Dr. Delia Fernandez – an assistant professor of Latinx history at Michigan State University – teaches her online classes and works on her book manuscript during the three hours a day her one-year-old son takes a nap.
After her partner left for army reserve duty, she suddenly found herself single parenting while working toward tenure during a pandemic. She was relieved when Michigan State University announced it would extend junior faculty’s tenure clocks by one year.
It’s “one of the most basic things universities can do to support their junior faculty … because the idea of research productivity, or any productivity at this time, is kind of absurd,” she said.
More than 240 universities are offering junior faculty extensions on their tenure clocks to ease the pressure as the coronavirus upends their research and routines.
But some faculty are concerned about whether extensions alone account for academia’s disparities. Without other supports, they fear it could exacerbate them.
Minority scholars are underrepresented, especially among tenured faculty. People of color made up 27% of junior faculty in fall 2017, but only 19% of tenured professors, a 2019 Pew Research Center study found. Meanwhile, Black and Hispanic faculty comprised 4% of assistant professors but only 2% of full-time professors overall that same year, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Dr. Patricia Matthew, an associate professor of English at Montclair University, is in favor of tenure clock extensions, but she’s concerned junior faculty of color may face an extra layer of setbacks during the pandemic. A yearlong pause may not be enough, said Matthew, the editor of Written/Unwritten: Diversity and the Hidden Truths of Tenure, a 2016 book in which she explored the inequities of the tenure system.
