We are hearing just one side of what happened. I'm sure tenure, as promotions in companies, are about a lot more than merit.

But do we even know if this person is a MIT tenured professor caliber? Maybe they are simply not as good as MIT expects. Maybe they are arrogant, unpleasant or hard to work with.

I have been on corporate promotion committees where I rejected, and have seen others rejecting, promotion cases. Everybody thinks they are amazing and deserve to be promoted. Trust me, that's not always the case.