Bring 'em On

A recent post from Slaves of Academe on stalking her former grad student peers and colleagues online linked to my post on academic deadwood. Taken along with the post below on the status of women in Philosophy and my own recent involuntary relocation from my interdisciplinary department at Bizarro U back to my disciplinary homeland of Philosophy has occasioned me to do some online prowling of my former academic homes as well. It's been sobering.

I don't actually recognize my graduate program any longer. It is one of those top 20 schools included in Haslanger's statistics below. I'm saddened to see it is well below average even among that dismal company with only two women remaining on its very large faculty, or less than five percent (or put another way, in the last twenty years they have failed to tenure and retain any new women faculty). Almost all of the members of my dissertation committee have either moved on or died. The entire continental program has disappeared and left the field clear for all analytic philosophy all the time.

As I contemplate what life will be like back as one of the boys in the Philosophy department at my present institution, I find it doesn't fill me with quite as much revulsion as in years past. There is one simple reason for this change... tenure.

Bring 'em on. I'm ready to rumble.