Tenured in the Sky with Diamonds

I don't know what that headline means. I'm tenured. I don't have to know. Not that this is going to be an apologia for the existence of tenure. I work hard. I care about the kids. I even take a run at a little scholarship now and again, though I have the good sense not to regurgitate the cud of the moment.

But that's not what I signed on to write about. My point is just this:

It's amusing to have provided the raw material for such snarkmeisters as gawker and wonkette. I have forwarded the links to those glancing mentions of me to my friends and to some of my ex-students. It is true, however, that if I were not tenured, boy would I be ever alert to the danger of some moment of butterfly/chaos, that is, some seemingly inconsequential action working its way to the far side of the world and back again only to come to rest inside my Dean's zone of perception and do me harm.

You never know if one's ripples in the big world will turn into a tsunami when they arrive in academia.

Now as a tenured fellow, I'm not worried about the bawdy uses to which my innocent research has been put. But still I'm not sending the links to my Dean or either of her Mini-Me's. (Her associate deans. Oh I just love them to death, bless their hearts.)

And don't you send her those links either. I'm pretty sure she's out of town. Also, I think her email is broke. I actually don't have a Dean, not in the traditional sense of the term. We've outsourced all those jobs to India.

I mean really. A Dean? Of Arts and Sciences?! Where'd you get that idea, anyway?

Sweet Jesus, where's the delete key?