The executive committee of the Faculty Senate will vote on a resolution today asking the new chancellor to turn down the Board of Supervisor’s tenure offer.
The Board of Supervisors offered incoming Chancellor Sean O’Keefe the tenure privilege as a part of his hiring package. But some faculty members said the offer undermines the very purpose of the privilege some professors work years to achieve.
Charles Delzell, mathematics professor and member of the executive committee, said that according to University policy statement 36, O’Keefe should not receive tenure status.
P.S. 36 says that for a faculty member to get tenure initially without a Ph.D., he must have tenure from a comparable university and a record of exceptional accomplishment.
Tenure is a privilege universities grant professors after significant research, teaching and public service that also ensures job security — making tenure difficult to award and take away.
Delzell said O’Keefe — a former head of NASA, secretary of the Navy and professor at Syracuse University — may have fulfilled the requirement of “exceptional accomplishment” through his previous posts, but not in the way the policy intended.
Delzell said the tenure policy is intended for exceptional academic accomplishments.
“Technically the way LSU has done it is perfectly legal,” Delzell said. “There are enough loopholes that they can grant tenure to practically anybody.”
But Delzell said old University documents say tenure’s purpose was to protect the academic freedom of the professor and, therefore, the academic integrity of the university.
Jenkins told The Advocate yesterday that tenure is not just based on traditional scholarship, but also on exceptional public service, which O’Keefe has.
But Ravi Rau, a tenured physics and astronomy professor, said Jenkins’ comment was “total nonsense.”
“This is total contradiction to LSU’s policy,” Rau said. “LSU cannot simply make up the rules as it goes along.”