When junior members of the English Department met with President Derek C. Bok and Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence earlier this month to complain about two recent tenure denials, they charged that Harvard places a disproportionate share of administrative work on its junior faculty.

To remedy the situation, the English professors proposed an additional semester of paid leave time and a more through evaluation of teaching and administrative contributions. And unless the administration accedes to their requests, the junior faculty said, they will not have a realistic chance of competing for tenure at Harvard.

"Historically, the English Department meeting [with Bok and Spence] is going to be very important," says newly tenured Professor of Romance Languages and Literature Alice A. Jardine. Jardine--and faculty members in a wide range of departments--say that the dissatisfaction of junior English faculty is but the most visible sign of problems with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences' time-honored tenure system.

Although Spence released a 1985 annual report saying that FAS needed to increase the possibility that its junior members would receive senior posts here, junior professors now say they have yet to see any appreciable results.

And a recent twist in the argument over whether Harvard offers its junior professors a fair chance is the charge that the University requires time-consuming administrative work that detracts from a young scholar's time to conduct research and write--the traditional criteria for senior-level posts.

From sitting on the Faculty Council and degree committees to serving as head tutors and thesis advisers, many junior faculty members say they are overburdened with the day-to-day responsibilities of the undergraduate program. And, they add, such work gets no consideration in the all-important tenure reviews which take place at the end of their seventh year.

"If you are expected to be a full citizen of the University, you simply cannot work at a rate that is any more rapid than your senior colleagues," says Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities Deborah E. Nord, an English Department professor whose recent tenure denial helped prompt the meeting with Bok. "They don't produce at a rate that would qualify them for tenure at Harvard."

In fact, many junior professors say that Nord's case is a classic example of the flaws in Harvard's tenure review process. Nord, the author of two books on Victorian literature, has an impressive resume of Harvard experience. Head tutor of the English Department for several years, she sat on the Faculty Council for three years and was also a member of the Committees on Degrees in Women's Studies and History and Literature.

But, the way Harvard's system currently works, Nord's administrative duties were not even considered in her tenure review. And, despite the support of her department's senior faculty, Nord was denied a lifetime post by an ad hoc committee of outside scholars earlier this spring.

"There is not any illusion about whether it counts for tenure because it absolutely does not," Nord says. "If the University is going to continue to have the tenure procedure it now does, it is not in the interests of junior faculty to be good citizens."

And Assistant Professor of English and American Literature Allen H. Reddick, the current head tutor in the English Department, says, "University service has no bearing whatsoever on whether one gets tenure or not. It doesn't work in your favor at all, but it necessarily takes time away from your scholarship."

These issues of service to the University are directly connected to the broader questions of Harvard's tenure review process, according to junior faculty. And for that reason, they say that their criticisms are unlikely to produce much change.

The way the process currently works, Harvard sends "blind letters" to top scholars around the country asking them to evaluate the internal candidate against the leading names in that person's field.

After receiving those evaluations, the department's senior faculty vote on the candidate, and, if they approve the promotion, Bok then convenes a group of outside scholars for a final review. The tortuous process comes to a close, though, with the president, who has final say on all hiring matters and has been known to overrule departments' recommendations.

And with the "best scholar" operating as Harvard's standard for promotions, junior faculty who have spent a large part of their seven years here teaching or doing committee work say they are disadvantaged.