Academic hires often come in pairs

HIRE EDUCATION: Michael Yolensky, law professor at Roger Williams University, says that hiring a married couple as part of a package is mostly unique to the education field. A Brown associate professor recently won a suit saying the school violated her hiring agreement when she was hired as part of a package with her husband. / PBN PHOTO/MARK S. MURPHY
HIRE EDUCATION: Michael Yolensky, law professor at Roger Williams University, says that hiring a married couple as part of a package is mostly unique to the education field. A Brown associate professor recently won a suit saying the school violated her hiring agreement when she was hired as part of a package with her husband. / PBN PHOTO/MARK S. MURPHY

Beverly Haviland, a senior lecturer and visiting associate professor in Brown University’s American Studies department, holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton University.
Before coming to Providence, she was a tenured professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and, before that, at Vassar College.
Well-published with a long list of awards on her research page on Brown’s website, she is, by all measures, an accomplished academic.
But what she wants is to be treated like a tenured professor at Brown. It’s a promise she said the university made to her when she was hired as part of a package deal with her husband, Paul Armstrong, who was hired as dean of the college in 2001, and did not deliver.
“I think [such a hiring] is a fairly unique aspect of academic employment,” said Michael Yelnosky, a professor of law at Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol. “I [also] think it’s not uncommon for some people to say, ‘This is opening up a bad can of worms, and we just shouldn’t do it.’ ”
Haviland sued Brown University in 2005 for breach of employment contract and for the right to be reviewed as a tenured professor would. In July, the R.I. Supreme Court ruled in Haviland’s favor, meaning she now has job protection similar to that of a tenured professor.
“It’s a cautionary tale, but these two [Brown professors] did it right,” Yelnosky said. “I read a lot of employment law cases from lots of jurisdictions, and I teach the subject. These people did much more and got much more [in writing] than most plaintiffs in employment wrongful-discharge [cases] get.”
Brown University, according to legal documents, recruited Armstrong in 2000 when he was a dean at Stony Brook and Havilland was a tenured professor of comparative studies there.
Armstrong made it clear that he wouldn’t go to Brown unless they could find a tenured position for Haviland.
After originally saying they couldn’t do that, the university created a position for Haviland as a visiting professor and said in writing it would allow her to be reviewed in the same manner as a tenured professor facing nonrenewal.
In short, Haviland wouldn’t be a tenured professor but she would be held to the same benefits and standards, including job security, as a tenured faculty member. But then Brown University sent another letter saying that Haviland instead would be reviewed the same way as any other nontenured professor. This was after the couple had resigned their Stony Brook positions and began planning their move to Providence.
The university, according to court documents, implied an exception would be made to Haviland’s renewal process as a nontenured professor. The court documents report that Haviland was satisfied with this and so the couple started work at Brown.
But then Haviland was reviewed in the same manner as nontenured faculty.
She appealed the decision at the university and was ruled against.
The court case ensued with Haviland winning at the District and Superior Court levels. Brown appealed those rulings and the case went to the R.I. Supreme Court in February 2012.
In its July 6 decision, the Supreme Court quote wrote: “Aristotle once said that love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies, and herein lies a significant problem for recruitment and contractual relations in the venerable halls of academia.”
According to the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, 36 percent of the American professoriate is part of an academic couple.
“I think it’s fairly common and you can understand [why],” said Thomas Dickinson, a Johnston attorney who represented Haviland in her case. “People in the academic world are socializing with each other. But if you’re in different departments and their careers might take different geographical paths, that’s [an issue] that universities have to be prepared to deal with.”
Yelnosky’ wife, Laurie Barron, is executive director of the RWU Law School’s Feinstein Institute for Legal Service and a lecturer in public-interest law.
He was already working at RWU Law School when they met. She was hired a few years later but, he said, that had nothing to do with his own position.
“I was tenured and staying. There were never any negotiations with me,” he said. “We’ve had several couples under consideration over the years I’ve been at the law school. This is a very common occurrence.”
Clayman Institute research also revealed that 47 percent of faculty with academic partners have not lost professional mobility as a result of their partnership and that 88 percent who negotiated a dual hire said they would have refused an appointment if the hiring institution couldn’t place their spouse there. Jeffrey Senese, vice president of academic affairs at Johnson & Wales University, hasn’t dealt with a dual-career couple in his current post but he did encounter such cases while in the same position at Philadelphia University and said dual employment is a tricky subject.
In some instances, he let the coveted professional move on because their spouse wasn’t as qualified as other candidates he was considering for open positions.
In other circumstances, he was able to help the trailing spouse, as they are so called, find employment at another area institution.
“[But] it’s always [to] the institution’s advantage to hire them,” Senese said. “You think about superstars, people who could go anywhere and you want them happy and settled and connected to the institution in many ways. How do you make that happen? You find a position for their spouse.”
Senese and Yelnosky said there are several factors that go into how willing an institution would be to do that.
Ivy League schools, for instance, may be harder to negotiate with than schools in rural areas, where spouses might have a hard time finding employment.
“Schools don’t have hard and fast policies,” Yelnosky said. “Some schools have remained ambivalent as a practice. They want to decide them case by case. It gets complicated.”
Haviland, who remains at her position at Brown, could not be reached for comment. Armstrong currently is a professor of English at the university.
Brown, according to court documents, said it felt it hadn’t issued Haviland an actual contract for the type of position she expected. The courts disagreed, saying that negotiations between the university and Haviland made for an “implied-in-fact contract.”
In a statement to Providence Business News, Brown University said: “Steps have been taken … to clarify the hiring process to ensure that faculty rules are followed in all cases. This case underscores the importance of adhering to faculty rules in granting privileges that are reserved for those who have been vetted in accordance with the rigorous standards associated with the awarding of tenure.” •

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