As a research dean, one of my roles is to ensure that we have a workable mentoring program in place for tenure track faculty. For some years, the school has been playing with the structure and contours of its tenure track mentoring program. In recent informal discussions with colleagues, I have again confronted the perceived conflict between the roles of formally appointed mentors as confidential advisors to their mentees and ultimately as colleagues who have to weigh in on promotion and tenure decisions. In particular, colleagues raise concerns that in a faculty of a limited size, if a lot of people are serving as mentors, who is left to do the adjudicating of candidates without a conflict of interest arising?
Fair point … in theory. But I wonder if it's really so significant in practice? It seems to me that the kinds of things my colleagues are concerned about are the less likely scenarios – concerns, for example, that a mentor discovers that a mentee is a less-than-stellar scholar or teacher. What position is that mentor in when it comes time for the faculty promotion vote on the candidate? Can (s)he disclose what she knows about the candidate's writing or teaching? The reason I don't think this is so much of a problem is that scholarship and teaching (at least when it comes time for a faculty vote) are pretty public activities. By the time the faculty votes, there should have been multiple formal internal and external evaluations of teaching and scholarship. How likely is it that the mentor is the only person who has realized that there is a serious problem with the candidate's work in one of these areas and is thus in a position of conflict at the faculty meeting?
My view is that it's more likely that some degree of confidential relationship between a mentor and a mentee can be useful in circumstances where the mentee has personal problems and needs some friendly advice, or maybe where the mentee is having difficulties with a particular colleague (hopefully not the mentor) and needs advice on how to handle that. If these are the main scenarios for which confidence is important, then I wonder how realistic the concerns are that confidence will ultimately lead to a conflict of interests in a tenure vote?
I'd be interested in whether other schools have formal policies about these aspects of the mentoring relationship.
You know, no matter how you slice it, the sad truth is that it's all about senior faculty tormenting junior faculty with their power. So I don't think it really matters how you run a mentoring program.
It's terrible that you feel that way, and the fact that some (many? but I hope not) tenure track folks feel as you do is all the more reason that it's incumbent on more senior folks to think about how the tenure track works in terms of both meeting its goals for the faculty and ensuring a useful experience for the candidate. (And I'd be happy to chat further either here or offline if you're interested.)
I think you are missing the real dynamic here. It is not that the junior faculty member will disclose something to the mentor that puts the mentor in a conflict of interest. It is that without a ironclad guarantee of confidentiality, the junior faculty member won't make the disclosure. This, of course, is the standard rationale for all sorts of other confidentiality guarantees, such as attorney-client privilege.
You make the point that scholarship and teaching are very public activities. Only in their final results. There are plenty of times when a junior faculty member will have a half-baked idea that could use refining; or a politically controversial idea worth discussing. But no junior faculty member in his right mind shares that with someone voting on his tenure down the line. Instead, it becomes a matter of working in isolation and sharing only the very best polished work when it is finished. The problem is not that the junior faculty member is a secretly bad scholar that only the mentor has figured out. The problem is that the sausage making factory is not a pretty sight, and can permanently decrease appetite after a tour; even if the final product is delicious.
Thank you for that comment and I think you've put your finger on exactly the issue that some of my colleagues were raising. I just personally have a little trouble with it myself because I often talk to people about half-baked ideas in complete confidence and I would never draw adverse conclusions about the person's abilities, or the final product, based on the discussion of half-baked ideas. But maybe my experiences are different from others' experiences. I'd be interested in some concrete examples of this dynamic in play if anyone has any that they could share without identifying the people involved.
"no junior faculty member in his right mind shares that with someone voting on his tenure down the line"
Since I am concededly not in my right mind, my own example may not be very instructive. But I've felt no hesitation, as a junior faculty member, in sharing even my most hemi-semi-demi-baked and politically controversial ideas with my colleagues. I'm not sure that I'd want to continue being their colleague if I didn't feel comfortable doing so. This is among the few respects in which I am an anti-Marxist: I wouldn't want to be a member of a club that would not have someone like me as a member.
Maybe we're idealists here, but my reaction is the same as Jacqui and Eric's. How else do half-baked ideas become less half-baked? And if an idea is politically controversial, how else to figure out which objections need to be addressed in order to make the piece as successful as possible, other than by sharing those ideas, especially with people who might not agree with you?
Eric and Kim, if you feel the ability to share unfinished goods with your colleagues without the protection of tenure, great. But that undermines the fundamental reason for academic tenure in the first place.
Kim, share half-baked ideas with your friends at other schools; your spouse; your lawyer friends; etc. There are plenty of people who might give you good feedback but who don't get a vote on tenure.
Eric, the tenure track is a 5-6 year job interview. In the spirit of "I wouldn't want to be a member of the club if they wouldn't want the real me to join," would you be your unvarnished real self at a job interview? Maybe you would, but I think you would be a tiny minority.
But isn't that still potentially conflating two different ideas? You might not want people to know that you're a bad dresser or a terrible conversationalist in a job interview, but surely you'd be happy talking about any aspect of your past work or future work prospects/ideas?
And I'm also not clear about why sharing half baked ideas undermines the fundamental reason for tenure. Isn't the fundamental reason for tenure to protect people who espouse unpopular views? The views you espouse in your scholarship, half-baked or otherwise, may be unpopular or difficult to defend, but surely if you choose to write something unpopular or difficult to defend pre-tenure it won't matter whether or not people see it in a half-baked context? The same underlying ideas will still be there – and will be in the public domain – at the time the tenure vote comes around. (And if you decide to play it safe and not write anything too controversial pre-tenure, then it also shouldn't matter whether or not people have seen early drafts.)
Jacqueline,
Sure, you might talk about your work at an interview. But you wouldn't present an unfinished piece at a job talk, or even list it on your CV, no matter what the school tells you about "we'll understand that it is a work in progress." Same idea when you are pre-tenure.
As for the purpose of tenure, I was perhaps confusing the two concepts. I think both are still relevant to the mentoring debate. There are half-baked ideas that you wouldn't want to share because they are unfinished, absent a guarantee of confidentiality. And there are politically controversial ideas (given the super-majority requirements common for tenure, they don't need to be broadly unpopular to be problematic) that you might not want to share until you get tenure.
Final point: I do think the two ideas are somewhat related. I could have politically controversial views that are relevant to my scholarship. But as we have seen the in judicial confirmation wars, one can espouse those views forcefully and controversially, or minimally and workmanlike, while reaching the same bottom line. It would hardly surprise me if first drafts are more revealing and final products are more minimalist, as a reaction to the pre-tenure incentives of avoiding risk.
I certainly take your final point, although I have been asked about (and happily talked about) half-baked ideas at academic job interviews and during my time on the tenure track in two different countries. We often ask people about half-baked ideas when we interview them for appointments, both entry level and lateral. But it would be interesting to know whether your final point is right that final products are more minimalist than works in progress, particularly in the more controversial areas. I'd be interested in people's views/experiences on that point.