But some people hold grudges. A vote like that should have been sufficient for tenure. If the whole process were a rational one, the promotion and tenure committee for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences would have looked at the slim rationales given for the negative votes. In the end, the F.A.S. committee voted several times on my case and was almost evenly split each time. We live in an era when tenure procedures are a bit of a charade, when deans and higher committees simply do not take what departments say at face value.
Departments usually act as advocates, trying hard to send up unanimous votes.
But when a few of the votes are negative, deans are likely to think that those votes really represent twice that number who are lukewarm about a candidate. Second-guessing is especially common at universities, like N.Y.U., that are striving to improve themselves. Other evidence in tenure files is also unreliable. Outside letters are rarely as honest as they should be, because their writers don't want to risk alienating a colleague. Many academics refuse to write evaluations unless they know in advance they can write positive ones.