In April of 2021, finishing up my 7th year on the tenure track as an Assistant Professor, I received a job offer from another university. I was excited about this new opportunity for a variety of reasons, including the chance to work at an institution where anti-racism was more visibly practiced than at my current one.
I informed my chair of my offer. It was an awkward, brief conversation indicative of my interactions with him in previous years. My chair informed me that they would be in touch after speaking with the dean. Later that day, I received an email requesting the terms of my counteroffer, and the negotiations began. I followed up via email the next day with my counteroffer requests, including a change to the publication requirement for tenure. Some of my proposed terms were met, but this particular request was denied, which ostensibly killed my already tepid interest in staying at WVU. The following is an email I composed, but never sent, in response to the denial of rethinking my tenure publication requirement:
Hi Brent,
Thanks for turning this around quickly.
I suspect I know the answer to this question, but may I ask why rethinking my tenure publication requirement cannot be accommodated?
If it’s helpful, another way to frame my request is that, rather than reduce the minimum number of publications needed [for tenure] from 8 to 7, I am asking to count my collective accomplishments and contributions in the areas of outreach as a public intellectual and my leadership in DEI work thus far as equivalent to one scholarly publication. I have ample evidence that my work in these areas has taken the same, if not more, intellectual rigor to produce and maintain, and has had a much greater impact on my field, my colleagues, and the university than most of my previous publications in peer-reviewed journals. Moreover, this work sits outside of the general expectations or category of recognition called “service”.
Speaking to my specific proposal more broadly, the academy consistently fails to recruit and retain [underrepresented minoritized faculty] in large part because the metrics used to judge a faculty member’s value fail to capture the totality of their contributions. If the academy is going to change and become more diverse, inclusive, and equitable, the conditions under which it determines who is retained must change as well. It has never, and I would argue it cannot continue, to be enough to ask certain faculty who bear larger and unique burdens within white and male dominated spaces to achieve a narrowly defined category of scholarship in order to earn the rights and protections, on the other side of tenure, to then work to change a system of evaluation we all know from the outset is problematic.
It is true that I could have negotiated these terms prior to agreeing to the appointment conditions I am now advocating to be altered, but making these arguments and attaining the necessary evidence to support them was not possible in 2014 [my first year on the tenure track], nor was it imaginable in the minds of the people who set the conditions for my appointment.
It is also true that I could advocate for future such changes for incoming faculty once I’ve met the requirements for tenure, but that is the sort of logic that perpetuates a culture of exclusion and marginalization within the academy and privileges white and male scholars at the expense of URM scholars.
I am routinely told by colleagues, students, and people outside the academy that my public scholarship and DEI leadership are deeply impactful and essential, and that the gains from this work would not have occurred without my presence. Moreover, my accomplishments in this area are directly in line with WVU’s mission and have raised colleagues' consciousness and created space that wouldn’t exist for the work we say we need to engage in at the department level. I am not a named leader of DEI work in the department, but I think most would agree that I am arguably the most relied-on faculty resource within the department on DEI issues. I would also argue that the overwhelming majority of initiatives and positive changes in the department have been directly influenced by my presence and contributions.
Finding a different way to recognize and value my unique contributions is not a necessary condition for earning tenure here, but it is deeply important for me to feel supported and valued at this institution. This is why my asks for a counteroffer would primarily take place after the summer of next year, when my tenure case would all but be decided. I understand the anxiety associated with the reality that I have yet to reach the minimum number of publications, but I am confident I will achieve this in the next 17 months. I understand that perhaps you are not able or unwilling to consider addressing my concerns about how my contributions are understood and valued through this negotiation process beyond having absolute confidence that I will achieve tenure, but a large part of my consideration on which offer to accept hinges on my ability to imagine that my value to this department and institution is understood beyond the tenure process. Just as I must demonstrate my value to this institution beyond tenure, this institution must demonstrate that it understands that value.
Rethinking how my impact as a scholar is understood within the tenure and promotion process would go a long way toward addressing the retention problem of URM faculty, here and in academia generally, who are actively engaged in the broader impacts of their scholarship. URM faculty are constantly told throughout the recruitment and pre-tenure process that our unique contributions and mere presence are essential to the academy, yet the standards by which we are judged as being valuable are still rooted in the privilege of being white and male. My anxieties about staying here aren’t rooted in the last two publications I need to meet the old standard, but rather in the perpetuation of a culture where the work I’m told is just as impactful as publications, work I know my white counterparts either cannot or have not done at the level I have demonstrated, is primarily a rhetorical devise to lure folks like me to institutions to only be valued through the lens of whiteness. I am anxious that upon achieving tenure, the isolation, lack of recognition, and the tremendous burden of navigating a culture of white supremacy will not fundamentally change for someone like me here.
Apologies for the dissertation and for not being more explicit about the nature and context of my counteroffer requests. Should any of what I’ve explained resonate with you, I’d be open and interested in talking more about it. If not, I understand and will take more time to contemplate the counteroffer as it stands.
Thanks for your time and consideration.
-Jonathan
So, why didn’t I send this email, which better contextualizes my initial proposal? Why not give the institution a chance to negotiate on my terms? Quite frankly, I was beyond tired. Tired of dealing with individuals and an institution whose rhetoric never matched their actions. I was tired of educating those who were better compensated than I and, in some cases, whose literal job it was to “diversity”, on how I was being marginalized and how they could do better. I was acting out of self-preservation. Creating space where people were less structurally and interpersonally racist helped me as much as it helped the institution and others within the university.
My now-former institution had ample opportunity to demonstrate that the logic outlined in my letter was understood and practiced. The fact that I felt it necessary to explain this logic is evidence of my lack of confidence in the institution’s ability to fulfill its mission of “diversity”. In discussing the logic of this specific issue and the terms of my counteroffer with Associate Dean Lupe Davidson, her response to my request to rethink my tenure publication requirement was, “Oh, you’re trying to have a paradigm shift”. Dr. Davidson then followed up with, “It’s not that these things don’t count, they count, just as service”.
After that conversation, it was clear to me that those in power were not willing to confront the status quo in the way I needed them to and that not even the potential of my leaving the institution could bring this about.
And then the bitterness set in.
All the years of confronting the culture of white narcissism, of educating my colleagues on their individual racism and the racism of the institution, of tempering or otherwise swallowing my frustrations, of leading without credit or compensation, of being told to “be patient” for the change I wanted to see, of the gaslighting, microagressions, and outright hostility, came bubbling to the surface.
And then, finally, I remembered something very important I had forgotten during this process of trying to make this abusive relationship work; I had an offer from another institution. So, I finally said to myself the words I desperately needed hear:
“Fuck this shit, I’m outta here. I literally don’t have to take this bullshit anymore”.