The English department at Duke is not generally con- sidered the "pomo" department. The Literature Program is. The English department, with the exception of the well- known faculty who have left, is very conservative--both in terms of method and with regard to what they consider the proper business of literary study. And some of the "stars" left because they were carrying on their own the majority of the burden of graduate teaching and much of the under- graduate curricula.
Some of the faculty who left moved into other parts of the university because of the deadlocks in the department not because of more lucrative salaries. The (arguably) biggest "star" who left (Sedgwick) left for a complicated set of reasons not the least of which was a return (for the third time) of cancer which made being with her husband a necessity.
Stanley Fish is taking up a job as a Dean. Most administra- tors in universities and colleges at the Dean level and upwards are paid much more highly than even "star" full professors. Professors in the sciences, engineering, professional schools (law, medicine, business), and the public policy schools are paid on the whole more than professors in the humanities. Most professors in those areas (sciences, etc.) are not "pomo."
Most "pomo" (or faculty whose work is poststructuralist in some way) earn salaries that follow the pattern of other kinds of faculty. "Pomo" faculty run the range from graduate students teaching literature courses, instructors/ adjuncts, assistant professors, associate professors, to high-ranking tenured faculty.
There is a vast difference between what most faculty earn and what a very few stars (whether "pomo" or not) earn. Public university faculty salaries are a matter of public record; private university faculty salaries are not but studies are available (some from the Modern Language Association) that compile information from both kinds of sources.
Wahneema