being, and whom the president charged are
at underlay the most responsible for the nation's
he penitentiary moral decay, people whose!
30's when the "utopian presumptions about
ced its first real human nature (have) hindered'
sional career the swift adm'nistration 'of
.justice (and) have also helped,
y, an invention fuel the expansion of gover-
Quakers, was to nment."
ordered hall of Such people include the
re the wayward American Civil Liberties Union,
eflect silently, the American Friends Service
his failures and, Committee and the Nationi
Zed. Lawyer's Guild, said the Loi
d penitentiaries Angeles Police Chief DatW
d continue to be Gates. These and others, he ad-
of professional ded, have entered into a 'coh-
hat nearly all si)piracy with the criminals and
hen the criminal terrorists of the world.
w networks of '"That," Gates told the chieft;'
y-is an irony "is the kind of terrorism yoYlF
t little solace to find is spreading across they
o the president, nation. You can see is right be'.
sal for the con- in New York, in Chicago, in Seat=
ns to be a huge tie, where new laws and lawsuits
rison system. have left the police with the
rS containment, hands tied."
ne thread in the These are the people who both'
hich President Chief Gates and the presid'edf
utlines. More regard as their principal b"-
he police chiefs stacles-as their philosophical
-who interrup- enemies as well as their liviAg
me 30 times for opponents-in their campaiga to
e entire planet contain the jungle of evil. The
good and evil. coming months may well reveal
crime, the wat- who is to be made the bait of the
il is the spectre lions.
Sm.
his new moral
n the characted
seed blowing Bro
stains and the Brwning wrote this article.
. It takes rot in for Pacific News Service.
f men's hearts,

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Letters to the Daily:

A WA CS:
To the Daily:
That AWACS and arms equi-
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is not thef onndation of the

awaring
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fields, than to protect the Middle
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Americans workingfor world-