> And besides, Ratcliff is a mensch. One of many casualties during Washington University's campaign to destroy its sociology department, he had the nerve to turn his guns on Wash U's board of trustees - the executive committee of the St. Louis bourgeoisie if ever there was one.
Tell us more about this. It's new to me but sounds interesting.
Carrol
Much of this is based on an oral tradition and by-now-fuzzy memory, but the story as I remember it and have been able to piece it together is this. For a brief period in the late sixties and early seventies, the sociology department at Washington University (in St. Louis, not Seattle) was dominated by two factions, both radical. This "out of control" sociology department was one factor in the Board of Trustees' decision to replace Tom Eliot with Bill Danforth as chancellor. Over the following 20 years or so, no one in the sociology department was awarded tenure, and many lines were not renewed, until attrition reduced the department to six members. At that point, the provost made the official decision to kill the department, a decision that still very nearly brought him a facuty censure (and would have had he not bought off certain departments with promises of future resources). Ratcliff was there in the seventies, and had been doing some Domhoff-style research on the int! er-corporate linkages in St. Louis (which at that time was #4 on the list of U.S. cities with most Fortune 500 headquarters). Since all roads led to the board of trustees of Wash U, he was doubly damned....for being a sociologist, and for being a good one.
As I say - make allowances for a possibly flawed memory and the deformations of oral transmission when reading this.