ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND TENURE. For more than a century Tufts had no official policy on academic freedom and tenure. As President John A. Cousens had pointed out in the 1920s, academic freedom had never been a serious issue at Tufts, and no formal machinery for the award of tenure had ever been felt to be necessary. The Tufts faculty was a relatively small, closely knit body, and verbal understandings and informal consensus had governed relations among the trustees, the president, and the faculty for years. College personnel were considered merely as an enlarged "family" which made the need for written rules and policies superfluous.

When the state legislature enacted a law in 1935 "prescribing an Oath or Affirmation of Allegiance to be taken and subscribed to by Teachers and Other Educators in the Commonwealth" (the so-called Massachusetts loyalty oath), President Cousens, together with various other educational officers in the Greater Boston area, had vigorously protested its passage as a violation of academic freedom. Two highly respected members of the Tufts faculty had resigned to protest the law. The college had regretfully but faithfully complied with the legislation, and until 1967 each new faculty member had dutifully taken the required oath by signing an appropriate document.

The loyalty oath was not seriously challenged by a Tufts faculty member until 1966, when Hugo A. Bedau, chairman of the Philosophy Department, refused to sign the oath. He obtained an injunction against the Tufts trustees to prevent his suspension or other interference with his teaching position, pending resolution by the state supreme court of a similar case at MIT. The issue was resolved in March 1967, when the court declared the state oath law invalid.

It was not until 1940, early in the presidency of Leonard Carmichael, that the trustees saw fit to adopt any statement at all regarding tenure. At the insistence of a very active local chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the trustees finally adopted as an addendum to their bylaws, a set of "guiding principles." They were based on the preliminary draft of a joint statement on academic freedom and tenure drawn up in 1938 by the American Association of Colleges and the national AAUP. The draft was revised somewhat two years later and became the so-called "1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure" that eventually became the general yardstick for acceptable academic practice at educational institutions throughout the nation.

In the 1938 draft which Tufts adopted, it was recommended that, "beginning with appointment to the rank of full-time instructor or a higher rank, the probationary period should not exceed six years, including within this period full-time service in all institutions of higher education." However, it was provided that if a term of probationary service of more than three years in one or more institutions preceded appointment to another institution, the probationary period would be reduced correspondingly unless agreed to otherwise in writing.

The institution reviewed the status of all full-time faculty at the same time that the preliminary AAUP statement was adopted, and awarded appointment "without limit of time" (WLT - Tufts' parlance for tenure) to twenty-one individuals in one blanket vote. Their service at Tufts ranged from two years to twenty-nine. From 1941 through 1957 forty-four more faculty were awarded tenure. Years of individual service at Tufts ranged from none to thirty. It was clear that no uniform number of years of probationary service was actually required at Tufts in spite of the six-year maximum recommended by the AAUP in its 1938 statement.

The only significant difference between that statement and the one to which the AAUP had subscribed in 1941 was the length of the probationary period. "Acceptable academic practice" regarding the length of the probationary period in the latter document was defined as a maximum of seven years rather than six. However, the

The original vote of the trustees in 1940 specifically restricted the application of the 1938 statement to the full-time members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, with the hope and expectation that it would be extended eventually to other faculties of the institution. There the matter rested for more than a decade. Formal faculty-administrative review of the Tufts tenure and promotion policy was not undertaken until after Wessell became president in 1953. In that year a committee to draft a faculty manual or handbook (the first in Tufts' history) had been authorized. Although the review was begun in 1954, very little was done for three years. Part of the delay was

After considerable delay, another review of the tenure rules at Tufts was started in 1962. The trustee vote of 1940 which had been reaffirmed when their revised bylaws were adopted in 1955, was again reaffirmed, and their rules were extended to cover the faculty of the Crane Theological School. The review was well under way by 1964, when the most widely advertised tenure case in Tufts history up to that point came to public attention. The consequence was formal adoption in October 1964 of a new policy on academic freedom, tenure, and retirement embodying not only the intent but most of the actual wording of the 1940 AAUP statement, but without ever

The most celebrated faculty tenure case of the 1960s at Tufts was that of Woodrow Wilson Sayre, grandson of the former President of the United States. Sayre was appointed in 1957 as Assistant Professor of Philosophy and failed to receive tenure seven years later. He departed in 1964 after unsuccessfully challenging the decision. He was apparently the first Tufts faculty member to have made a public issue of his nonreappointment, and had already attracted national attention as a mountain climber who in 1962 led a widely publicized four-man expedition into the Himalayan mountains of Nepal.

Sayre had begun his teaching career at Pomona College in California, where he served full-time for four years with the rank of instructor. Upon completion of his PhD (from Harvard) in 1957 he was appointed to the Tufts faculty. He was granted a leave of absence in the spring of 1962 to conduct an expedition up Mt. Everest.

In the fall of 1962, George B. Burch, chairman of the Department of Philosophy, recommended to the Provost that Sayre be awarded tenure, but without promotion to associate professor. Sayre was advised by Burch in the summer of 1963 that Charles E. Stearns, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, intended not to renew Sayre's appointment, and that the dean would probably receive the support of both President Wessell and the provost (which he did). Sayre was informed in writing by Dean Stearns in October 1963 of the probability of his nonreappointment. After acknowledging that

Sayre decided to challenge the decision not to reappoint him, contending (a) that he already had tenure under both Tufts rules and those of the AAUP, and that (b) he should be awarded tenure in any case on the basis of merit. Two issues therefore emerged in this complex case, made so in part because of the apparent ambiguities and discrepancies in Tufts' existing tenure policy and because of the more generalized question of the relative weight to be given to productive scholarship and classroom teaching in awarding tenure. It was not such technicalities as the length of the probationary period and the conflict between Tufts' policies and those of the AAUP that attracted widespread attention so much as it was the second issue that caught the public eye and was fully exploited by the media.

As soon as Burch had been informed of the decision of the administration not to reappoint Sayre, he contacted the national office of the AAUP in Washington, D.C., and requested clarification of the tenure rules. It appeared to him that Sayre already had tenure under the 1940 Statement of Principles but that both the provost and President Wessell had informed him that Tufts had not accepted the 1940 statement but abided by its own rules. Credit for prior service was not recognized by Tufts, which required a probationary period of nine years for those initially appointed with the rank of instructor or higher, rather than the seven-year maximum recommended by the AAUP. The local chapter of that organization also called the president's attention to the apparent contradiction of rules and requested that the trustees provide clarification. The administration contended that Sayre's was simply a case of not renewing a non-tenured appointment and that that was the end of the matter. The local chapter contended, on the other hand, that Sayre already had tenure and could be removed only for cause. That was the impasse. Sayre had meanwhile filed a formal complaint with the national office of the AAUP, which contacted President Wessell. He replied that the notice of Sayre's nonreappointment would not be withdrawn. The AAUP contended that Sayre had tenure under its rules, and that he should be given adequate opportunity to defend himself and be provided with all the protections of academic due process to which

In the spring of 1964 Sayre, on the advice of the local AAUP chapter, presented his case to the faculty Advisory Committee on Faculty Personnel. It was the first instance of this type that the committee had confronted since its creation in 1940. Altogether, it held eight hearings. Much time and attention were devoted to discussion about the conflict between the university's policies and those of the AAUP and which should be followed. It was the committee's unanimous decision that Sayre had tenure under AAUP rules, but they supported the administration's decision, by a vote of 4 to 1, not to reappoint Sayre, on the ground that he did not have tenure under Tufts rules, and that he did not deserve tenure on the basis of his record of teaching and scholarship. Sayre even made a personal appeal to the trustee Educational Policy Committee but it and then the full board unanimously supported the administration in its decision not to reappoint him. At least two faculty members who spoke to the issue suggested that Sayre be given an additional one-year appointment, without tenure, but that idea was promptly vetoed by the administration.

There ensued an extended, complex, and repetitive three-way correspondence among the local AAUP chapter, the national office, and the Tufts administration. This finally resulted in the appointment by the AAUP of an ad hoc investigating committee which visited the campus in December 1964 and conducted an extensive inquiry into the confusing situation. It made its report in the spring of 1966.

Tufts was considered especially vulnerable in its handling of the Sayre case because the AAUP, claiming tenure for him under its regulations, had alleged that there were procedural errors committed by the Advisory Committee on Faculty Personnel and that academic due process had been violated in his case. The reason was that the committee treated him as a non-tenured faculty member and therefore did not follow the procedures recommended by the AAUP for tenured faculty. The AAUP did not pass judgment on the issue of lack

Tufts narrowly escaped censure by the AAUP at its annual meeting in the spring of 1966. The investigating committee had found that Sayre was a tenured member of the faculty according to AAUP principles. His dismissal under this circumstance did not follow approved procedures (including "a proper hearing") and the termination of his services constituted a violation of the 1940 Statement of Principles. There were no clear standards for tenure or consistent practices in effect at Tufts at the time of his dismissal and therefore the institution "did not conform to acceptable academic practice."

However, censure was not imposed. In a telegram to Tufts the very day the case was to have come up for final vote by the AAUP, its General Secretary informed the university that "the general condition of tenure and academic freedom" which had prevailed since the adoption by the trustees of a revised statement after Sayre's departure in 1964 was "reassuring" and that a vote to censure would have been "inappropriate."

Tufts scrupulously adhered to both the letter and the spirit of the AAUP principles after 1964, so far as they applied to members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The seven-year probationary period for that faculty was reaffirmed by the trustees in 1982. It was Sayre's claim to tenure on his own merits that had opened a floodgate of discussion and debate over the perennial academic question of the relative importance of teaching and scholarship in intitutions of higher learning. The debate soon spread far beyond the Tufts campus and attracted attention in the wider arena of the press everywhere, from the New York Times to the student newspaper at the University of California in Berkeley.

Tufts itself had begun a transition in the 1950s from its historic primary emphasis on teaching to an increasing recognition of the importance of scholarly activity outside the classroom in making tenure decisions. This question related to the even larger question of the role played by teaching and scholarship in the whole educational process as well as in the professional future of individual faculty members. The beginning of the transition had coincided with

At the time Wessell became president, Tufts' expectations regarding faculty research and publication were explained by Leonard Mead in his first report as Research Coordinator in 1953. Research was strictly voluntary and only "an important adjunct to the primary educational mission of the College. No teacher on the staff is 'required' to do research, although its conduct is recognized as beneficial to both teacher and student and as a means of providing an atmosphere of heightened intellectual curiosity." In order to encourage research, the trustee Executive Committee in 1956 authorized the reduction of teaching loads up to one-third for faculty who had research projects actively under way. A subcommittee on Faculty Scholarship had been created in the 1950s by the faculty Committee on Educational Policy. In their report in 1956 they defined the primary responsibility of the faculty to be effective teaching, but recognized the importance of scholarship (which they defined as keeping up with one's field) and research (which would lead to or make a contribution to knowledge). The subcommittee called for a "positive policy" from the administration concerning the relation between teaching ard research, and among their recommendations were encouragement to take sabbatic leaves, summer fellowships for faculty, and grants-in-aid by the university.

George S. Mumford, at the time a member of the Department of Mathematics faculty and later an administrative official at Tufts, was the first recipient, in 1957, of a summer research fellowship. It totalled $1,000, and was established by a gift from a Jackson alumna. Between 1957 and 1960, seven summer research fellowships were awarded out of twenty-six applications. A Faculty Research Fund of $10,000 was created by the trustees, beginning in 1960-61. Within three years it had been increased to provide modest support for nineteen projects by faculty representing twelve different departments. In 1967, two of the beneficiaries of the research funds were among the first recipients of awards by the National Humanities Foundation.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences had also taken formal cognizance of the relationship between classroom performance and productive scholarship in the spring of 1962, when its Committee on Educational Policy had presented for discussion a proposed resolution. It was stated that "it shall be incumbent on each faculty member to do conscientious teaching and to carry on creative or scholarly work of a character sufficiently significant to be suitable for publication in a recognized medium in his field." (This was known

Sayre, in his seven years at Tufts, had in fact published two items, but neither was in a field considered appropriate for a scholarly faculty member. The first was an article in Life magazine and the second was a book, both dealing with mountaineering. It was the lack of published scholarship in the field of philosophy while at the institution that was the basic reason for his nonreappointment. And it was the failure to award tenure to Sayre on the ground claimed by the university that provoked the renewed debate over the somewhat simplistic notion of "publish or perish." Tufts was accused of sacrificing an excellent teacher on the altar of a "mania" for producing scholarly books and articles.

President Wessell responded by asserting that "there is no 'publish or perish' dictum in effect at Tufts. Such a phrase is but a popular and tempting over-simplification of the question of the relations between teaching and scholarship and has no currency at Tufts." He restated his position when he gave his last President's Day address in the spring of 1966. Students had protested Sayre's dismissal, which included the establishment of a picket line and the urging by the Tufts student government organization that the decision not to reappoint be reconsidered. Wessell called for a balance of faculty between those who were excellent teachers and those who published as well as taught, and voiced the ideal of "building a faculty of good teachers who are also productive scholars." This view coincided with that of Dean Stearns who, in response to a long letter from Sayre in 1964 claiming the irrelevance of scholarship to teaching, pointed out that Tufts did not proceed "on the basis of a single criterion, on an either-or-basis. Rather ... we should seek colleagues who (at least) are both effective teachers and productive scholars."

Although no formal poll was ever taken to determine the sentiments of the faculty regarding the Sayre case, the great majority supported the administration's decision. Sayre left to accept a position

There were at least two important consequences that came out of the Sayre case. Tufts was finally forced to review and put in order its procedural policies regarding tenure and to get rid of the ambiguities which had surrounded them previously. And it clarified the expectations of the university as to eligibility for tenure. The message was clear to the younger, untenured faculty according to Lewis F. Manly, chairman of the Department of Economics and the one member of the Advisory Committee on Faculty Personnel who had cast a dissenting vote regarding Sayre's reappointment. "Scholarly publication is a condition for tenure appointment." That became one of the criteria listed when an advisory faculty Committee on Tenure and Promotion went into operation in the spring of 1970.

Until 1967 there was no formal machinery at all for reviewing candidates for either tenure or promotion. When a department chairman felt that a member of the department deserved either or both, there was a brief consultation with the appropriate dean, who apprised the president of the decision. He, in turn, presented the name of the candidate for trustee action. The department head (or chairman) usually made an individual judgment as to whether the faculty member deserved tenure and/or advancement in rank and was in no way required to consult with other members of the department or with other colleagues either inside or outside the institution. The chairman presumably took into account length of service and reputation as a teacher (but seldom observed classroom performance first-hand), and general campus and community activity.

In the post-World War II period, very few initial appointments were made above the level of instructor, largely as an economy measure. Many junior faculty were hired without a PhD but with the expectation that they would have earned one within at least three years. Appointments were ordinarily made on an annual basis for the first three years, and if all went well, would be followed by two three-year appointments before the final decision on tenure was made. All of this was confirmed by long-standing administrative practice but was not codified and put into writing until 1958. Scholarly publication was considered desirable but was in no sense required. It was, in brief, a highly personal evaluation by the department chairman, with a minimum number of steps involved in the process. Ad hoc committees were appointed for the first time in 1967 by the provost to advise on each individual being considered for tenure and promotion but there were still no firmly established criteria for

When the committee was first constituted, the vast majority of the members were full professors. (Between 1970-71 and 1974-75, only two of the thirty elected by then were associate professors.) By the early 1980s the situation had changed radically. From 1981-82 to 1985-86, the number of associate professors comprised the majority, and in 1983-84 there were no full professors at all on the committee. There was some feeling that those below the rank of full professor were placed in an awkward position and hesitated to recommend promotion for colleagues to a higher rank than they themselves held. But an attempt to amend the bylaws to require a minimum of three full professors on the committee at all times went down to defeat in the spring of 1985. One reason was that membership on the committee was considered so demanding of extra time and energy, and the intangible rewards for service so scanty that full professors were unwilling to be nominated and that the pool of eligible candidates had to be kept as large as possible. (Of the 86 full professors on the faculty in 1984-85, 65 were eligible to serve. Of the associate professors, 83 out of a total of 120 currently on the Arts and Sciences faculty were eligible to serve.)

An attempt was made to collect all of the evidence available bearing on the individuals under consideration, including that furnished by those outside the institution. Each department was to "maintain records of student opinion of faculty members" as a source of information about candidates, and they were to be made available to the committee. However, a series of attempts to prepare a uniform questionnaire to be filled out by all students in all courses was repeatedly defeated by the faculty. A committee was appointed in 1972 to prepare an all-purpose questionnaire but the faculty disagreed on what was expected. Another attempt was made a year later and met

Ad hoc committees were to be created for each candidate, consisting of two members of the parent committee, two members of the department(s) concerned, and one member selected by the tenured members of the department in a related field or from outside the university but in the same discipline as the candidate. After reporting back to the standing committee, the ad hoc committees were to make a recommendation to the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, subject to review by the president. Although the deliberations of both the standing and ad hoc committees were to be considered confidential, their recommendations were to be made known to the candidates through the appropriate department chairmen. Maintaining confidentiality was a chronic problem, and leaks did occur on occasion. In most cases the president and the dean concurred with the recommendations of the committee. However, in 1971 two individuals recommended by the committee were denied tenure by the dean. When the overruling was made known, an attempt in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences was defeated to adopt a policy that the decisions of the committee should not be reversed by the administration except in cases of financial exigency, discontinuance of a program, or by vote of the faculty.

The decisions of the administration were never seriously challenged by the faculty, even in 1972-73, when in one instance the unanimous recommendation of the committee was overturned by the dean. A less than unanimous vote by the tenure and promotion committee almost always resulted in a negative decision by the administration. A presidential decision in the spring of 1983 not to award tenure to a member of the Sociology Department, produced a storm of protest from some students and included a sit-in in Ballou Hall. The agitation resulted in the creation of an ad hoc faculty-student committee to review the entire tenure process. The nature and extent of student input into decision-making relating to tenure was the key issue.

The Committee on Tenure and Promotion was given the responsibility of establishing the general guidelines for tenure and promotion, and in the winter of 1969-70 solicited opinions from the faculty. There was considerable urgency to decide upon a set of policies and procedures because the newly created committee had thirty-nine candidates for tenure and/or promotion to consider its

Aside from concern about establishing the machinery for handling tenure and promotion matters, President Hallowell devoted considerable attention to faculty hiring practices. Efforts were made, with some success, to widen the search for women and minorities as well as to diminish the importance of the "old boy" network in employing faculty. Arrangements were completed during the last year of the Hallowell administration for a two-year program, starting in 1976-77, "to broaden expectations and opportunities for women," funded by the Mellon Foundation. Affirmative Action efforts brought tangible results, for by 1975-76 there were seventeen full-time minority faculty and sixty-one full-time female faculty. Between 1962 and 1975, the estimated proportion of time devoted exclusively to teaching by the Arts and Sciences faculty had dropped from 70 percent to less than 65 percent. However, the traditional recognition of effective teaching was by no means forgotten. The first Lillian Leibner Award for Excellence in Teaching and Advising was made in 1975, rotated among the three divisions of the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences and technology.

An important encouragement to scholarly activity had first been provided in systematic fashion with the adoption in 1946 of an institutional policy on sabbatic leave. It provided leave for one semester at full base salary or for a full academic year at half salary. Leave of absence without pay could be granted at any time, ordinarily for no more than one academic year. The policy was amended several times. It was provided in 1959 (apparently for the first time) that "sabbatic leave cannot ordinarily be granted after the applicant has passed his sixtieth birthday." The policy was amended in 1967 to include the assumption that "acceptance of sabbatic leave incurs an obligation to return to the university for at least two years further service." This was modified a year later to read that "a faculty member who accepts sabbatic leave intends to return to the University." Questions were raised concerning the desirability of retaining the age limitation after a faculty member over sixty was refused a sabbatical in 1969. In 1971 the policy statement was again amended, this time removing the age restriction imposed in 1959, but reducing the requirement of continued service to Tufts after return from sabbatical to one year before retirement. It was not until 1971 that sabbatic leave was authorized for administrators who did not have faculty status.

[] See Woodrow Wilson Sayre, Four Against Everest (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964).

[] For the complete report and a step-by-step account of the case and the issues which were involved, see the AAUP Bulletin 52 (March 1966): 24-31.