I just read about this website in the latest Lingua Franca. It is a rant against Columbia University by a young Economics professor who says that "he suffered a fate. . . as something out of Goodfella" when he was passed over for tenure. His tale is almost identical to the one I heard from John Hartman, a friend of mine who taught Sociology until he suffered the same fate as McLaren. John also likened working at Columbia to being a soldier in the Mafia. Unlike McLaren, he has taken a job in private industry. Whenever I ran into frustrations with certain powerful people in academia, I always went to John Hartman who thought that many senior professors, even those with prestigious journals at their disposal, should have retired years ago. He likened them to "plaque" in the arteries. The Worst Mistake I Ever Made by John McLaren, August 2000 When I was young I made far more mistakes than I care to remember. Perhaps that can't be avoided, since after all, the mistakes are often what really get stuck in the memory. In disastrous encounters with peers, elders, authorities and institutions, I made my way and learned a thing or two while developing some healthy scars along the way. I blanche when I think of the mistakes I made when I was younger. Perhaps that is the only way to grow up. Nonetheless, I have no trouble in naming the worst mistake I ever made in my life. That I made in my professional life, in 1992, by accepting an offer as Assistant Professor in the economics department at Columbia University. I think of the tale as worth a brief telling for a couple of reasons that extend beyond the world of academics, because it is a nice example of a group of talented people who together make a very ineffective organization, a phenomenon that my friends in the business world tell me they encounter all the time. In essence, each member of such an organization comes to expect the worst from all other members, an expectation that can be self-fulfulling and can be inherited from one generation of the organization's members to the next. In addition to this, within academia, it's also a cautionary tale for any subsequent young scholars who might stumble into the same fix. . . Full article at: http://www.geocities.com/jem18_99/mistake.html Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
