"I think there was a general sense in themeeting, and among the junior faculty and evenamong the senior faculty, that the present ad hocsystem doesn't work very well," said AssistantProfessor of English Allen H. Reddick, thedepartment's head tutor. "I don't think that's anygreat secret."

"A significant number of the people who areevaluating a junior candidate don't know thatcandidate and don't know what the contributions ofthe faculty member has been," said AssistantProfessor of English Nancy Ruttenburg.

Ruttenburg added that ad hoc committeesunfairly compared junior faculty's research withthat of the leaders in the field who have had moretime to publish. She also said ad hoc committeemembers often are not specialists in the field ofa tenure candidate.

In other departments, Spence convenes an ad hoccommittee to judge tenure candidates only afterthe department has recommended them. But sincelast year, a committee of outside scholars hastaken part in the English tenure process from thebeginning.

In an unusual move, Spence appointed theEnglish Department's committee as a permanent bodyto help break a hiring logjam that had stagnatedthe department's tenure process in recent years.But Ruttenberg said the committee had not improvedthe lot of junior members of the department.

Junior professors have said that when they comeup for tenure, they are not sure how the committeewould handle their cases, since it was set upprimarily to appoint full professors from outsideHarvard. However, committee members haverepeatedly said they would also consider internalcandidates.

Junior faculty members who attended the meetingsaid they were skeptical about whether any realchanges would come about as a result of themeeting with Bok and Spence, but they added thatit was an important forum for airing theirconcerns.

"We're extremely proud of being here and we'reextremely proud of the job we do," Reddick said."We really are all proud that we stood togetherand voiced our concerns on really sincere feelingsof disillusionment at being junior faculty membersat Harvard.