By Bridget Murray
Monitor staff

Daniel Kirschenbaum, PhD, was once a tenured senior psychologist running a promi- nent eating-disorders clinic at Northwestern University Medical School. But in 1992, he was locked out of his office, the clinic and his job?everything but his title as a tenured professor.

Spurring this turn of events was the medical school?s new chair of psychiatry, Sheldon Miller, MD, hired to rein in an overinflated budget and cut money-losing programs. Among those Miller targeted was Kirschenbaum, whose eating-disorders clinic Miller claimed was running at a loss. (Kirschenbaum disputes that claim.) The university maintains that Kirschenbaum?s tenure contract describes a ?0-based? salary, so the medical school could legally pay him nothing and ask him to leave campus, which it did. Now Kirschenbaum has tenure, but no job with Northwestern. His wife, Laura Humphrey, PhD, a psychologist on a similar contract, was also shut out of her salary and escorted to her car.

But whereas she reluctantly decided to take a position elsewhere, Kirschenbaum moved to fight the decision. Claiming that Northwestern has violated tenure?s protection of job stability and academic freedom, Kirschenbaum filed suit against the university. The case, which is set to go to court in April, has captured national attention. Some media reports charge that the case holds implications for tenure nationwide, and Kirschenbaum agrees.

?If tenure can mean nonpayment, then the term is hollow and empty,? says Kirschenbaum. ?With this new definition, university administrators can replace senior faculty with junior faculty to downsize or just to eliminate people whose professions, opinions and research they don?t like.?

Media reports cite other threats to tenure, including at the University of Minnesota, for example, where faculty stopped short an administrative effort to weaken tenure. They also cite a case at the University of Southern California?s medical school, where tenured medical school professors are fighting threatened salary reductions.

However, some educators warn against making hasty generalizations about tenure based on individual cases like Kirschenbaum?s. Tenure at medical schools has historically operated differently from tenure in the regular university, notes Richard Chait, PhD, a Harvard University higher education professor who studies tenure issues. Whereas universities usually guarantee their in-house tenured faculty a set base salary, medical schools don?t because a big chunk of their funds are patient generated.

In fact, some medical schools, like Northwestern?s, operate quite differently from the university. Although Northwestern awarded Kirschenbaum tenure in 1990, it has since transferred the costs of some medical school programs, and the faculty who run them, to the purportedly independent Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation.

And, the university argues, Kirschenbaum should have recognized the 0-based nature of his tenure contract when he signed it. (About 200 of the medical school?s 1,000 faculty have such contracts.)

?The salary specifications were clearly stated in Kirschenbaum?s contract,? says Alan Cubbage, Northwestern?s vice president for university relations and its spokesman for the case.

Kirschenbaum?s lawyer, Tom Cunningham, adamantly disputes that claim, calling the contract ambiguous. Certainly Kirschenbaum expected his salary to fluctuate, according to his contract?s specification that it would be determined each year. But he never expected it to be eliminated, says Cunningham. The contract fails to provide an adequate definition of tenure, he says.

Northwestern argues that Kirschenbaum has shaky grounds to claim damages. His present position as director of his own Center for Behavioral Medicine earns him a salary comparable to what he was making at Northwestern, avers Cubbage.

But Kirschenbaum counters that high expenses and overhead make his net income significantly lower, and he no longer has access to grant money, labs and other academic benefits.

Plus, he is not teaching or conducting research to anywhere near the extent that he did during his 20 years as an educator.

Psychologist Danny Wedding, PhD, president of the Association of Medical School Psychologists, agrees that it?s not appropriate to call people tenured if they can?t carry out the regular professorial duties for which they were prepared. Wedding, who directs the Missouri Institute of Mental Health at the University of Missouri?s School of Medicine, also opposes the use of 0-based contracts.

It?s reasonable to expect medical school professors to generate part of their salary with grants and patient revenue, but usually the base salary is at least 40 percent to 50 percent, not 0, he says. Wedding says he and other medical school psychologists will be watching closely as the Kirschenbaum case unfolds.