The headline on Adrian De Vore’s May 21 Op-ed piece, “Iowa State faculty refuses to accept accountability” is a slander.

No such thing has ever happened. All ISU faculty are reviewed, and I have never even heard any faculty member suggest that they shouldn’t be.

Faculty understand well that were they not reviewed, it would not only be difficult to dismiss such headline-trash, it would be hard to make the decisions a university must make to function, like setting salaries, etc. So the FACULTY believes faculty should be reviewed.

Some critics of tenure want what is (badly) named “post-tenure review.”

That name itself insinuates the falsehood that tenured faculty are not reviewed, and was likely picked for just that reason.

De Vore wrote that the ISU faculty voted down post-tenure review. But that’s not right.

Post-tenure review, as it is understood by tenure critics, was not even on the ballot.

Post-tenure review, as understood by those not acquainted with the verbal tricks of some tenure critics, is just “review of faculty after they have tenure.” ISU has that and has always had it. And the faculty did NOT vote against it.

What the faculty did vote to do was retain the current system of doing these reviews rather than switch to a new system, called “peer review.”

The main reason they did that is likely the homely one that the peer review would expend to much time.

Imagining that it was done for some lurid reason like antipathy to accountability may bring a pleasant righteous adrenaline surge, but it is plain wrong.

As I pointed out above, the faculty supports accountability, and for good reasons.

Bryan E. Cain

Professor

Mathematics