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Monday, October 24, 2005
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ANTHRO Since it’s impossible to know, given the secrecy of such matters, why this Yale professor’s contract was not renewed, UD takes no position on whether it was an injustice. But certain aspects of the situation tell you things about the current state of the American university. First, there’s the ethos of TPM, or total publishing madness, about which Timothy Burke among others has complained. Asked to comment on why the anthropology department failed to keep him, the non-renewed professor neither describes nor defends the substance of his work, but rather taunts his colleagues: "I'm both more productive intellectually than they are and I'm having more fun. It must drive them crazy," he said in an interview. Nowhere in his published remarks does this man talk about the nature and value of what he publishes. Rather, sounding every inch the energizer bunny, he boasts of his publishing prowess. How could anyone fail to tenure a person like me, he seems to say, since I’ve generated so much paper? This is not really his fault. He’s responding to the publish-your-ass-off ethos of the profession. Having been a good boy, he is now astounded that he is not being rewarded. This hyper-obliging productivity drudge describes himself as a proud anarchist. And then there’s a semantic question. What does the word “conservative” mean in the context of the Yale faculty? "He was really challenging the attitudes, the politics and the conservative views of the department," an anthro graduate student says by way of explaining the outcome. In the midst of very conventional people, he was, everyone agrees, unacceptably “eccentric.” But a cursory examination reveals quite a bit of eccentricity in this department (also a lot of having fun). One faculty member pictures himself as two people. Another turns out to be a record producer whose most recent productions include Tribute to the October Revolution in Jazz (UD doesn‘t know whether he means that October revolution). Rather than non-eccentricity, what seems to characterize much of this department is a 1950’s coolcat ethic, as in the case of this intense fellow  with bongos.------------------------ Update: A couple of other things come to mind as UD ponders this story, which has been picked up by a lot of newspapers but isn’t going to develop into anything more interesting: (1.) The Guardian, in a sympathetic but pretty empty account of things, quotes this guy speculating that his “high regard for himself and disdain for colleagues may also have contributed.” It shouldn’t have (you’re not supposed to use “collegiality” as a criterion), but on the other hand you might as well wait until tenure to say certain things. Now that he‘s secure, for instance, philosophy professor Colin McGinn has really opened up. Here‘s part of an interview he gave not long ago: ' "I won't talk to my colleagues about philosophy. It is too boring to me," he says. (2.) The Guardian adds to the list of injuriously eccentric aspects of this fellow. For instance, he “wears combat trousers to class.” This can only have helped, not hurt. At Northwestern, when she was an undergrad, UD took a spectacular class in Chinese history from Professor James Sheridan. Sheridan, whose great book on China is available at Amazon for fifty cents (insert lines ten and eleven, Ozymandias, here), was by far the most complete WASP she had ever seen, and will ever see, in her life. Yet this chiseled Town-and-Country specimen was such an enthusiast of China that he taught in exactly the same beige Mao-footsoldier jacket and pants every day. |