American University has upheld its decision to deny tenure to former professor Carolyn Brown, a broadcast journalist who appealed after she was the latest in a number of women who claimed that they were victims of a biased evaluation by former AU Provost Dr. Scott A. Bass.
In a letter sent to Brown on May 30, AU President Dr. Sylvia M. Burwell upheld the provost’s earlier decision denying the professor tenure and promotion in March 2017. Burwell responded to three grounds Brown based her appeal on – one being the use of teacher evaluations to assess teaching ability.
Brown, currently a faculty member in the Mayborn School of Journalism at the University of North Texas, plans to file a complaint with the D.C. Office of Human Rights “immediately.”
What Burwell “did was just sort of kick [the decision] back to the provost, who is the one who originally made the decision without, I think, taking a look at the evidence and the situation,” Brown told Diverse. “If the only tool you’re going to use to evaluate someone’s teaching has been proven in academic studies – all types of studies – as biased against women and people of color, then I think that’s problematic.”
Dr. John Watson, associate professor in AU’s School of Communication and a mentor to Brown, said that although Provost Bass noted an inconsistency in Brown’s range of teacher-evaluation scores for his earlier decision, other areas of her work used for tenure consideration such as scholarship and publications were “excellent.”
Teacher evaluations, he added, can be “horribly subjective.”
Brown filed her tenure decision appeal with the Committee on Faculty Grievances (CFG) three months after Provost Bass denied her for tenure and promotion last year.
