I am pleased to have an opportunity to respond to Kurt Weyland’s article titled “Promotion Letters: Current Problems and a Reform Proposal.” The article addresses an important topic that is fundamental to the tenure and promotion process: the veracity of external-review letters. According to Weyland, external reviews have lost their value because they are disproportionately positive and devoid of thorough and candid critique. To resolve the problem, he recommends that the profession raise the honorarium for reviews to $2,000. For Weyland, a more generous honorarium likely would give universities “the undeniable right to receive a thorough, professional evaluation, which would dispassionately measure accomplishments and promise, or the lack thereof” and make it more likely that “leading scholars” would be more willing to provide an honest assessment of candidates for tenure and promotion.
Although it is an interesting read, my candid assessment is that the article introduces a solution that is sorely in need of a problem. Having overseen and participated in several tenure and promotion cases, I am frankly unaware of any difficulties associated with receiving honest assessments of a candidate’s scholarly record. If, in fact, the external-review process is in need of reform, suggestions for improvement should focus on (1) the institutional processes whereby external reviewers are selected, and (2) reviewers’ frequent disregard for the guidelines that they receive from the institutions of candidates up for promotion.
In my experience, the reviewer acceptance rate exceeds 75%—hardly evidence that scholars are unwilling or reticent about participating in this most significant task. If I were to catalog the problems associated with the external-review process, the list would be relatively short and include the following: (1) reviewers rarely adhere to the deadline without some degree of prodding from the candidate’s department chair; (2) reviewers often go off script and gratuitously answer questions that were not asked; and (3) rather than being overly positive or vacuous, as Weyland suggests, some reviewers go beyond an assessment of a candidate’s scholarship and include nasty comments about a colleague’s prospects for future success. Let me address the latter two problems succinctly. My department’s guidelines given to reviewers include the following statement:
We have internal mechanisms for assessing teaching and service contributions, so we request that your review not recommend conclusions concerning whether or not tenure and/or promotion should be awarded.
Despite this guideline, it is not uncommon for reviewers to weigh in on the candidate’s qualifications for tenure and promotion by utilizing the standards of their own institution. This is a mistake. When we consider the variability of requirements for promotion and tenure across institutions (and even within institutions), such an assessment may not bode well for a candidate if the requirements at the reviewer’s institution are more stringent. Reviewers must take into account that there is no “one-size-fits-all” tenure process. Institutions are different and assess certain factors differently. The following statement is also included in our guidelines:
Our promotion rules ask that a reviewer assess an applicant’s work in terms of its scholarly merit, originality, and significance within and beyond the academy. Your assessment will play a crucial role in how our department and university will evaluate [Candidate X’s] scholarly performance.
Far from an adherence to the “Zeitgeist pervading US academia in the third millennium” and its purported concern with trigger warnings, this statement asks reviewers to adhere to the merits, originality, and significance of the candidate’s scholarship. That’s all. This guideline is particularly important at institutions, such as my own, in which candidates are permitted to view redacted copies of their external reviews. I have read reviews that are an assault on a candidate’s dignity. There is a significant difference between the tone and content of reviews that are honest and substantive and those that are downright mean-spirited. The latter leaves readers (i.e., faculty and administrators throughout the tenure and promotion process) wondering about the emotional stability of the reviewer or whether the reviewer perceives the task to be akin to hazing. To be sure, our enterprise has the capacity to irreparably harm a person’s self-esteem. Most of us possess a degree of self-doubt. A mean-spirited review may require that faculty members overcome tremendous trepidation to submit their scholarship for future review. In fact, some candidates never recover.
Our very careers are dependent on feedback that is given objectively, without regard for reward or compensation. If we predicate reviews and evaluations on substantial honoraria, we will create a different system—a system that could be ripe for abuse.
Another important critique concerns the internal processes that institutions use to select external reviewers. In my view, institutional processes may be the culprit associated with the concerns raised by the author. At my institution, DePaul University, unit personnel committees are encouraged to solicit three external-review letters per candidate. Candidates for promotion are asked to submit a list of suitable reviewers; the personnel committee submits a list of potential reviewers; and, finally, the personnel committee selects two reviewers from its own list and one from the candidate’s list. It is the responsibility of the personnel committee to ensure that three important guidelines are followed to the letter: (1) the candidate and potential reviewers do not have a significant working relationship; (2) potential reviewers are capable of assessing scholarship in the candidate’s subfield; and (3) to the extent possible, external reviewers are from comparable institutions. Failure to adhere to these important assurances may result in external-review letters that are slanted in one direction or another. Failure on the part of the personnel committee, however, should not be interpreted to mean that today’s scholars are unwilling to carry out their responsibility to the profession. That surely has not been my experience in soliciting external reviews.
In conclusion, it is likely that every person reading this response owes a debt of gratitude to scholars who have taken the time to review and evaluate their work. One of the many benefits of membership in a profession dedicated to ideas is feedback. Our very careers are dependent on feedback that is given objectively, without regard for reward or compensation. If we predicate reviews and evaluations on substantial honoraria, we will create a different system—a system that could be ripe for abuse.
At a time when many institutions are struggling to keep their doors open due to declining enrollment and negative views about the significance of higher education, it is unfeasible to expect that institutions will expend considerable resources on generous honoraria. My institution assesses upwards of 45 tenure and promotion cases annually, each requiring three external reviews. I think it is safe to say that my institution may not be willing to commit approximately $270,000 (the equivalent of several faculty lines) to the external-review process, particularly because it has not identified it to be broken.
If done correctly, external reviews and other academic evaluations are time consuming and require a degree of dedication. However, we do it because it is a reciprocal process. We desire substantive reviews of our own work, so we provide substantive reviews of the work of other scholars in the profession. Considering that our very life’s work requires the assessment of others, it does not make sense to monetize it beyond the nominal stipend. If we go down this road, we may unwittingly subordinate the camaraderie associated with service to the profession.
