The Tenure Process in LIS: a Survey of LIS/IS Program Directors (Report‪)‬

Background and Review of the Literature Academic tenure undergoes persistent criticism. The most pervasive criticism of academic tenure is that it protects faculty members who are no longer contributing to the institution once the initial acknowledgment of tenure has been made. This allegation was perhaps evident to undergraduates forty years ago, because the legal pads from which their tenured professors lectured (often in large, impersonal lecture halls) were yellowed and brittle from years of use. Allen (2000) wrote that critics of higher education use tenure "as a scapegoat for a plethora of institutional shortcomings" (p. 95) and that in spite of scapegoat status, tenure remains "the very lynchpin [sic]of academic freedom" (p. 95). In reality, tenured faculties continue to perform to the expectations of their institutions even though the nature of responsibility undergoes change.