Last month, the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees shocked faculty across Mississippi when it voted, without discussion, to modify criteria in some of its tenure.
Faculty, who had no formal input on the changes, say the revised criteria are vague and could be easily used by presidents to target outspoken or marginalized colleagues in Mississippi, particularly considering that IHL used similar language to oust liberal professors during the civil rights movement.
As a job protection, tenure ensures that faculty can’t be fired without just cause. IHL’s policy changes create new criteria that university presidents can use to decide whether to award tenure at the end of the six-year, rigorous review process, including a faculty member’s “collegiality,” “effectiveness, accuracy and integrity in communications,” and “contumacious conduct,” a factor that was previously only included in the board’s dismissal policy.
“It’s not clear what these terms mean in practice,” said Brian LaPierre, the outgoing president of University of Southern Mississippi’s faculty senate. “They’ll have to be defined.”
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says contumacious means “stubbornly disobedient” or “rebellious.” The IHL has included the word in employment contracts for years as a reason a faculty member could be dismissed. But how does IHL define the term?
In an email, spokesperson Caron Blanton wrote the board does not define contumacious conduct in its policies, but that “it is based on...
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