Ratcliff

kelley kwalker2 at gte.net
Tue Jan 16 08:45:02 PST 2001


someone wrote about Richard Ratcliff, my diss chair, who is retiring--at very young age (stupid, typically story of academic in-fighting and dorkiness. thankfully, i'm owed much by others, but it really does suck to have to deal with attrition! i'm a lucky chick when it comes to committees anyway, given the sordid tales i've heard.)

at any rate, i meant to tell you, carrol, that Richard was doing bank redlining research in St. Louis, another reason why he was rattling some cages.

Richard's been in Grenada for winter break, but he said, in his smart ass way, that it was nice to be part of someone's fading memory... :) and asks, "what's a mensch?"

if it means something like, "a man who would have the nerve to write a parody of a faculty meeting about how crappy the grad studs performed on the last administration of Theory and Method exams, where same faculty talked about lowering standards b/c they thought the students were lame but was really about how lazy the fac was and he did so, in effect, to reveal who said what without ever naming names and then post it on a dept. listserv for all to see...." then Richard's a mensch!!

kelley


> > 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.
> >
> >



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