academic economics

joanna bujes joanna.bujes at ebay.sun.com
Tue Jun 19 15:27:21 PDT 2001


At 05:48 PM 06/19/2001 -0400, you wrote:
> >The pay gap is widening in all respects. Bus/Science vs. the Humanities.
> >Star professors vs. ordinary grunts.
>
>I was just at the University of Illinois-Chicago. The estimable
>Stanley Fish was recruited at the price of $250k/yr to hire some
>stars. Walter Benn Michaels has been brought it at somewhat lower
>expense, partly paid out of an affirmative action fund.

God this makes me want to throw up!

When I was looking for jobs in 86 (as a UCB PhD) Walter Michaels and Stephen Greenblatt (barf) were in charge of job placements. As both these "men" have sheer genius for helping the man on the next higher step of the ladder while kicking at the one below, they had managed to place zero job applicants the year before. Not suprisingly, the grad students in my herd were a little worried as to whether they would find jobs. One of the students raised his hand and asked Walter why he thought that no one had gotten jobs the year before. Michael"s answer was the the candidates had just not been "sexy" enough.

I sat in my seat and bit my tongue...I was already in big trouble with Greenblatt for "mau-mauing" his class. But goddamn. Here we were mostly trying to be scholars and teachers when the thing to do was to be a great whore.

Well, I guess, it turns out that Michael learned to be the best whore of all.

Ugh.

Joanna Bujes



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