If tenure guarantees academic freedom, where does that leave untenured junior faculty? Wary of making enemies, say some. William Busa, a former associate professor of biology, spent nine years at Hopkins before he was denied tenure. "In your early years, if you're smart, you won't rock the boat," he says. "Young turks are utterly inhibited from suggesting any changes, for running the risk of incurring the wrath of people who most benefit from the way it is."

Remember, candidates who are up for tenure need those all-important letters from outside experts--letters that attest to the influence of their work. But groundbreaking scholarship that challenges the orthodoxy may be critical of work done by these same scholars passing judgment.

Political science professor Matthew Crenson knows firsthand the anxiety that can cause. His first book, The Unpolitics of Air Pollution, questioned what was then the reigning theory of the distribution of power in cities in a pluralist democracy. "After I wrote it, the editor of The American Political Science Review, who was one of the prime proponents of the theory, sent a letter to my thesis advisor telling him that they could no longer be friends, that my PhD from the University of Chicago should be revoked, that I had an unaccountable disrespect for my elders, and that I had slandered his mentor at Yale." Crenson laughs now, in part because the controversy, instead of ruining him, helped make his reputation. But at the time, he says, "It was devastating. I thought my career was over."

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