A conservative-leaning Harvard professor’s failure to secure tenure has prompted a colleague to investigate why.

Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson has enlisted the aid of the 144 students comprising his spring semester evidence class, with additional help from a Washington, DC-based private investigator, to explore why Harvard President Neil Rudenstine denied Associate Professor of Government Peter Berkowitz’s bid for tenure late last year.

The class is working in conjunction with the investigator to access documents that might shed light on Harvard’s notoriously secretive tenure review proceedings. Nesson, who is tenured and has agreed to serve as Berkowitz’s legal counsel, has promised to post on the Internet any and all information the class project turns up.

"This university has been built on secrecy," Nesson told his students. "The idea of confidentiality runs through the university and is ingrained in us."

Mr. Berkowitz, an eight-year veteran of Harvard with a solid publishing record to his credit, was recommended for tenure by a majority of his government department colleagues, only to be blind-sided by Rudenstine’s decision.

A regular contributor to the left-of-center New Republic as well as other journals, Berkowitz is curious as to whether some of his political writings—deemed by some to be conservative by Harvard’s standards—motivated Rudenstine to scuttle his tenure application.

To that end, Martin Peretz, owner of the New Republic and a friend of Mr. Berkowitz, is footing the bill for the investigator and for all related legal expenses.

Those familiar with Harvard’s government department vouch for its restrained moderation, but observe that some disciplines in particular make no pretense of dispassionate scholarship.

Harvard Professor Harvey Mansfield, Berkowitz’s tenured government department peer, surprisingly characterizes the ideological makeup of his department as "on the conservative side of mainstream in the academic context, not because there are many conservatives here but because of a large quota of ‘rational choice’ people who tend to be libertarians."

Mansfield cautioned, however, that this does not apply to his and Berkowitz’s speciality, i.e., political theory.

"I would be the only conservative out of four junior faculty and six senior faculty," he told Campus Report. "But even to have one out of ten—that’s very unusual. Political theory attracts as many conservatives as it does liberals, but that has little to do with who gets the jobs."

Berkowitz, who describes himself as an Independent on the conventional political scale, pridefully stated that his reluctance to address potentially explosive topics such as abortion or welfare reform in his work has made it difficult for liberals and conservatives alike to "pin him down."

"If you were an ordinary person interested in politics, and you were to read my writings (say six or seven hundred pages), you would say, ‘Hmm. I’m not exactly sure how this guy votes,’ which is what universities are supposed to be all about," he told CR. "Similarly, if you were to look on the back of my Nietzsche book, you’d discover that it was endorsed by the two biggest people in my field—one on the right, one on the left."

Berkowitz’s travails have brought into focus the shroud of secrecy that typically envelops tenure proceedings, as Harvard is admittedly at the extreme of colleges and universities in terms of strict confidentiality, as well as the exercise of one-man, absolute, arbitrary rule.

At Harvard, should a department decide to approve a candidate for tenure, that candidate’s name goes directly to the president. At other universities, a typical candidate goes to a higher-up or branch committee first. Harvard President Rudenstine presides over the hearing, which includes the dean of faculty of arts and sciences, several members of the applicant’s department to make the department’s case, plus five people (the ad hoc panel) who assist the president in an advisory capacity. Three of those individuals generally come from outside Harvard, two from inside the school. Rules of confidentiality prohibit Berkowitz’s colleagues from sharing with him any details of the meeting.

Glowing reviews from all present do not guarantee applicants tenure, as it is within the university president’s authority to unilaterally quash a bid for capricious or personal reasons alone—as is alleged to have happened with Mr. Berkowitz. One of Prof. Nesson’s main queries concerns whether the five-man ad hoc committee was stacked with scholars hostile toward Berkowitz’s work.

Regardless of whether or not a "fix" was in, Nesson has few kind words for a procedure which routinely pits faculty members against one another.

"Our current tenure review process stands among other universities at the extreme of secrecy," he told CR. "It is an authoritarian system that breeds hypocrisy and distrust, infantalizes senior faculty, and allows divisions to fester as factions fight for favor with the father. Fear of authority makes members of our community reluctant to raise objection to the authoritarian’s arbitrary use and abuse of power, and leads others to shun and punish those who do."

For Berkowitz and Nesson, whose pleas to the university that it perform at bare minimum a perfunctory investigation have been turned down, the theme of "fairness" punctuates their grievance.

"In a field as controversial as political theory, the selection of experts is a very delicate matter," said Berkowitz. "The whole process is premised on Harvard’s claim to find people who are recognized as outstanding in the field, above the fray, impartial and so on. In my case the allegations were that they got people who were not distinguished, not particulary knowledgeable and who were biased against either my approach or my politics. So we want to put together an appeal, asking the university to investigate. There’s nothing to prevent my [non-Harvard] detractors on the committee from talking or explaining themselves, but thus far they have refused to do so."

While Harvard has a policy of not commenting on specific tenure cases, the school has attempted to deflect criticism by noting that Mr. Berkowitz was not the only victim of their rigorous tenure review last year. Of 20 instructors recommended for permanent teaching positions by their departments, Harvard spokesman Alex Huppe said "three or four were denied" by the president.

As for the future, Berkowitz hesitates to equate tenure denial to an academic "kiss of death."

"I will probably be able to secure a one-year [teaching] renewal," he said. "Generally speaking, denial of tenure at Harvard doesn’t sully you, especially faculty members who were denied at the presidential level, meaning I received the support of my department, which is taken to be an impressive thing in my field. That having been said, I’m in a bit of an awkward position. I’ve written a lot, and much of my writing criticizes various leaders in the field—these are the people making hiring decisions. I should be fine, but there’s no guarantee."

Prof. Nesson, meanwhile, implores Harvard to live up to some of its more prominent credos.

"I believe it is time for Harvard to honor the inscription on Langdell Law Library, ‘Not under man but under God and law,’" he said. "[At the moment], that isn’t our system."