Academic Freedom and Tenure: Meharry Medical College (Tennessee)1

Academe, Nov/Dec 2004 by Poston, Lawrence S, Bloch, Earl F, Soslau, Gerald

At the time she was issued notice of termination, Professor Russell was the director of two PhD training programs, one sponsored by the NIH and the other by the U.S. Department of Education, and was the co-director of two other PhD training programs, one in human genetics and the other in cardiovascular disease, jointly sponsored by Vanderbilt University and Meharry. She also served as a consultant on a third PhD training program at Vanderbilt and Meharry in cellular microbiology. Her own research, which was focused on a skin disorder particularly common among persons of African, Mediterranean, and Asian descent, and was carried out with Professor Trupin, received favorable publicity in the local press.

Professor Russell was never formally awarded tenure at Meharry. In early 1994, when the acting dean of the School of Medicine recommended that she be promoted to the rank of professor, Professor Russell requested that she also be recommended for tenure. The dean did so, in his letter to the chair of the promotions and tenure committee. But the committee's report of March 15, 1994, addressed only her promotion in rank and made no reference to her candidacy for tenure. In her initial contract for the academic year 2003-04, with an expiration date of June 30, 2004, which Professor Russell received on June 2, her appointment was labeled "tenure track." Meharry's standard contract form provides for two other kinds of faculty appointment: "non-tenured specific term" and "tenured."

According to Professor Russell, the initial May 19, 2003, individual meetings that Dean Coney had with each of the department chairs in the School of Medicine were characterized by certain common elements. The dean informed the chairs of the budgetary deficit that she expected them to meet within their faculty salary category, but she did not give them an opportunity to present their own proposals for addressing the deficit. The chairs were informed that the board of trustees had approved implementation of salary cuts for individuals who did not meet the 75 percent requirement for time contractually committed to research, and that teaching allowances for each department would be based on contact hours turned in by faculty for teaching students and training fellows. Professor Russell reports that she was told that she needed to identify approximately $250,000 in faculty salaries not covered by general funds, and that in all likelihood she would have to release some faculty members on December 31, 200ß, to address the deficit. Professor Russell indicated to the dean that she would try to avoid such an action and would seek other mechanisms for meeting the deficit, such as the rebudgeting of grant funds and the identification of new funding sources. The next day she delivered a letter to Dr. Coney, questioning some of the dean's suggested methods for meeting the budget deficit. She received no response to her letter. According to Professor Russell, the dean was absent from the campus during much of the period from May 19 on, and the conversations about the budget that took place after that date were with Paul McFarland, the medical school's fiscal officer.