Perspective on Tenure for I.U. Librarians: How Do We Define and Support Tenure at I.U.?
In a 2011 Indiana University Libraries Faculty Council (IULFC) ballot, librarians voted that promotion and tenure procedures will become campus-specific. Some campuses are in the process of developing procedures and some already have them. No matter how our final procedures will vary campus to campus, we share the bond of academic status and tenure for librarians, and, especially now, we need to think about what these principles mean to us individually and as a faculty. Although our shared criteria for promotion and tenure remain as stated in the Indiana University Faculty Handbook, even those may change as the result of our in-depth review of the tenure process.
Status of the Profession: A 1989 National Survey of Tenure and Promotion Policies for Academic Librarians
A questionnaire surveying institutional tenure and promotion criteria sent to 469 academic libraries yielded 304 usable responses. Findings show that job performance continues to be the most widely recognized factor for evaluating academic librarians' performances, examined in virtually every institution. Research, publication, and service play significant roles, particularly at institutions where librarians hold faculty status. Graduate degrees in addition to the M.L.S. are frequently necessary for promotion in academic rank. Approximately half of the responding institutions judge academic librarians by the same tenure and promotion criteria as other faculty.
THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE AND COLONIALISM: REASONS FOR AFRICA’S UNDERDEVELOPMENT?
It is probably an understatement to assert that Africa, the world’s second largest continent, is underdeveloped compared with other continents. Two major exogenous factors often cited for Africa’s development crisis are the so called ‘dual historical injustices’ – the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism. It is often pointed out that while the former almost completely arrested and retarded Africa’s demographical growth for more than three centuries, evoked a perennial state of acrimony and warfare and created a tense and unprecedented atmosphere of insecurity which hindered economic activities and stifled local entrepreneurship and technological drive and dislocated Africa’s socio-economic and political structures and institutions; the latter tied African countries to the apron strings of western imperial powers thereby rendering the pre-conditions necessary for socio-economic and political transformation unachievable. This paper contends that while the history of Africa’s underdevelopment may be traceable to the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism, African leaders had made enormous contributions to the continent’s underdevelopment and backwardness. The paper concludes that irresponsible and irresponsive leadership, vampirism and prodigality, corruption, lack of respect for democratic ideals, insecurity, endemic civil wars, nepotism, etc are the fundamental causes of Africa’s underdevelopment.