Quote of the Day
The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency.McClanahan on To Tenure or Not To Tenure
This may be my favorite McClanahan episode. Why? Because I specifically wrote an (unacknowledged) email to McClanahan, my first, suggesting an episode on Nikole Hannah-Jones. I had written a critical tweet or two on Jones, opining on the tenure decision (any familiar reader knows I oppose tenure, which others might think is self-serving because I never went up for tenure and left academia without a job offer after a one-year non-renewable contract at Illinois State. What left a bitter taste in my mouth was that Bowling Green State (Toledo, OH) was the first college to offer me a position, and I really loved them--but they wouldn't let me teach graduate courses. So after office politics at UWM and UTEP destroyed my academic career, I think I heard that the guy who ended up getting my BGSU had won early tenure; it was ironic. At that point, I was looking for any job, even just teaching service courses. My job as a university professor had been a dream come true. As a DBA, my income soon far exceeded what I ever made as a professor, but I would have returned in a heartbeat once I had enough IT experience as a fallback.)
I don't think McClanahan classified the episode as a reader-generated episode, and given the salience of the 1619 project, I'm sure McClanahan didn't need me to raise the topic. On Twitter, I didn't really respect the project was worthy of tenure and pointed out I was sure she would find someone in progressive academia to offer her a job. Sure enough, under political correctness, UNC overturned the tenure denial, but Howard University offered her a prestigious chair position in the interim. Of course, they did. McClanahan points out facts I didn't know, like Jones had not been in a tenure-track position and she was in a journalism vs. history position.
Political Cartoon
Kibbe on the Free State Project
Choose Life
Musical Interlude: #1 Hits of 1975
The Eagles, "One of These Nights"
