MIT
MIT Faculty Newsletter  
Vol. XX No. 5
May / June 2008
contents
Financing Undergraduate Education
MIT Faculty Survey: It's About Time
Berwick, Lee, and Orlin Elected to
FNL Editorial Board
Reconsidering the Value of Service to MIT
Confidentiality in Recruitment, Promotion, and Tenure Reviews
Provost Announces Faculty Renewal Program
Endowment Spending Policy at MIT
A New Approach to MIT's Financial Planning
A Primer on Indirect Costs
Changes in Engineering Education
Anthropologists Express Concern Over Government Plan to Support Military-Related Research in Universities
Reflections on Nominations and Elections for Faculty Officers and Commmittees at MIT
Initiative on Faculty Race and Diversity: Research Team and Effort Launched
The Man I Killed; Lise
Creating a Culture of Communication: Assessing the Implementation of the Undergraduate Communication Requirement
The Vision Thing
Lerman Now Dean for Graduate Education
The Spellings Commission Backs Off
Who Should Be Allowed to Speak
at Faculty Meetings?
from the 2008 Faculty Survey: Reasonableness of Workload
from the 2008 Faculty Survey:
Satisfaction with . . .
from the 2008 Faculty Survey:
Sources of Stress
Printable Version

Confidentiality in Recruitment, Promotion,
and Tenure Reviews

L. Rafael Reif, Bish Sanyal

MIT’s Policies and Procedures includes provisions designed to ensure that candidates for appointment, promotion, and tenure receive a thorough and fair review of their qualifications and accomplishments. Implicit throughout these provisions is the need for appropriate confidentiality of sensitive information. Among other things, P&P specifically says, “An essential component of the evaluation process at MIT is the solicitation of written assessments from persons familiar with the individual’s character, research and teaching capabilities, and academic qualifications. In order to assure the most candid and useful evaluations, MIT has traditionally accorded such assessments the highest degree of confidentiality.”

Honoring these policies is an obligation of everyone at MIT, but especially of faculty members. MIT requires all faculty members who participate in faculty recruitment and in promotion and tenure reviews, and all those faculty and staff who may otherwise come to know confidential information, to safeguard that information, including the identity of authors of such assessments and their specific content. Not only is a breach of confidentiality a serious violation of MIT policy, but without conscientious diligence, we will eventually find that this essential component of our process is unavailable or unreliable.

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