M.D. Anderson is censured by national faculty group

voted unanimously in favor of the censure, one of academia’s harshest criticisms. The vote followed a nearly yearlong investigation into academic freedom and tenure practices at the University of Texas cancer center that concluded its administration violated commonly accepted principles.

“I am deeply saddened by the need for censure and hope it may be short-lived, but President (Ronald) DePinho seems bent on stonewalling,” said Debra Nails, a Michigan State philosophy pro- fessor and the chairwoman of the AAUPteam that investigated M.D. Anderson. “The University of Texas, the extraordinary faculty of the cancer center, and the individuals who have been unjustly treated at M.D. Anderson deserve better.”

AAUP censure carries no legal weight, but it is considered a major stigma, potentially affecting an institution’s ability to attract and retain top faculty. M.D. Anderson is the most prominent name among the 56 institutions currently on the AAUP list, which is mostly populated by lesser known schools.

At the heart of the censure is M.D. Anderson’s lack of tenure, which in academia typically guarantees faculty permanent employment after a grueling probationary period. Under a system M.D. Anderson refers to as term tenure, a characterization AAUP officials call “a contradiction in terms,” professors must reapply for their appointments every seven years.

DePinho defended the system in a statement responding to the censure.

“M.D. Anderson’s time-tested system of offering renewable seven-year appointments to our faculty members not only promotes academic freedom but also fosters exceptional individual achievement and maintains the institution’s global impact on the cancer problem,” said DePinho. “In addition, years of data demonstrate our consistent pattern of

renewing faculty appointments in almost all cases.”

UT System Chancellor Bill McRaven echoed the defense, calling M.D. Anderson’s system instrumental in keeping the cancer center at the forefront of the world’s most formidable cancer centers. In a statement, he said that as a specialized research-based cancer care institution with “the singular mission of saving lives,” the process has worked “exceptionally well to ensure the recruitment and retention of world class, high-impact faculty” for decades.

M.D. Anderson’s administration did not send anyone to contest the censure, voted upon at the AAUP annual meeting in Washington. It was combative during the investigation.

The censure statement focused on the dismissal of two long-time professors, but also noted “increasing pressure on basic-science faculty members to obtain grants and on clinical faculty to treat more patients, with what the faculty claimed were deleterious results for research and patient care.” It said that as a consequence, faculty members could be “inclined to select lines of research for their fundability and predictable results.” “Benefit of mankind’

The AAUP, which defends academic freedom and shared governance, consists of roughly 47,000 members at over 500 local campus chapters and 39 state organizations. It was founded 100 years ago in response to firings of professors with unpopular views.

The M.D. Anderson case arose because DePinho denied extensions of tenure to three professors who’d received unanimous recommendations from the institution’s promo- tion and tenure committee, controversial because presidents usually honor such recommendations. Two of the professors — Kapil Mehta and Zhengxin Wang — complained they had done everything necessary to meet renewal requirements and were never given an explanation for DePinho’s decision. (The third professor opted not to make his case public.)

M.D. Anderson’s administration questioned the AAUP’s credentials and ability to objectively judge such disputes after it was notified last July of the investigation. When Nails’ investigatory team made a fact-finding visit to campus in September, the administration declined to meet with it.

Mehta on Saturday called the AAUP’s censure “a sad day in the history of M.D. Anderson.”

He said “faculty morale and confidence in the leadership have deteriorated due to lack of shared governance and fear of retaliation,” which “will prevent innovation in research and delay new therapeutic applications for the benefit of mankind.”

The censure statement said M.D. Anderson violated AAUP principles by not providing reasons for rejecting the promotion and tenure committee recommendations. It also criticized the lack of a hearing before a faculty body at which the burden would be on the administration to show cause for the dismissal of Mehta and Wang. Faculty discourse

The statement also noted an increased frequency of presidential rejections despite unanimous faculty personnel committee recommendations for appointment renewal under DePinho. It said the trend reduces “the faculty’s confidence in the fairness of the reappointment pro- cess” and resulted in a tendency toward “faculty censoring their own discourse.”

In his statement, McRaven noted that M.D. Anderson’s practice of renewable, multiple-year appointments is in compliance with the UT System regents’ rules and regulations.

The addition of M.D. Anderson puts two UT System schools on the AAUP list. UT Medical Branch at Galveston was censured in 2010 after it laid off 124 professors following Hurricane Ike, 42 of them tenured and 16 tenure track. The professors were among more than 2,400 UTMB employees to lose their jobs after Ike caused nearly $1 billion in damages to the medical school and its hospital.

Besides M.D. Anderson and UTMB, the most prominent institutions on the AAUP censure list are Louisiana State Univer- sity, the State University of New York and the University of Illinois, which was also added Saturday. M.D. Anderson, UTMB and Meharry Medical College are the only medical institutions. Can come of the list

Institutions can be removed from the censure list by a majority vote at a subsequent annual meeting.

Of 219 institutions censured prior to this year, 166 eventually came off the list, some as soon as the next year, some after decades.

The AAUP website says members often consider it a duty, in order to indicate their support of the principles violated, to refrain from accepting an appointment to an institution on the censure list. But it adds there are no such obligations. todd.ackerman@chron.com twitter.com/ChronMed