March 25, 2006


Beckwith

Filed under: Academia
By QD (Email) @ 8:27 am

Go ahead, wander over to Frank Beckwith’s homepage. Look at all the articles he’s written, the books he’s published. I was in academia as a graduate student in a couple of our nation’s top schools for seven years and will be starting in the fall as an assistant professor in political science at a top-50 university. The idea that Baylor has denied Frank tenure is, simply put, an outrage. He has a publication record that would easily get him tenure everywhere except perhaps places like Harvard, Princeton and the like (where the tenure rate is something like one in a gazillion). Baylor should be ashamed of itself and young scholars and graduate students whose views lie outside the mainstream of academics should not think that Baylor represents a place where they can be open about their views and do their work honestly.

I have watched Baylor pretty closely over the past few years, and have thought that its Baylor 2012 program (where it was attempting to revitalize its Christian identity) made it a very attractive place to go. It even made the prospect of living in Waco palatable. No more.

Shame, shame.


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  1. The Debate Link

    2. Interdepartmental Warfare This is how feuds start. First, we have a spat brewing at Rutgers-Camden Law School over affirmative action in their hiring process. Professor Michael Livingston wrote a blistering attack claiming that Affirmative Action lowers the quality of new ...

  2. Telic Thoughts

    3. More on Beckwith and Baylor Southern Appeal is critizicing Baylor, as is First Things. Meanwhile, Kathy Hutchins suggests that just like the slaves in the movie Spartacus, all academics should stand up, saying "I am Francis Beckwith".

26 Rebel Yells to “Beckwith”

  1. JaxJD2B Says:
    March 25th, 2006 at 10:22 am

    Collegiality is a huge opportunity for liberal departments to kick out tenure-candidates they disagree with.
    At Loyola New Orleans, we had an amazing (and orthodox) religious studies professor, Christian Brugger who was denied tenure for the very same reason. This despite his excellent academic publishing, high student evaluations, and great level of participation in the university.
    He now teaches at the Institute for Psychological Sciences in DC.
    Just goes to show the lip-service being paid to “diverse viewpoints” is really just that - lip service.

  2. TO Says:
    March 25th, 2006 at 1:43 pm

    I wonder what Juan Non-Volokh et al. think of this.

  3. Jay Anderson Says:
    March 25th, 2006 at 3:29 pm

    Another reason for me to answer “the University of Virginia” (law school) instead of “Baylor University” (undergraduate) whenever people ask me where I went to school.

    Shameful, indeed. If I still gave money to Baylor I’d stop.

  4. shortz Says:
    March 25th, 2006 at 6:57 pm

    Isn’t he in favor of the ID fraud? That’s reason enough to deny him tenure.

  5. JohnInMontgomery Says:
    March 25th, 2006 at 6:57 pm

    I assumed that a Baptist university would automatically be conservative. I’m very surprised at this tenure issue.

  6. Jay C. Says:
    March 26th, 2006 at 12:40 am

    As a Baylor twice-alum, including a graduate of the institute at which Professor Beckwith teaches, I am dumbfounded at his denial of tenure. I absolutely love Baylor and support the 2012 Vision, but something’s very screwy here.

  7. TO Says:
    March 26th, 2006 at 4:13 pm

    Supporting the ID fraud isn’t reason to deny tenure. Take QD’s suggestion and look at Prof. Beckwith’s website. If his whole career (or maybe even a significant part) consisted of defenses of the ID fraud, I’d be sympathetic. It doesn’t.

    Prof. Beckwith has found himself on the “wrong” side of an issue that arose in the media at about the time that he was up for tenure. I don’t think that’s sufficient reason to deny tenure.

    QD and others, has Baylor offered any explanation?

  8. shortz Says:
    March 26th, 2006 at 4:50 pm

    “Supporting the ID fraud isn’t reason to deny tenure. ”

    You really can’t have tenured people supporting fraud.

  9. Defensor Pacis Says:
    March 26th, 2006 at 7:23 pm

    Beckwith’s area is not ID. He argued that it would be constitutional to teach it in schools, but thinks that even if constitutional it would not be advisable.

    “Fraud” is a risible charge. That ID is false is completely debatable, though again Beckwith hasn’t made a career out of debating its merits one way or the other. That said, given all the nutcase ideas some professors have at elite institutions, if we’re going to conduct purges over false or bad ideas ID should be pretty low on the list.

    I should not be surprised, but I still am when folks are so small-minded as to demand an academy that caters strictly to their own idea of what counts as acceptable discourse. Let the purges begin!

  10. Hunter Baker Says:
    March 26th, 2006 at 7:29 pm

    Nicely, put Defensor.

  11. Grover Gardner Says:
    March 26th, 2006 at 7:43 pm

    IIRC, Dr. Beckwith made a fuss here at SA over a rather harmless statement on one of the Baylor faculty bulletin boards, insisting it was a “death threat”. That’s not going to make friends among the rest of the faculty.

  12. Defensor Pacis Says:
    March 26th, 2006 at 7:44 pm

    Because they were already so friendly . . .

  13. TP Says:
    March 26th, 2006 at 11:07 pm

    Several points, all entirely my own limited perspective.

    First off, as I’m sure most junior faculty can attest to, tenure is a notoriously opaque and cloistered concept. It is often difficult to understand why certain persons are asked to join the club and why certain persons are not. Sometimes, like rituals of admission to many societies, it seems utterly arbitrary.

    Second, and related, the idea that Professor Beckwith was denied tenure at Baylor — Baylor !! — because of his politics strikes me as absurd. I have lived in Texas for over 6 years, and have attended graduate schools for two terminal degrees, and one thing I can assure you of, is that while the Academy in general may be skewed liberal, Baylor most certainly is NOT.

    I would tend to argue that Professor Beckwith’s politics are probably more in line with the politics of probably the Baylor faculty and certainly the Baylor administration than they are disparate. Thus, the tired meme that a conservative professor was denied tenure because of his/her politics just doesn’t make a lot of sense here.

    I want to be clear: I am in NO way making ANY comment whatsoever on whether Profesor Beckwith should have received tenure. While I personally disagree with about 90% of his views, I have always enjoyed reading his posts, interacting with me (he is always willing to engage in a respectful manner), and I have also enjoyed reading his scholarly works.

    But, given the odd nature of tenure in general, I am generally unsurprised by who does and who does not get tenure. Look at Daniel Drezner — a more accomplished political scientist one would be hard-pressed to find, and yet he was denied tenure, for reasons unclear to most people, including himself.

    Third, while people may debate the merits of ID or not, the fact remains that it has taken a major public relations hit, partly spurred by the Dover decision. It does not seem impossible that P. Beckwith’s very public position on the controversy, whether reasonable or not, could have had an impact on the tenure decision.

    Whatever the case, I am very sorry that P. Beckwith was not granted tenure, and I personally wish him nothing but the best in his professional endeavors.

  14. Lurker Says:
    March 27th, 2006 at 7:21 am

    The commenter above gets it right. Granting tenure is a political process in which merits based on academic record plays only part of a role. Here are some other factors that could have affected his tenure. Was he a good teacher? Did his particular academic focus blend with the rest of the department? Was he liked amongst his peers (i.e. was he ‘collegial’)? Did his publications have any impact with his peers across the nation and the world (e.g. it is easy to spam some journals for the sake of a high publication count, but that doesn’t mean anybody will read them)? That said, I find tenure denial a poor excuse to turn Beckwith into a martyr for some higher conservative cause against Baylor. It is downright anti-intellectual. Beckwith, if he is true to himself, will have a hard decision to make. Should he continue to pursue academics, perhaps elsewhere, or should he, for instance, become an employee at the Discovery Institute, and retire?

  15. Jon Rowe Says:
    March 27th, 2006 at 7:40 am

    – Look at Daniel Drezner — a more accomplished political scientist one would be hard-pressed to find, –

    That was probably a dumb decision on Chicago’s part; but still it happed at Chicago, not Baylor. The top schools are notorious for denying tenure, by holding ridiculously high standards. Is Baylor?

    (Remember, shortly thereafter Drezner got offered a TENURED position at Tufts, without ever having even taught there.)

    I know in law schools — even at the top schools — there is a presumption that you get tenure unless there is something “wrong” with you, which strikes me as the right way to go.

    If you are going to have tenure at all, if a prof. pays his or her dues to the institution and does what’s expected (which Beckwith seems to have done) he or she should get tenure.

  16. TP Says:
    March 27th, 2006 at 9:26 am

    Jon,

    P. Drezner was just one example. You don’t think it would be difficult to find puzzling tenure decisions at almost any tier of university, do you?

    We have very different ideas on the notion of tenure in law schools — what you say was surely true 15 years ago, but I tend to think it is much less true now.

    I do not disagree with your normative point, of course — that one ought to get tenure if one pays their dues. I was merely pointing out the lay of the landscape, which is that many tenure decisions are mystifying.

  17. shortz Says:
    March 27th, 2006 at 9:56 am

    “He argued that it would be constitutional to teach it in schools, but thinks that even if constitutional it would not be advisable.”

    Then he doesn’t promote the ID fraud, and I was wrong. Promoting it is, however, wrong.

    “That ID is false is completely debatable”

    Not really, no. The fraud is mostly in dressing up this error as science.

  18. AntiLurker Says:
    March 27th, 2006 at 11:44 am

    Lurker raises questions, but has no answers. Raising loaded questions in order to turn speculation into fact is unfair, uncharitable and unkind, and McCarthyesque (Eg: “I’m not saying you’e a homosexual, but….”). FB has been targeted from day one at BU. And you know that.

    [Edited by SA admin.]

  19. Ramson's eyepatch Says:
    March 27th, 2006 at 2:48 pm

    Or, you can quote Scalia:

    http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002236937

    ***

    Tenure committees are notoriously fickle. A lot of messy departmental politics live under the “collegial” rug.

    All other details aside, one thing that might have tripped up FB is that while, yes, he has a lot of publications, many of them were published with presses/journals that support only minimal peer review. His publications in peer review situations look, at a glance, like less ambitious work. For example, his forthcoming book with CUP–a press that does have some real peer review–is a reader (based on the catalog copy) and not a monograph of original research.

    Personally, I think universities should consider all publications and let the tenure committee sort out the importance of the work. However, it’s typical that a person with just a couple of papers published in highly competitive peer reviewed journals will be taken more seriously than someone with, say, a bestseller or a popular textbook/reader.

  20. Grad Student Says:
    March 27th, 2006 at 6:58 pm

    Ramson’s eyepatch is lying. FB’s book is a single-author monograph of original work! I’ve read it. I’m one of his grad students. IT IS NOT YET IN THE CUP CATALOG. It won’t come up until Spring 2007!

  21. Lurker Says:
    March 27th, 2006 at 10:30 pm

    To “AntiLurker,” I understand your frustration and anger. But God loves you and me both. I shall pray for you.

  22. Ramson's eyepatch Says:
    March 27th, 2006 at 11:09 pm

    Grad Student, relax. I made a mistake. A bit of bad googling and a stupid mistake looking up stuff on the CUP website on my part made me think Beckwith’s CUP book was edited. (Duh, he’s not Karen, he’s Francis.)

    I’ll take your word on it that it’s a monograph, no doubt a fine, peer reviewed monograph.

  23. Mark Wyzalek Says:
    March 28th, 2006 at 5:47 am

    First Things weighs in pretty strongly:
    http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=215

  24. Grad Student II Says:
    March 28th, 2006 at 9:19 am

    Someone wrote: “Several points, all entirely my own limited perspective.”

    Me: I couldn’t agree more; each of this points is from a quite limited perspective indeed. Have you ever been to Baylor?

  25. TP Says:
    March 28th, 2006 at 10:23 am

    Grad Student:

    Yes.

  26. Eric Rasmusen Says:
    March 29th, 2006 at 10:12 am

    If Prof. Drezner couldn’t get a better tenured job than at Tufts, that is a sign that Chicago was right not to tenure him. A job at Tufts is good, to be sure, but would it rank in the top 50 in political science? Standards at top departments are not ridiculously high; they are just high enough so new professors have to be as good as the existing faculty.

    How good are the journals at which Prof. Beckwith has published? Looking at his cites in Google Scholar, he doesn’t look very strong. But cite counts differ between fields, so it would be good if someone who knows the field described why he merits or does not merit tenure at Baylor.

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