From "Spike in Baylor Tenure Denials Protested" by Mark Kelly for Baptist Press, posted 3/25/08
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--An unusually high number of faculty members at Baylor University have been denied tenure this semester, and one former Baylor professor believes the denials reflect the school's decision to turn away from its Baylor 2012 campaign to establish Baylor as both a Christian university and a top-tier research institution.
Forty percent of the 30 faculty up for tenure this year were denied, contrasted with 14 percent in 2007 and 11 percent in 2006, according to William Dembski, a former Baylor professor who now is research professor in philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.
More significant than the spike in tenure denials is the fact that nine of the 12 faculty refused tenure by Baylor President John Mark Lilley had been approved by their departments and by the university-wide faculty tenure committee, Dembski said.
...Dembski believes he sees a pattern in the tenure denials that reflects controversy over former Baylor President Robert Sloan's campaign to reaffirm the school's Christian distinctives while continuing to pursue prominence as a research institution. "All the junior faculty denied tenure appear to have strongly supported enhancing Baylor's Christian identity, an aspect of Baylor 2012 that many of the established professors at Baylor reject, preferring instead that Baylor become secular," said Dembski, who also is a senior fellow with Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture in Seattle. "It now appears that Baylor President John Lilley is decimating those faculty who staunchly support the 2012 vision, especially weeding out faculty who supported Robert Sloan's vision for restoring Christian faithfulness to Baylor."
