
          Denial of Tenure At Vanderbilt
          By Gaillard, FryeFrye Gaillard
          Vol. 5, No. 4, 1983, pp. 7-8
          
          By almost any measure, the last year has been a good one for
Elizabeth Langland. Her first two books, published by the University
of Chicago Press and the University Press of New England, have drawn
praise from the critics, and a third book--Society and the
Novel--has been accepted by the University of North Carolina
Press.
          In addition, her teaching is going well at Converse College in
Spartanburg, S.C., where Langland is the 34-year-old Chairman of the
English Department. Teaching generally goes well for Langland. She was
widely acclaimed by the students at Vanderbilt, where she taught until
1982, and where students lined up one hundred and twenty at a time for
her British Novels class.
          But Langland was forced to leave Vanderbilt. The University's Arts
and and Science Dean, Jacque Vogeli, overruled a recommendation by the
school's English faculty that she become the first woman in the
department's history to be granted tenure. That decision has sparked a
federal lawsuit and a national controversy, and Vanderbilt's image has
taken a beating.
          The court case will be heard sometime in October. In the meantime,
Vanderbilt officials have sought to defend themselves against charges
of egregious sexism, which is a difficult task, given the facts that
are available to the University's critics. At the time of Langland's
tenure vote, for example, Vanderbilt's Arts and Science College had
two hundred and ten tenured faculty members, of whom two hundred and
three were male.
          There were already "grumblings about those statistics. But the
complaints grew louder after June 13,1981, when Langland was summoned
to the office of English Department Chairman James Kilroy. "The news
is not good," Kilroy told her. And he read her a letter from Vogeli,
approximately two pages of single-spaced type, informing her that her
tenure request was being denied. Vogeli, who had approved tenure for
twenty-nine men and one woman during his time as a Vanderbilt dean,
ordered Kilroy not to show Langland the letter or allow her to take
any notes on its contents. Just read it to her once, Vogeli had
said.
          Still, Langland got the gist of it. Vogeli found her scholarship
deficient; she had failed, he said to establish "a national
reputation" in her field.
          Langland was shaken and dismayed. but many of her colleagues were
outraged. One of the angriest was Susan Ford Wiltshire, a tenured,
Southern-bred classics professor who arrived at Vanderbilt in
1971. Wiltshire knew that no woman hired after that had been granted
tenure at Vanderbilt, despite lofty assurances by the school's
administration that Vanderbilt was committed to equality.
          In addition, Wiltshire was familiar with Langland's credentials as
a teacher and a scholar--the three books she had written or edited
during three years at Vanderbilt, a time during which she also wrote
several scholarly articles, chaired the University's Women Studies
Program and taught at least three courses a semester.
          "Elizabeth was widely recognized as one of the genuinely excellent
teachers on campus," said Wiltshire. "As for Jacque Vogeli's
estimation of her scholarship, there are a great many
people--including the majority of her own department, and more
recently, critics around the country--who clearly disagree with
him."
          For Wiltshire and many others, the issue boiled down to this:
Despite Vanderbilt's atrocious record in promoting women faculty
members, a University dean went out of his way--took the unusual step
of overruling the recommendation of a respected department--to deny
tenure to an excellent teacher and promising young scholar.
          The move seems all the more surprising in view of Vanderbilt's
national reputation for excellence. The English department has long
been one of the best in the South, with writers such as Robert Penn
Warren and John Crowe Ransom passing through in recent decades. 

And
during the political and social turbulence of the 1960s, Vanderbilt's
chancellor at the time, Alexander Heard, stood up strongly for
academic freedom--keeping his campus peaceful not by threats of
repression, but by honest open dialogue that impressed even the most
radical of students.
          Vanderbilt people take pride in all that. But they also wince at
the University's shabbier moments, including its decision in 1960 to
dismiss the Reverend James Lawson from its graduate divinity
program. Lawson was black, and his offense, in the eyes of the
Vanderbilt administration, was to lead sit-in demonstrations at
Nashville lunch counters.
          Harvie Branscomb, Vanderbilt's chancellor before Heard, explained
the University's position this way: "There is no issue involved of
freedom or thought, or of conscience, or of speech, or of the right to
protest against social custom. The issue is whether or not the
University can be identified with a continued campaign of mass
disobedience of law as a means of protest."
          Susan Wiltshire and other critics argue that the same institutional
defensiveness and startling lapse of vision have characterized
Vanderbilt's handling of the Elizabeth Langland case. As proof, they
cite Vogeli's recent quotes in a student publication:
          "(The press) reported that I denied tenure. I do not deny tenure. I
sometimes fail to concur with a department recommendation. There is a
difference. Deny has a pejorative ring. Deny implies that tenure is
something that rightfully belongs to a faculty member, and that I am
preventing that member from receiving it. It is like saying your
professor denied you an A."
          Wiltshire, Langland and many of their colleagues were unimpressed,
at the least, by Vogeli's stance, and they formed an organization
called WEAV (Women's Equity at Vanderbilt) to push the Langland case
and to raise the larger questions about women's equality. Regardless
of the outcome of the Langland suit, the WEAV members are convinced
their efforts will have a long-run effect.
          "The history of this institution will be significantly altered by
what has happened in the last year and a half," concludes
Wiltshire. "Elizabeth Langland and Jim Lawson each said 'no' to the
'no'--and that makes all the difference."
          
            Frye Gaillard, a Southern author and editorial writer at
the Charlotte Observer, is a graduate of Vanderbilt,
class of '68.
          
        