“Daniel Drezner, center-left but sometimes leaning a wee bit center-right got fired from Chicago with far better credentials (and a more sophisticated CV and prose style than David.)”

Here is what Daniel W. Drezner, currently still an assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago, says about himself:

“I’m a small-l libertarian Republican who studies international relations, which means I’m frequently conflicted between my laissez-faire instincts and my clear-eyed recognition that there is no substitute for nation-states in world politics.” (http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/002397.html)

Centre-left? Leaning a wee bit centre-right? If all of jane’s comments are as informed and precise as this then I’m not surprised she cannot see anything wrong with DG being fired.

I’ve googled DG and have to say (after more than 3 decades in academia and tenure from a NE university with the lowest t-rate in America) I’m not impressed by his writing, thinking, political maturity or anything else. (Not that anthropology is much of an academic discipline in any event.) DG’s webpage at Yale doesn’t indicate much scholarship; the highly anecdotal, narrative-driven anthro racket allows the ‘voices’ of whatever selected victimized group to speak, without any analysis or context; hence the easy fraud of field founders Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Anyone with a tape recorder can churn out reams of publications without any ‘footnotes.’ So, I don’t see the prolixity he’s bragging about–or why there isn’t more of the Madagascar-type verbiage. I can’t understand why he continues to insist that he publishes frenetically (sic.) For whom? Does writing for anarchist or left-wing rags that aren’t peer-reviewed supposed to earn the esteem of fellow scholars? Of his colleagues in the department? Of Yale? Isn’t it a bit disingenuous for an anarchist to cry foul when denied employment for a capitalist-supported (and capitalist producing) center of learning like Yale? The whole post post-mo Marxist racket evinced by what I have found by DG wouldn’t pass muster in philosophy or even more amenable history departments. It’s more like scifi than poly-sci. I’m surprised, even shocked, at only one part of his sob story: it’s that he got hired at Yale (and once renewed)! DG, don’t worry. Those ‘thousands’ of US university Marxists are waiting to support you and snap you up for their universities. We both know there aren’t any conservatives in academia!!

As for tragic – I appreciate the assessment. I guess what I really meant was: it remains to be seen if the results are going to be all that bad. I mean, I was going to be on the job market anyway, this year.
David

I guess when I think of tragedy, I think of a situation where doing what you think is right leads to terrible terrible outcomes because your situation involves a conflict from which you can’t escape. Antigone is forced to choose between honoring her brother or obeying her king, Orestes can only avenge his father’s death by murdering him mother, and so forth. As far as I can tell, you were caught between the demands of your principles and your personal success. I’d never say you made the wrong choice, David. But I would say it was tragic you had to choose.

I don’t think I’m really that much of a tragic figure. I stuck by my principles even though I knew it might mean trouble, and trouble was what I got. But one of the basic principles of direct action is that if one simply tries to live as one would in a free society – even if it’s so innocuous a thing as trying to be open and fair and decent to everyone, trying to treat everyone like an equal – in the midst of vast inequalities of power, those in power probably _will_ attempt to punish you. Which makes acting that way a kind of act of civil disobedience that exposes the real nature of the system. That’s worth doing in itself. And the fact that the Yale department is so incredibly hierarchical that they’d do it even to someone who is internationally recognized as a scholar, thus thoroughly embarrassing themselves, makes it all the more revealing. On the other hand, the immediate cause of their turning on my wasn’t even that – it was just the fact that I was willing to openly state that a good student was, in fact, a good student when someone was dishonestly and maliciously trying to destroy her career. I think anyone who’s suggesting that this is not simply outrageous, and that a decent person should have considered doing anything else, really should reflect on what chain of logic could have got them there.
DG

But, as I’ve said about: while his politics were the proximate cause of his firing, I think the larger story here is not one of increasing McCarthyism of the university but one of how department politics have always worked for more than a century, and the limits and constraints placed on junior faculty. And yes, that is what I find interesting about this. I am in fact coming from this not as a political activist (although I am a supporter) but because of the way it is a fascinating departmental ethnography.

One of the points I was trying to make was that, given his obvious intelligence and savvy, David’s handling of his career at Yale (or what little I know of it) seemed (excuse the lapse into Weberisms), from a purely _zweckrational_ perspective, suboptimal if the end he was seeking was continued employment. If we was pursuing some _wertrational_ mode of comportment — standing on his principles — then while it is unfortunate and wrong that he was fired, it’s also not surprising even though (obviously) it is wrong.

In either case — to reiterate — this makes David a tragic figure, not a stupid or wrong one. Thanks for your measured comments.

Please don’t take this personally, but the tone of your comment and your responses seem weirdly concerned about propriety and the job market and tend towards blaming David. A career is only worthwhile if it’s something you believe in, otherwise you might as well be a tax attorney or an advertising executive as an academic. There are enough cowards in academia, and many academic institutions tend to corrupt towards cowardice. David’s stand is not brave in the way that the Barcelona commune was brave — academics overinflate their importance in the greater scheme of things (not David, he’s fully aware that this is not like fighting Fascists) — but for an academic in today’s American climate he certainly is as are many of the graduate students supporting him. Bless ‘em.