Louisiana
LSU librarians can thrive outside of the tenure framework, dean says • Louisiana Illuminator
Editor’s note: The following commentary was submitted in response to an Aug. 20, 2024 report from the Illuminator: “LSU changes tenure rules for librarians to improve its research rankings,” by Piper Hutchinson
In August, LSU announced that it would no longer hire librarians to tenure-track positions.
The University offered two justifications for the move: LSU’s aspiration for American Association of Universities status, and the chronic difficulty involved in evaluating the promotion and tenure portfolios of faculty who teach no classes and have just 15% of their time allocated to research.
For some of LSU’s library faculty, the elimination of future tenure track appointments felt like a devaluing of their work, and one that could lead to further diminishment and disinvestment.
While I empathize with the concerns of our disappointed librarians, I believe that this move will improve the work lives of librarians generally. Speaking as a research library director with career long research interests, I am fully committed to a model of academic librarianship which involves significant engagement with the literature of our profession, the publication of new knowledge, and service contributions such as leadership in professional associations. My experience, however, leads me to believe that these behaviors can exist, even thrive outside the framework of tenure. They certainly do at the 79% of AAU institutions that do not offer librarians tenure.
The controversy over librarian tenure has shown us all how deeply enmeshed the issue is in foundational values and beliefs that might otherwise go unchallenged. I am as guilty of ignoring my own assumptions as anyone, and it’s taken this abrupt change to make me take stock of what I currently believe. I’ve ended up with the following five principles:
Respect for the role
However research librarian positions are configured, in practice they need to operate as full partners in the academic process. Teaching and curricular support, the provision of student success services, and collection building all require deep professional expertise, and all require full engagement with teaching faculty, Faculty Senate, and campus-wide committees. It is further appropriate for research librarian positions to offer the protections offered teaching faculty. NC State University provides “academic tenure” to their non tenure track faculty, which differs from “permanent tenure” only in that it is bounded within the contract period of employment.
Respect for tenure
Tenure at most of America’s best universities is reserved for those who do significant teaching and research, and who do those jobs extremely well. Teaching is entirely absent from many librarian positions, and for nearly all, conducting original research is peripheral to their primary responsibilities.
Scaffolding and rewards for research and service
The appointment and promotion of research librarians needs to encourage and reward innovation and substantive contributions to the profession. Engagement of this sort will not suit every librarian, but for those who actively seek out this kind of professional life, libraries should provide mentorship programs, internal peer coaching, travel budgets, and allowance for continuing education of all kinds.
Scaffolding and rewards for excellence in librarianship
A common trope in higher education bemoans faculty reward structures that discount excellence in teaching. The analog in research libraries are librarians who are extraordinarily good at the job they’re hired for, only to lose their jobs as a result of inadequate publication activity. Librarian ranks need to recognize excellent work, and provide consequential promotion and compensation rewards. The mentor programs and peer coaching mentioned above can easily be adapted so as to support those oriented towards workplace excellence.
Producing value
There is an additional cost that flows from shoehorning librarian contributions into evaluation and promotion documents built for teaching faculty. That awkward effort also impairs our ability to highlight and reward the dazzling breadth of work our librarians do in serving faculty and students. Now more than ever, we need those contributions to be visible, inescapable really, all across campus. Doing so will come naturally to a profession that has transformed itself so completely over the past 25 years. Excellent research libraries are a university’s competitive edge, and it is their librarians that make them so.
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Louisiana
Federal appeals court upholds Texas’ Ten Commandments law. What does it mean for Louisiana?
A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a Texas law requiring public schools to post the Ten Commandments, just weeks after the same court allowed a similar Louisiana law to take effect.
A majority of judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas’ law, which is nearly identical to Louisiana’s, is constitutional and does not violate students’ religious freedom. In February, the court lifted an injunction on Louisiana’s law, which cleared schools to put up the posters, but the judges said it was too early to rule on that law’s constitutionality.
Tuesday’s ruling could bode well for Louisiana’s law if it eventually returns to the 5th Circuit, considered the country’s most conservative federal court of appeals.
In their majority opinion, the judges rejected the argument that posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms would pressure students to honor the biblical mandates or adopt particular beliefs.
“To plaintiffs, merely exposing children to religious language is enough to make the displays engines of coercive indoctrination. We disagree,” the majority wrote about the Texas law, known as S.B. 10. A minority of the court’s active judges dissented.
Even though Tuesday’s ruling only addressed the Texas case, defenders of Louisiana’s legislation celebrated it as a victory. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said the 5th Circuit’s argument in upholding Texas’ law was identical to the one Louisiana made in defense of its law.
“Our law clearly was always constitutional,” she posted on X, “and I am grateful that the Fifth Circuit has now definitively agreed with us.”
Louisiana’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed the law in 2024, which requires all public K-12 schools and colleges to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. A group of parents quickly challenged the law in court, and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that stopped the state from enforcing the law.
In February, the 5th Circuit reversed the lower court’s decision, saying it had been premature to block the law before it took effect. The judges said they could not rule on the law’s constitutionality before seeing how it played out in schools.
But in the case of Texas’ law, which that state’s Republican-led Legislature passed in 2025, the court did rule on the merits.
Rejecting arguments made by attorneys for the Texas families who challenged the law, the 5th Circuit majority said that requiring public schools to post the Ten Commandments does not amount to the government endorsing a particular religion, which the U.S. Constitution forbids. The law also does not impose religious beliefs on students, the judges wrote.
“As noted, S.B. 10 authorizes no religious instruction and gives teachers no license to contradict children’s religious beliefs (or their parents’),” the majority opinion says. “No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or affirm their divine origin.”
The Texas families were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Texas, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, with the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP serving as pro bono counsel. The same groups, including Louisiana’s ACLU chapter, represented the Louisiana families.
In a statement Tuesday, the organizations said they are “extremely disappointed” by the 5th Circuit’s ruling, adding that they expect to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state, and the freedom of families to choose how, when and if to provide their children with religious instruction,” the groups said. “This decision tramples those rights.”
Nearly all major industries in Louisiana added jobs over the past year, signaling momentum for a stronger future, according to a recent report from Leaders for a Better Louisiana.
The organizat…
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SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) — Police say a man shot and killed eight children, including seven of his own, following a domestic dispute in Shreveport.
The incident took place early Sunday morning, April 19, on West 79th Street in the Cedar Grove neighborhood. According to the Caddo Parish Coroner’s Office, the victims included three boys and five girls, aged between three and 11-years-old. Seven of the children were siblings, while one was a cousin. Two adult females were also injured, including one who was shot at a home located in the 500 block of Harrison Street.
One of the adults was inside the home on West 79th Street when the children were killed. She managed to escape through a window with two of the children and reached the roof. The woman jumped down with one of the children. Unfortunately, the other child did not manage to escape. Police later found his body on the roof with a gunshot wound. The surviving child was taken to the hospital with a broken leg.
The children were identified by their mothers as Jayla (age 3), Shayla (age 5), Kayla (age 6), Layla (age 7), Markaydon (age 10), Sariahh (age 11), Khedarrion (age 6), and Braylon (age 5).
Authorities say the suspect and father of the victims, Shamar Elkins, was the only person who fired shots that led to the juveniles’ deaths.
Authorities noted that Elkins stole a vehicle near West 79th Street after he shot the victims. He was pursued by patrol officers into Bossier Parish, where they discharged their weapons and fatally shot him on Brompton Lane. Louisiana State Police will take over the investigation involving the officers.
Shreveport Mayor Tom Arceneaux expressed his thoughts on the matter, saying, “We have a hurting community. We have hurting families. We have hurting police officers, coroner’s personnel, fire department, sheriff people, and this affects the entire community. We all mourn with these families. I ask, it’s a Sunday morning. I ask all of you who are, who are listening, who might be able to. Pray at your services this morning for not just this family, for all the victims, for the victims who are at the hospital, and for the Cedar Grove community and for the community at large.”
Attorney General Liz Murrill also commented on the tragic shooting, stating, “Multiple law enforcement agencies are investigating this tragic situation. We do not yet know all the details, but I am deeply saddened by the senseless loss of life. I’m praying for the victims and their family members in the wake of this devastating violence.”
According to the Director of Strategy and Communications, Mary Nash-Wood, two of the children attended Summer Grove, and at least four attended Linwood Charter School.
The police have not determined a motive. More updates will be provided as the information becomes available.
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