May 9, 2015, 10:58 am

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

My sister bloggers Historiann (who has spent part of her sabbatical creating a snazzy new design) and Madwoman with a Laptop, now a fancy executive director, could tell you this farewell has been coming for a while. I’m hangin’ up my template.

It had to come someday. After 1,115 posts (with this one, 1,116), Tenured Radical is coming to an end. Why? you may ask.

I ask: “Why not?”

Tenured Radical was launched in 2007. It migrated here in 2011 at the invitation of an ambitious young journalist who has since moved on to The Charlie Rose Show. It did its work well for four more years, which is really long in Internet Time. While some writers thrived in this new section and others did not, together we harnessed the power of blogging to address big changes in academic life, political writing and scholarship as…

April 29, 2015, 10:53 am

Teaching Baltimore, Teaching the History of American Violence

By Claire Potter

Baltimore burning in 1968. Photo credit.

During this year of police violence, and organizing against police violence, I have avoided blogging about the many issues raised by Ferguson, Staten Island and Baltimore. I am ambivalent about this decision, because it isn’t as though I do not have a lot to say, and that saying it in this space is not important. Many of these protests occurred in my own city: my students and I marched, and we talked. Urban uprisings have been the most consistent theme of the academic year.

Yet I have been overwhelmed by these events. More importantly, I have also been troubled by the role social media has played in the dynamics of these uprisings, and by the extent to which some academics posture as virtual, semi-professional, urban revolutionaries when they talk to the Internet. Without…

April 23, 2015, 6:41 pm

Weekend Link Love from Tenured Radical

By Claire Potter

Best news ever! My conversation with Chauncey DeVega is up at We Are Respectable Negroes. Actually it’s been up since last week, and the conference, post conference, omigod-am-I-leaving-town-again cycle prevented me from posting it here. Apologies to all DeVega fans.

In any case, it was really fun to engage with Chauncey, who did me the favor of making a virtual visit to my blogging class in the fall. We covered, in his words, “police brutality and life in New York in the shadow of the Eric Garner case; the perils, joys, and challenges of public pedagogy and intellectual work; and share[d] some fun stories about the naughty, titillating, and scintillating things that can be found in famous folks’ personal archives and collections.”

And other stuff. We are an awesome pair, and thinking of giving Rachel Maddow a run for her $$. Since the weekend is almost here, enjoy: click here to…

April 19, 2015, 2:04 pm

The Current State of Academic Conferences

By Claire Potter

Some panelists were missing, but Benjamin Franklin showed up at this year’s OAH.

I am just back from St. Louis, where the Organization of American Historians (OAH) had its annual meeting this weekend. A brief review:

The program was good. I did not go to any bad sessions, and I went to 2-3 every day, which is unusual for me. I didn’t hear anybody complain about any bad sessions. Congratulations, program committee, and many thanks to Marc Stein of San Francisco State for the queer history stream. Marc has been a relentless promoter of our field, and has made it far more prominent at this and other conferences than it would have been without his efforts.
The Renaissance Hotel was still under construction, and they had booked two conferences back to back, which made checking in on Thursday a drag. There was…

April 7, 2015, 9:34 am

Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien: On Changing Jobs

By Claire Potter

I’m guessing Hannah Arendt was not chosen as our school mascot because of the smoking.

The other day I read a comment on Facebook to the effect that, after changing jobs, many academics experience a moment of intense regret. The author of the comment timed this moment of regret at about six months into the new job, when the losses and the difficulty of the transition becomes truly apparent. I would just like to take this opportunity to say, after three years of working in a new job:

Not me. I am happy as a clam.

I haven’t gone in the other direction either: I don’t think that my previous job was incredibly flawed. Although everyone collects grievances and regrets, mine seem to have vanished entirely, and I remember only the things I liked about working there (longtime readers of this blog will be shocked at…

April 5, 2015, 8:14 am

Sunday Radical Roundup: What We Are Reading

By Claire Potter

It’s Easter, it’s Passover. But what is Tenured Radical doing? Visiting Mom and catching up on email, that’s what. But in the middle of everything, there is time to read, and here are a few things that have caught my eye:

Oh My God! I Left the Baby on the Bus! A brilliant essay about choosing not to have children — many times — by M.G. Lord, “You’d Be Such a Good Mother. If Only You Weren’t You,“ Dame (April 3, 2015.) Yes, yes, and yes.
You Must remember This. Daniel Zalewski’s essay, “Life Lines,” The New Yorker (March 30, 2015), is about an artist and illustrator whose hippocampus and memory were zapped by encephalitis. I cannot even begin to describe what an amazing essay this is. Not one of those New Yorker pieces that endlessly devolves into brain science, it teaches about the brain and brain research through the life this former New Yorker cover illustrator Lonnie Sue…

March 19, 2015, 5:08 pm

Even a Moment of Mentoring Can Matter

By Claire Potter

American Historical Association President Vicki Ruiz has a wonderful essay about mentorship in this month’s Perspectives. Her own career as a historian began with an invitation to come to office hours:

A community college transfer, I knocked on Jean Gould Bryant’s door with a feeling of dread. What had I done wrong? She quickly put me at ease. After that eventful meeting, I began to consider graduate school, and over a period of 18 months, Bryant expanded my intellectual horizons as she prepared me for the rigors of her alma mater, Stanford. Coincidentally, I enrolled in courses on “race relations” taught by a young African American sociologist trained at UCLA. Leonor Boulin Johnson also took an interest in me, lending me books I never knew existed, books in Chicano studies. And, as the saying goes, the rest is history.

As Ruiz points out, it’s easier “to know those…

March 18, 2015, 11:27 am

Update: Notre Dame Requests Changes in a Post

By Claire Potter

Illustration is a reference to the tag for this post.

Readers of my review of Emily Yoffee’s review of The Hunting Ground may be interested in knowing that the Chronicle has been contacted by Dennis K. Brown, an Assistant Vice President and University Spokesman at Notre Dame, in response to alleged inaccuracies about the Lizzy Seeberg case. Brown’s request reads as follows:

From: Dennis Brown [email address redacted]
Sent: Friday, March 06, 2015 1:54 PM
To: Dianne Donovan
Subject: Blog entry

Dianne,

I’m not sure if you’re the right person to contact, but do hope you can assist or point me in the right direction.

An article this week by Claire Potter on sexual assault includes inaccurate information about a case at Notre Dame four years ago. Here’s the link to her article.

…

March 17, 2015, 8:00 am

Reading Around the Web

By Claire Potter

A few things that have crossed our desk last week, and we wanted to make sure they were on yours too.

Erik Loomis wants to know: what’s love got to do with it? In “Adjuncts“ (Lawyers, Guns and Money, March 12 2015.) Written on the occasion of National Adjunct Walkout Day, Loomis acknowledges many of the reasons, good and bad, that people stay in the game. However, he argues that these reasons aren’t good enough to stay in a business that stresses you out and does not pay a living wage: “to be honest, most adjuncts should also quit their jobs and find something else to do,” he writes. I completely agree with this. Parenthetically, I am fascinated by the seriousness and lack of vitriol in the comments section. Past experience suggests that had I published such a piece at Tenured Radical, my computer screen would go up in flames. Hat tip: Historiann.
More questions: Margaret…

March 15, 2015, 8:00 am

Wikipedians in Blue

By Claire Potter

Who knew the New York Police Department was full of avid Wikipedians? Here’s a fun fact to include in your next digital humanities syllabus: in ”Edits to Wikipedia Page Traced to 1 Police Plaza,” Capital, March 13, 2015) Kelly Weill reports on a review of Wikipedia pages conducted by Capital. Numerous edits to Wikipedia pages about police brutality have been altered, and the edits can be traced to IP addresses assigned to NYPD headquarters.

According to Weill,

Computer users identified by Capital as working on the NYPD headquarters’ network have edited and attempted to delete Wikipedia entries for several well-known victims of police altercations, including entries for Eric Garner, Sean Bell, and Amadou Diallo. Capital identified 85 NYPD addresses that have edited Wikipedia, although it is unclear how many users were involved, as computers on the NYPD network can operate on the…