We Need to Talk: Scholarship, Tenure, and Promotion in the Balance

There are twenty summary recommendations made in the Report of the MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion; my de partment is already (and has been for some time) doing eighteen of them. I point this out not to sing our praises but to suggest that the "complex situation," as the report calls it, of trends that must be addressed before they become a crisis is already being addressed (5). It is not going to be resolved once and for all, mind you, because these are issues that must be continually engaged. Nonetheless, there are many examples, I suspect, of departments already addressing and employing the practices, calibrations, conceptions, and facilitations recommended by the task force. It's just that such examples or models are not, as far as I can tell, emanating from doc toral programs or traveling in a trickle-down fashion. The discussion we should have on these recommendations must stop being "vertical"?as if the PhDs sent to master's and baccalaureate institutions go brain-dead or incommunicado when (and if) they find a position?and must become dispersed horizontally across the spectrum of departments, colleges, and universities.