Posted on 06/28/2005 3:35:14 PM PDT by Kimmers
Law Prof Worries Iraq War Views May Cost Him Chance at Tenure Jun 27, 2005, 7:32 PM Professor William Bradford
By Mary McDermott 24 Hour News 8
A law professor at Indiana University worries he's not going to get tenure and says his views on the war in Iraq are part of the reason why.
Professor William Bradford has degrees from Harvard and Northwestern Universities, and law students at Indiana University voted him the best new teacher of the year.
"I think he's one of the best professors around here. You can debate him on anything all day and he'll enjoy it,” said Brian Deiwert, an IU Law School graduate.
But four years into his career at IU, William Bradford is wondering whether he'll be asked to stay permanently. "I hope to be able to stay here but I don't think that I'll be able to for reasons not of my own making."
Bradford is a veteran of Desert Storm and will be eligible for tenure in a few years. But he says two tenured professors are trying to prevent him in getting it, partly because he supports the war in Iraq.
"Florence Roisman's trying to allege that because I have viewpoints that are different from hers in terms of the war on terror - she thinks it's an aggressive war; I think it's a just war, to liberate the people there and help enhance our security. Because of that difference of opinion, I am a bad person. I am an uncollegial person. I need to be politically cleansed,” said Bradford.
The issue is generating talk on the IUPUI campus. Students sent a letter of support for Bradford to the law school dean. There's also plenty of discussion about the topic on a law school blog.
The administration at IUPUI says Bradford will get a "fair shake….because there are many levels to the tenure process.”
"So there will be a number of people looking at it and a number of people beyond the law school that will be involved in the decision,” said Richard Schneider, IUPUI spokesperson.
Bradford says he's not sure of that and says he plans to see what options are available for him beyond the IU School of Law.
People do not have to pass some sort of leftist "litmus test". His opponent has expressed her opinion, and now she should shut up, because her opinion doesn't count more than anyone else's. If she doesn't like her colleagues at the University, she can go somewhere else. How many careers have to be ruined by left-wing bozos at the universities? I'm looking forward to the day when the left wingers who think they run our universities either die or retire.
Sad but true....my husband is on his way to another position where they are interested in doing the right thing for medicine, support good research and actually like and understand outcome studies
She obviously lives by her 'princples' only when it suits her...
"Freedom of discussion is one of the greatest glories of the United States, and it can be devoted to no more important task than reconciliation of different opinions about how to achieve both inclusiveness and freedom of belief."
Depends on the field. Its good that he loves to teach, but you also want someone who will stay current in the field and not sit on their laurels (intellectually speaking). Universities tend to want heavyweights who publish--those who just teach theories espoused by others are looked down on.
BTW--going public with the "they're not going to give me tenure" whine is the kiss of death (regardless of whether he is good or not). Its the academic equivalent of whistleblowing.
That's being surprisingly blunt about his poor chances at the law-school level of the process.
Forget his popularity with students.
Everyone knows this game going in, and it's a little hypocritical of conservatives to complain about "bias" if they DON'T have the pubs---and I speak from experience: if you have the pubs, they CANNOT keep you out.
We had a great teacher (he related well to students) but he didn't know the literature, and just sitting in on his classes, it was clear that he was not preparing his students by at least exposing them to recent theories, completely disproven ideas, or new discoveries. So your research in fact DOES inform your teaching. I bring my research into the classroom all the time.
I agree, but at my school, the full-timers teach ALL the entry level history courses; and at Harvard, I knew a TA who suggested he might be allowed to lecture just once. The prof scornfully said, "That's MY class." So in your better schools, you don't have this grad student stuff.
Florence Roisman = POS...
Yes, evidently you've forgotten that universities are not just schools. The point of having a professoriate rather than teachers is to put students in touch with people at the forefront of human knowledge in their field, and that means research.
If we erased all the research that university professors have done, we'd have no CAT, PET or MRI scans (opps, Prof. Radon, whose mathematics drives the imaging would have been devoting himself to teaching back in the 1930's); we'd have no internet (gee, those ARPA grants to university professors to develop the software for file exchange and e-mail wouldn't have anyone to collect because the professors would just have been teaching); Chile wouldn't have a model pension system for us to point to in attempting to reform Social Security because Milton Freedman would have been tied down in the classroom. (I could go on.)
Teaching constitutes about 1/3 of a professor's job. The rest is research and helping to run the university: we run our own job searches, course and program development (analogous to product development in the commerical sector), program evaluaion, the first (and arduous) part of promotion decisions, advise students, raise money (at least by grant applications, sometimes by other means), and a whole lot of other stuff teachers don't do.
And no, we wouldn't like to have some stuffed suit, who thinks of the university as a business, take over that administrative stuff from us so we devote ourselves more to either teaching or research. Universities aren't businesses because students aren't customers: the customer is always right. If the student is always right he or she is ineducable.
The worst and the dullest?
"I speak from experience: if you have the pubs, they CANNOT keep you out."
I am glad that your experience was different, but I am sorry to inform you that you are wrong. They can most certainly keep you out by withholding their tenure vote, by smearing your reputation, and by making your job so difficult to do that there is no reason to stay.
Two words that I never thought I'd see in the same sentence.
Again, it's all pubs. If you have the pubs, you have the clout at any university.
Except for Harvard, who doesn't tenure anyone, I've yet to see any conservative with truly solid pubs be denied tenure. As for "working climate," bah humbug. It's what you make it. Sometimes conservatives need to stop being shrinking violets and tell people up front they won't put up with bull. When little snide comments started in faculty meetings, I let it be known very clearly that I would not tolerate such junk in a professional setting, and I fired back when I heard one. The comments stopped.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.