Termination of tenured appointments: MCP Hahnemann School of Medicine (Pennsylvania)

Academe, May/Jun 2000

Academic Freedom and Tenure

Termination of Tenured Appointments:

MCP Hahnemann School of

Medicine (Pennsylvania)

This report concerns the discharge from their faculty positions of thirteen to fifteen tenured members of the basic-science faculty of the MCP Hahnemann School of Medicine, in response to a declaration of financial exigency, with minimal notice, inadequate severance salary, and a complete absence of normal procedural safeguards in violation not only of applicable Association-supported standards but also of the bylaws of the institution itself.2 That generally accepted norms of academic behavior were disregarded is not in dispute, as will be explained later. What is in dispute is who should be held responsible for the actions taken, and whether the current administration of the medical school should be expected to remedy the plight of the discharged faculty members.

The uncertainties and complexities in this case arise in good part from the fact that, coincident with the actions taken against the above-mentioned tenured professors, dramatic changes occurred in the ownership, administration, and management of the institution, as it moved from a declaration of financial exigency into bankruptcy proceedings from which it then, Phoenix-like, arose.

I. The Institution

The present MCP Hahnemann School of Medicine is the successor to two previously separate, well-established medical schools in Philadelphia: the Medical College of Pennsylvania (MCP) and the Hahnemann University Medical School (Hahnemann), each of which was acquired by the Pittsburgh-based, hospital-centered Allegheny Health, Education, and Research Foundation (AHERF), and formally merged into one institution in 1994.

The Medical College of Pennsylvania is the successor to the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, founded in 1850. By 1969, after several name changes, MCP and its associated hospital had become coeducational, with a focus on community service. It retained an emphasis on medical services for women (though this was not its exclusive activity) and had only minor involvement in medical research. In 1987 MCP and its hospital were acquired by Allegheny Health Services (predecessor of AHERF), under the entrepreneurial leadership of its president, Sherif S. Abdelhak, as part of his ambitious efforts to establish a statewide medical network, efforts that included acquiring eight hospitals in the Philadelphia area as well as numerous primary and specialty physician practices (to funnel more patients to its hospitals). Prior to AHERF's acquisition of MCP, faculty at the college operated with the conventional sorts of faculty status, including eligibility for tenure after a probationary period.

Hahnemann University was established in 1848 as the Homeopathic College of Pennsylvania, but in 1884 it became Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia. Almost a century later, having added schools of nursing and of allied health professions, the institution changed its name to Hahnemann University. The medical school and its associated hospital have earned a reputation for excellence in both clinical and research activity. They were acquired in 1993 by AHERF and merged with MCP a year later. Until relatively recently, none of the Hahnemann faculty had tenure, but in a blanket action some time prior to the merger, all those with the rank of associate or full professor were awarded tenure. The merged institution was initially named the Medical College of Pennsylvania and Hahnemann University, but it was subsequently renamed MCP Hahnemann, as a unit within the Allegheny University of the Health Sciences (hereafter referred to as Allegheny University or AUHS).3 After the merger, the medical school had a basic-science faculty of about a hundred (of whom about one-third were dismissed in 1998), and many hundreds of clinical faculty.

Although these two institutions with significantly different faculties, traditions, and missions were formally "merged" in 1994, they were never fully integrated; discussions of the need for both administrative and faculty consolidation began with the clear prospect of reductions in faculty size. Much of the medical school's leadership (Provost Leonard L. Ross and most department chairs) came from the MCP side; most of the basic-science faculty who were eventually dismissed and whose treatment is the subject of this report-largely Ph.D.'s-came from Hahnemann.4

II. Factual Background: Selected Events, 1994 to 1999

At the time of the merger of MCP and Hahnemann, the Allegheny University administration recognized tenure. The regulations then in effect included the following:

The Board of Trustees shall have the right to terminate the appointments of tenured members of the Faculty ... [in circumstances of] financial exigency of the University. A state of financial exigency of the University involving the termination of appointments of tenured Faculty can only be declared by the Board of Trustees... after consultation with the University Council [the Faculty Senate]. Such consultation shall include the presentation of criteria for declaring financial exigency and the criteria for the selection of positions for termination.