Friendly Academic Cooperation
I recently witnessed a fine example of the spirit of open investigation and cooperation that drives academics today. A friend of mine was contacted by his advisor. The advisor was contacted by a former associate's tenure review committee. My friend was given the assignment of reviewing the associate's papers and writing up enough dirt to make sure they would not get tenure. No, the committee is not at MIT.
I'm used to nice simple fields where only my coworkers, vendors and customers are busy trying to get me fired and destroy my career. For the most part people I've worked in the past leave well enough alone unless they are trying to (not) hire me at their own company.
No, this didn't really surprise me; I realize tenure politics are brutal. But in an ideal world it would seem like the committee could do its own dirty work.
How would you feel if it were a doctor or safety criticals systems person being reviewed and the concerns were about general qualifications for the job.
ANother thing that seemed to be true in this instance is that the review was exclusively based on valid concerns about quality of papers published.
My issue is with my (apparently inaccurate) reading - my impression was that the advisor was asking your friend to dig for dirt because the advisor didn't want the person hired and was looking for an excuse, as opposed to asking your friend to, for example, compile documentation to back the advisor's negative assessment of the person's work.
But it does sound weirdly complicated, as tibbetts points out.
The problem is that such a review was required