Faculty Rights Tip: Peer Review Committees for Tenure-Line Hiring

For some CSU campuses, it is tenure-line faculty hiring season. CFA continues to advocate for faculty hiring that reflects our commitment to racial and social justice and that promotes opportunities for Lecturer faculty to join the tenure-line ranks. Our 2022-2024 Collective Bargaining Agreement contains a provision that supports these overall goals by requiring that hiring committees be elected, not appointed.

The Collective Bargaining Agreement’s Article 12.22 states:
“Each department or equivalent unit must elect a peer review committee of tenured employees for the purpose of reviewing and recommending individuals for probationary appointments. At the discretion of the President and upon request of the department these peer review committees may also include probationary employees.”

The peer review committee for a faculty search (a.k.a. “the search committee”) may not be appointed by a chair or any administrator. There must be an election by the faculty unit employees within the department. Failure to hold such an election or any administrative efforts intended to deprive faculty of input in the hiring process for tenure line faculty, is a violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

If review committees at your campus are made up of only tenured faculty, and the committee composition is inhibiting the recruitment of underrepresented candidates, such as BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ scholars, it is within your right to raise this with your campus governance bodies and with campus administrators, and to ask that probationary faculty members be included in department search committee elections.

While the ultimate hiring decision lies with the President of each campus, faculty participation and input in the process is a contractual right, and it is necessary to ensure that search processes are fair, just, and contribute to diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus and among the faculty. 

Want to learn more about your union? Become active with your local CFA chapter Faculty Rights team and find your representative here.

Want to learn about how your campus is doing with respect to race, ethnicity, gender, and faculty hiring? Check out CFA’s 2020 report, “Changing Faces of CSU Faculty and Students.”

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