Re: Akhil Gupta's Tenure Decision

eye_in_the_sky (to_me@post_it.to_sci.com)
Tue, 21 Jan 1997 15:29:23 -0500

While Prof Gupta might be having a genuine and strong case it is not
possible to evaluate if any unfairness was extended to him based on the
information provided in your post.
The information lacking is: criteria used by Stanford for granting
tenure, his progress toward getting tenure, policy for appeal etc.
I doubt if posting info here and people on SCI sending letters to
Stanford Dean will help him much because the letters will not carry much
weight if they are written based on this information.
It is not uncommon to be recommended by the dept faculty for tenure and
the Dean/Vice Chancellor throwing the case out (the argument I have
heard is that in a friendly envir the colleagues do not tend to not
approve when they have worked with each other for many years and the
Dean/VC's evaluation is specifically for that purpose).

If Stanford has a precedence of going back on their tenure decisions,
letters from Stanford students/faculty-collegues in his area may help
somewhat rather than arbitrary letters from SCI readers.
My altavista search for akhil+gupta results in 24 hits; you may want to
check all those pieces for citations to his work; some results may come
in handy.
In addition to Altavista, I would also look at other search engines like
Infoseek, excite to see if there is any other relevant information in
the WEB (sometimes it can provide useful information).

I wish all the best for him.

eye_in_the_sky

bobby vaughn wrote:
>
> Last month (December 1996), the Deans' office of the Stanford University
> School of Humanities and Sciences denied tenure to Akhil Gupta of the
> Anthropology Department. As members of the Stanford community, we are
> angered and concerned about the administration's decision, and are
> committed to an appeal.
>
Rest deleted