Riesman disagrees. He speaks of a "teach of perish" attitude in the tight academic job market that runs counter to the traditional complaints of "publish or perish."

"It is a partially false picture that only scholarship counts," he says. "Ever since I've been here, and with increasing intensity since Derek Bok became president, one has had to make a case for teaching. The problem lies elsewhere. There have been people on this faculty who've been promoted on the basis of their teaching. The problem does not lie in administration support for them. The problem lies in peer respect. The feeling on the part of one's peers that one isn't part of the field is a far more crucial factor than the issue of promotion itself, which can be obtained by teachers."

" 'Publish or perish' is a little too simple a way of explaining what happens," says Kiely. "What it means is that if you publish well, if your research is really very good, that can compensate for lousy teaching. But if your teaching is absolutely brilliant but you're not publishing anything, it's unlikely--there are a few exceptions--that it will compensate for the lack of research. So in that sense, when it comes down to a tenure decision, there is not equal weight given to both."

In any discussion of junior faculty problems the issue of tenure raises its ugly head. If the undergraduates' major demand on the system is for better education, the junior faculty's must be for more secure employment. The struggle then is to balance the needs of the student and the young teacher and the University. Says Kiely, "I don't see how to solve that except to keep some kind of tenure system and keep a good rotating junior faculty. The rotating junior faculty refreshes the system. But if tenure were somehow or other to be given to all these wonderful young people they would cease to be junior faculty and become part of the system. The fairly shortterm rotation is good for the institution and for the education and also isn't bad for their careers. It's better to be told you're not going to be kept on permanently within a short period, rather than being kept hanging on year after year."

Is all the complaining of the junior faculty, then, merely the normal noise of the system in motion, or something abnormal?

"I think it's abnormal because of the unbelievable tightness of the job market," says Wilcox. "The only question the junior faculty has is not how it's going, but 'why can't I be tenured?'

There is a lot a foot to get rid of tenure, but I'm against it. The greatness of an academic institution is the development of tenure, and out of tenure develops academic freedom: Those are the elders, they have made it.

"Personally, I don't think tenure is good for the whole world, but I'm an establishment type and I think academe should have a series of elders. Tribes end up announcing someone as an elder, and I'll bet in some jungle place everybody is saying, 'That guy doesn't remember what he's talking about--how the hell can he run this tribe?'"

David L. DeJean is associate editor of The Louisville Times.

The Opinion Page is a regular feature of The Harvard Crimson that presents responsible opinions by members of the Harvard community and others. These articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editorial staff of The Crimson.

Harvard Nieman Fellows, like many of their counterparts at the Center for International Affairs and the Institute of Politics, see Harvard in year-long glimpses. Young journalists on leave from their jobs in America and around the world, Nieman Fellows spend their time here taking courses, talking with students and faculty members, and thinking about their work and about Harvard. On this page, one Fellow describes his thoughts as his year ends, and another discusses a problem he has learned about during the past year-the tenure system.