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Tuesday, March 09, 2004

The employment of employment

I learned today that Vivian Wagner has published a most generous review of my 1998 book, The Employment of English:  Theory, Jobs, and the Future of Literary Studies in Workplace, the internet’s premier journal of academic labor.  Thanks, Vivian!

I’m reminded of the first internet review the book received-- from James Diedrick at the Authors Review of Books almost six years ago.  And then later in 1998 there was Janet McNew’s somewhat more critical (but still quite nice) review over at the American Book Review.  I should have acknowledged these things long ago, I guess, but I didn’t have a blog then, now, did I.

Posted by Michael on 03/09 at 04:38 PM
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Why no Nona Gerard?

A reader asks why-- if I teach at Penn State, which I do-- I haven’t weighed in on the controversy swirling around the dismissal of Penn State Altoona professor Nona Gerard.

The short answer is this:  I know next to nothing about the reasons for Gerard’s firing.  I agree with Kieran Healy that “firing tenured professors because they are opinionated jerks seems to set a dangerous precedent,” and indeed I would worry that the “opinionated jerk” standard would cover about sixty percent of the professoriate even if it is irrelevant to Gerard.  That’s why, back in January when I first read about Gerard, my sympathies were entirely with her.  At one point, in fact, I expressed those sympathies, saying, more or less, “my instincts tell me that my sympathies should be with Nona Gerard on this.” Whereupon a couple of my colleagues-- not senior faculty, not administrators, just friends (one of whom teaches at Altoona)-- pulled me aside and said, with all due respect, “Michael, with all due respect, you don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about on this one.” And they were right; I didn’t.  All I had were my instincts.  University Administration vs. out lesbian leftist theater professor?  Ordinarily, I’d bet the house on the underdog.

But most of the people who’ve commented thus far on Gerard don’t have much more than instinct, either.  Last week Brian Leiter declared that “Penn State leaves the ranks of serious universities” with this decision, and even the more circumspect Timothy Burke (who is always more circumspect, even when he’s dealing with people who shoot from the holster) opens a Crooked Timber comment with “the Penn State case is bad.”

Maybe it is.  We know that the vote was 5-0 against the charge that Gerard failed to perform her duties; 5-0 in favor of the charge of grave misconduct; and 3-2 to rescind tenure.  So we know, at minimum, that there was serious debate among the committee members with regard to the charges brought against Gerard, and that two people who were persuaded that Gerard’s actions (whatever they were) amounted to “grave misconduct” did not agree that this grave misconduct justified the revocation of tenure.

And we also know this:  this isn’t a case like the one at the University of Southern Mississippi, where university president Shelby Thames allegedly locked two professors out of their offices (I hear their computers have been confiscated as well) before initiating dismissal procedures.  Apparently, the grounds for the dismissal are that the professors in question (according to the Chronicle of Higher Education) had been involved in an AAUP investigation of the USM provost:

Mr. Glamser, president of the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said in a telephone interview that he and Mr. Stringer had been suspended because of their involvement with the AAUP’s investigation of the academic credentials of a senior administrator.

In December, according to Mr. Glamser, he received an anonymous packet of information alleging that Angeline Godwin Dvorak, the vice president for research and economic development, had misrepresented herself on various documents as having been a tenured associate professor of English at the University of Kentucky. Ms. Dvorak has denied falsifying her credentials.

The USM Faculty Senate has responded with a 40-0 vote of no confidence in Thames, and apparently-- according to local media-- President Thames has a history of autocratic leadership in his two years at the helm, so this isn’t particularly anomalous.

So with a tip of the cap to Kieran Healy, whose judgment usually seems reasonably sound, I have to think that there really isn’t any plausible linkage between a Penn State case that respected due process and came to a debatable conclusion, and a University of Southern Mississippi case that involved a peremptory lockout of two professors who were involved in an investigation of a senior member of the administration.

Last but not least:  I am not interested in protecting my employer on this one.  My instincts continue to tell me to regard all revocations of tenure with deep suspicion, and besides, I have a long history of denouncing my employers (the University of Illinois, 1989-2001, and Penn State, 2001-present) when the need arises, especially with regard to their dealings with graduate students.  But I think there’s a world of difference between a questionable decision and a manifest outrage.  The Penn State decision should be pursued, and the grounds for Gerard’s dismissal made available for broader review.  And the USM decision should be simply and unambiguously denounced.

UPDATE:  Kieran Healy follows up on his earlier post here, noting “that there just isn’t enough information available to make a judgment” but that “the bar for revoking tenure is pretty damn high.” I agree-- and it’s not clear that the bar was cleared in this case (and apparently two of the committee members didn’t think so either).  I should add, also, that the colleagues who spoke to me about Gerard earlier this year weren’t arguing in favor of revoking her tenure.

UPDATE UPDATE:  Erin O’Connor offers a measured response to this post, in the course of which she writes that she’s “troubled by the passive voice construction” in its penultimate sentence.  Fair enough.  So, who should do the pursuing?  I say the AAUP-- and in the meantime, I will continue to reserve judgment about the substance of the case until I learn more about it.

Posted by Michael on 03/09 at 03:20 PM
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Real letters about real bloggers

Bob McRuer (whose paper at the Disability Studies conference, “Crip Eye for the Normate Guy,” was one of the highlights of the weekend) writes to say,

My own web surfing of late convinces me that Real Bloggers Do Electoral College Predictions.  I say Kerry holds the Gore states and picks up New Hampshire, Nevada, and Ohio.  My occasional flashes of panic/fear are most often occasioned by Wisconsin and Iowa.  And I’ll really go out on a limb and say Kerry picks up D.C., despite the 2 or 3 gay Republicans who after deep soul-searching and wallet-checking decide that they’re going to stand by their man, giving him two arms to cling to when nights are cold and lonely.

Even though he does things they don’t understand, yes, I know.

OK, then, I’ll get around to mapping out the Electoral College Map one of these days.  And I haven’t even finished picking out Kerry’s cabinet yet!  I have Lani Guinier for Attorney General and Brad DeLong at Treasury, Doug Henwood at Commerce and Al Gore at Interior.  But I just can’t decide on Agriculture-- and it’s a tossup between Jonathan Kozol and Henry Louis Gates at Education.  So much to do, so much to do.  Suggestions welcome!

UPDATE:  The first suggestion is to move Henwood over to the Office of Management and Budget.  Good one!  Keep ‘em coming. . . .

Posted by Michael on 03/09 at 06:58 AM
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Fifty thousand and more

Sometime during the night we surpassed 50,000 visitors for the year.  It took 44 days to cross the 25,000 mark and another 25 to get to 50,000, and if we keep increasing readership at this pace, all 6.5 billion people on Earth will be visiting this site daily by May 16 or 17 of this year.  Honestly, I thought world domination would take much longer than this-- I was planning on late 2009, myself.

Thanks to everyone for stopping by.  Remember, you don’t have to do a thing to keep this site free and open to the public.  And if you’re so inclined, have a look around in the essays section while you’re here.

Posted by Michael on 03/09 at 06:44 AM
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Conference final

Well, the Disability Studies and the University conference rocked.  Fine presentations, fine facilities, much camaraderie, and a lively sense of what to do next.  In the next few weeks I might post my own paper here, but in the meantime I have to rewrite it and make it longer so that I can present it at Columbia the week after next, and maybe at Ohio State in April.  In the meantime I have to give a talk to the Down Syndrome Association of Greater St. Louis.  No, most of the time I’m not this busy travelling; on the contrary, most of the time my life is every bit as boring as I said it was back in my second post to this site.  But this month is an exception.  It’s hard to travel when you’re teaching MWF, anyway, and the tiny turboprops give me backaches, dropsy, psoriasis, vapors, and mossy teeth.

One of these days I want to put together an academic conference that addresses the phenomenon of academic conferences.  It will be called “The Longer Version,” and will be distinguished by three features:  one, every paper will have a respondent who, instead of waiting for the paper to end, will simply snort, harrumph, and blurt “I think not!” at random moments during the paper.  Two, questioners will be required to begin all questions by saying, “this is really more of a comment than a question-- I wonder if you could say more about X,” on the condition that X was either unmentioned in or tangential to the paper itself.  (Questions must be at least three minutes long.) And three, every speaker will be required to answer these questions by saying, “I actually address this question in the longer version of this paper,” regardless of whether there is a longer version or not.  (If the conference proceedings are published, they will consist only of sections of papers that were cut for time during the actual conference.)

Actually, one of the reasons the Disability Studies conference was fun was that the Q and A parts of the conference really were full of Qs and As.  Amazing but true!

Posted by Michael on 03/09 at 05:54 AM
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Thursday, March 04, 2004

Fear of a queer constitution

I’m sorry I haven’t been able to rise above satire in my posts about the right’s opposition to gay marriage (here and here)-- it’s just that when I come across certain culturally conservative positions in their violent death throes, I find that ridicule is sometimes the emotionally safest response I have.  If I were gay, chances are I’d be more inclined to engage the issue more substantially, and object to-- among other things-- the serious limitations entailed in most contemporary thinking about forms of companionate coupledom.  Safer for me, I suppose, to imagine my Mullah/Senator Rick Santorum showing up in New Paltz, New York asking for permission to marry his dog.

Fortunately, I have some brilliant queer theorist friends and the technological capacity to link to their latest work.  Check out these two essays-- one by Robert McRuer, the other by Lisa Duggan.  You’ll be glad you did-- and you’ll be both smarter and queerer for reading ‘em, too.

UPDATE:  Oops, forgot to explain that headline.  From the closing grafs of McRuer’s piece:

It’s ironic that the culture has increasingly and quietly assimilated queer cultural and relational forms even as we have been surrounded by loud cultural conversations about the need to protect the sanctity of heterosexual “marriage.” In the face of this irony, LGBT folks could, perhaps, push for a constitutional amendment to keep straight people away from our sacred institutions. . . .

I didn’t want to leave the impression that on the subject of gay marriage, I was the Satire Guy and Bob was the Straight Man.

Posted by Michael on 03/04 at 04:59 PM
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