Didn’t he have tenure?
> Didn’t he have tenure? <
It’s very odd. The guy was “a star teacher at Princeton” (says the article). Then he leaves Princeton to take a year-by-year contract job at New York University. Yes, very odd.
No, he did not.
I looked into this story, as I used to teach at a university.
Like so many who do so nowadays, I was a contract hire. They called it “soft money”, and the contract was renewed based on a grant we had from the FedGov and State. So I had to sign up every time the grant was approved (every 5-6 years). Tenure wasn’t offered for these positions. In fairness to the University, the pay I received as part of the contract was MUCH higher. I did this for 20 years, so even met the state teacher’s retirement fund, and I put in cash to that every month. Actually, they lost the grants when I had been working for them for 18 years, but I still had two years left. I wasn’t paid except when taught a specific classes that had been on the schedule. I spent the last year working for someone else, but still had vested in the retirement so I could still retire when I hit what would have been my 20-year mark. A LOT of colleges and universities do this. You get paid more than faculty on some contracts, but you could lose your job, too.
Anyway, long story short, Dr. Jones was on a one-year contract. He wasn’t fired, rather they refused to offer him another contract.
That was the BS part, really. He fulfilled all other requirements. On that alone, he might have cause for a suit based on age discrimination.
“Didn’t he have tenure?”
I expect he had tenure when he was on the faculty at Princeton, where he spent the bulk of his career.
Maybe a decade back, he retired from Princeton, and took a position at NYU - I expect that position was non-tenure track, which would not be unusual for a faculty member past retirement age taking a position that required only classroom teaching (and not the intensive research program expected of the tenured faculty at schools at the level of Princeton and NYU).
So if Jones at NYU was a member of the “teaching faculty” rather than the tenure-track research faculty, he would be hired on a series of one-year contracts, or at least contracts of two or three years. If they paid him for his current year’s contract, all they’d have to do is fill someone else in for the rest of the academic year, and then just not offer him a contract for the coming year (and beyond).
Still a totally bad move on the part of NYU.
He did not have tenure. Despite publishing an organic chemistry textbook, he was employed on a one-year contract, renewable each year at the discretion of the Dean.
I know this because I read it in another article and because I myself am employed as a Mathematics lecturer at a Tennessee university on the same kind of one-year contract. Universities have stopped hiring tenure-track faculty, and one-year renewable contracts are the noose that you must agree to. I've been on a one-year renewable contract since 2010. I have a PhD in Pure Mathematics. My job is different from adjunct -- one-year contract means I have full healthcare and a 401-K. I just don't have job security beyond August 2023. It's a crappy way to live, but there is nothing else.