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PARTISAN REVIEW
years of graduate school and six years of junior teaching adjudicated by
a two-hour colloquy down the hall.
Of course, people and institutions always find ways of coping. Of
late, at many universities senior faculty and administrators have discov–
ered a mechanism that frees the decision-makers of responsibility and
isolates for the aspirant
the
hurdle for advancement: the book. As long
as the candidate proves an inoffensive teacher and a reasonable depart–
ment member, only one question sits on the meeting room table: Is the
research project finished?
If
the junior colleague has a book in hand or
an acceptance letter from the director of a university press, tenure is a
fait accompli.
If
the work remains in manuscript, promising but incom–
plete, no promotion. That is the employment equation. Tenure has
boiled down to a six-year composition scheme. Junior faculty now face
a demystified production schedule, and senior faculty enter the tenure
meeting with a one-checkbox form in their heads. No more messy dis–
cussions about quality. No more anxiety about whether the department
has enough discernment, or too much. Administrators have an objective
criterion to point to should any outsiders challenge the proceedings.
Judgment has been externalized, handed over to university editorial
boards. The assistant professor has inherited a job task that takes pri–
ority over teaching students, that is, marketing his revised dissertation
to academic press editors.
While the book criterion has clarified the tenure process, it has fun–
damentally altered the nature of scholarship in the humanities. The sys–
tem discourages research that is time-consuming, that involves tracking
down information secreted in libraries and archives, that may yield
numerous dead ends before a discovery occurs. Junior faculty must envi–
sion book-length projects that can be executed well in advance of the
crucial tenure meeting, which takes place in the middle of the candi–
date's sixth year of employment. With university presses sometimes tak–
ing two years to decide upon a manuscript, pre-tenure scholars have
three and a half years from the time of their hiring to complete their
opus. Books that require lengthier inquiries do not get written. Recent
hirees acclimating themselves to a new campus, building up their teach–
ing repertoire, and learning the ropes of department service do not have
time to bury themselves in manuscript collections or to pursue dubious
trails of evidence. Clear-sighted professors will avoid empirical meth–
ods, aware that it takes too much time to verify propositions about cul–
ture, to corroborate facts with multiple sources, to consult primary
documents, and to compile evidence adequate to inductive conclusions.
They will seek out research models whose premises are already in place,
