Report: Academic freedom and tenure: Johnson & Wales University (Rhode Island)

Academe, May/Jun 1999 by Yellowitz, Irwin, Breines, Winifred

In the cases of Professors Nelson and Taylor-Dunlop, they say that, prior to their respective meetings with Dean Boyle on May 18, they had no reason to believe that their appointments would not be renewed, and thus had no reason to seek faculty positions elsewhere. Whatever opportunity they might have had to obtain other faculty appointments if they had received timely notice of nonrenewal according to the above-cited standards was lost by May 18, and each was left without a full-time faculty position for the 1998-99 academic year. The investigating committee finds that the notice given to Professors Nelson and Taylor-Dunlop, when measured against Association standards, was egregiously late.

2. Reasons and the Opportunity for Review

The Association's Statement on Procedural Standards in the Renewal or Nonrenewal of Faculty Appointments provides that recommendations regarding renewal of faculty appointments should be "reached by an appropriate faculty group in accordance with procedures approved by the faculty." The Statement calls for providing a faculty member who receives notice of nonreappointment with an oral explanation for the decision if so requested. If the faculty member then requests the reasons in writing, they are to be provided. The Statement on Procedural Standards, incorporating Regulation 10 of the Association's Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure, further calls for a faculty member who alleges that a decision against reappointment was based significantly upon considerations violative of academic freedom to be afforded the opportunity for review of the allegation by a faculty committee under specified procedural safeguards.

Renewal of faculty appointments at Johnson & Wales University is left entirely to the discretion of the administration. With respect to reasons, the Johnson & Wales University faculty manual is silent on the subject. Professor Nelson reports having been told by Dean Boyle only that in some unspecified way he did not "fit" the educational leadership program or the university. Professor Taylor-Dunlop states that she was given no reason at all. As for the matter of faculty appeals, the university's "faculty resolution procedure" offers faculty members who have one-year contracts the opportunity to have a "fair, objective, impartial review of one's concerns," but exempts from the procedure "areas involving employer prerogatives." Arguably, the exception swallows the procedure, for any appeal by a faculty member against an action of the administration concerning the renewal of an annual appointment would seem to implicate the "employer's prerogatives." Indeed, the reference to "employer prerogatives" has no legitimate place in an institution of higher learning. A different appeal procedure is available for faculty members who have multiyear contracts, and there is no mention of "employer prerogatives."

The lack of a faculty role at Johnson & Wales University in the renewal of faculty appointments, the refusal to provide a meaningful reason to Professor Nelson, and the refusal to provide any reason to Professor Taylor-Dunlop, leave abundant room for the two faculty members and others in the academic community to question the administration's motives. Professors Nelson and Taylor-Dunlop, in not having a procedure available through which they could appeal the notices of nonreappointment, were denied safeguards of academic due process that are commonly accepted in the academic profession and to which they were entitled under Association-supported standards. The investigating committee finds that the lack of these safeguards leaves the faculty of Johnson & Wales University with inadequate protections against an improper exercise of administrative authority.