PS: Political Science & Politics

Table of Contents - 2011 - Volume 44, Issue 02  

The Profession

The Logic of the Tenure Decision: In Dubio Contra “Reum”

Kurt Weylanda1

a1 University of Texas at Austin

Abstract

Since tenure decisions concern the award of an employment guarantee, the burden of proof ought to rest on the candidate; in cases of doubt, the vote should be negative. However, a number of corrosive tendencies often weaken the strict application of this principle. To counteract these tendencies, this article advocates a strategy of pre-commitment to fairly objective standards and reliance on the professional judgments of a variety of anonymous outside experts, as reflected in a candidate's success in the double-blind peer review process.

Kurt Weyland is a professor of government and Lozano Long Professor of Latin American Politics at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written many books, articles, and book chapters on democratization, neoliberalism, populism, and social policy in Latin America. He is currently working on a book analyzing the wave-like diffusion of political regime changes across countries, starting with the explosive spread of the 1848 revolution in Europe and Latin America. He can be reached at kweyland@austin.utexas.edu.

Footnotes

I thank James Booth, Gary Freeman, John Higley, James Hunter, Wendy Hunter, and Scott Mainwaring for many thought-provoking discussions and interesting ideas on the topics examined in this article. I am grateful to these colleagues, as well as the anonymous reviewers for outstanding comments on earlier drafts of this article. Obviously, I myself am responsible for any errors or misjudgments that remain.

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