Unwanted!

Welcome!

2010-10-03T08:55:00.000-07:00

Unwanted!--A Novel has now been posted in its entirety. It was inspired (so to speak) by two events: one at Brown University (which the New York Times ran a story about on November 18, 1990), and the other at Duke University (which the New York Times ran a story about on September 19, 1993).

I am very pleased that Unwanted! has attracted readers in many countries--especially America, Canada, Britain, Russia, Singapore, Hungary, China, France, Germany, and New Zealand.

If you’re new to this blog, please start with Chapter 1 and read forward.

I hope that you’ll also read another blog novel that I have posted—Diary of a First Year Grad Student—which can be found here:

http://diaryofafirstyeargradstudent.blogspot.com/

Chapter 17

2010-10-02T05:42:00.000-07:00

Ann Sweezy was walking back to her office with a load of blue books to grade from the final exam she had just administered when she unexpectedly came upon Elita White, who was carrying a similar burden.

Ann had been trying hard not to display her emotions in public, but her eyes now suddenly filled with tears. "Oh, Elita!" she said. "I heard that Michaelson turned you down for tenure. He turned me down too!"

"Yeah, I heard," said Elita. "He's a bastard! But that provost is a real bitch! I'm glad she's leaving!"

"It's been so humiliating!" complained Ann. "The worst thing of all is how everyone in my department treats me like a pariah now. When I go into the main office or even the hallway, other faculty stop talking and move away from me. A few told me they were sad about the news, but I think most of them have already written me off and are already arguing about what to do with my position!" She could not stop herself from sobbing, even out here in the open.

"Well," Elita responded angrily, "that's the way I've been made to feel since the very first day I started teaching here. Nobody in my department has ever asked my opinion or sought my input on anything serious. I know what they all think: that I was brought in to satisfy some affirmative action quota, and that I never would have been hired if I wasn't black. I can tell that not one of them thinks my appeal will succeed, and that they'll finally be rid of me this time next year."

Ann was taken aback by this. All she could think to say was, "But at least you have the support of the NDU African-American community."

"I'm afraid you have an idealized notion of the unity of the African-American community here," said Elita scornfully. "I haven't received much support from that quarter. In fact, I've even heard rumors that it was Charles Gibson who did me in."

They both remembered the little episode with him. There was no need to discuss it. "But you know what humiliates me more than anything?" Ann asked, and then answered herself: "Michaelson gave tenure to Robert Barnes, but he's decided to leave anyway! He can stay but he doesn't want to, while I want to stay but probably can't! What am I going to do?" She then sobbed some more. She didn't care who saw.

"I'll tell you what you're going to do," said Elita. "I'll tell you what both of us are going to do. We're both going to appeal next year. And we're both going to win--without publishing or doing anything more than we already have."

Ann stopped crying. "What makes you say that?" Surely this was wishful thinking, Ann thought.

"It's simple!" Elita responded. "Just think about it: during the entire tenure process this past year, who wrote the most negative memo about you?"

"The provost," answered Ann. "That was a real surprise."

"Same for me," said Elita. "But she won't be here next year."

"Yes, but..."

"Now tell me this: did the chair of your department write you a positive memo this past year?" asked Elita.

"Yes, she did, but..."

"So did mine," Elita continued. "If our chairs wrote us positive memos this past year, there's no way that they can write anything less positive next time around--not without risking a lawsuit in which they would have to explain why they wrote positive memos for us the first time."

"Yes, but what about the voting by the departmental faculty and the college P&T committee?"

"Forget them!" Elita insisted. "The chair of my department wrote me a positive memo even after the tenured faculty in my department gave me a split vote, and the dean wrote me a positive memo even after I received more negative votes than positive ones on the P&T committee. Did the dean write you a positive memo too?"

"Yes."

"Just like our chairs," Elita explained, "Dean DiSola can't write memos any less positive about us than he wrote this past year without running the risk of being sued. But here's the clincher: instead of going to Provost Bobier, next year's memos from Dean DiSola will then go to Acting Provost DiSola. He can hardly advise turning us down in his capacity as acting provost after having advised approving our appeals in his capacity as dean--as he must since he advised approving us for tenure this year."

Ann hadn't thought of this. "But what about President Michaelson?" she asked. "Why would he change his mind about us?"

"Did Michaelson's letter rejecting your application for tenure state any reason for doing so?"

"No," responded Ann. "It just said something like, `I am sorry to inform you that, in accordance with the recommendation of the provost, I have decided not to approve your application for promotion and tenure.' He then went on to tell me that I was eligible for a one-year appointment during which I could appeal this decision, but which would be terminal if my appeal was unsuccessful."

"I got the same letter," said Elita. "The key phrase in it was `in accordance with the recommendation of the provost.' If he receives positive recommendations for us from the acting provost next year, then he is likely to award us tenure `in accordance with the recommendation of the provost.' If everyone below him recommends granting our appeals, he's not going to stick his neck out by denying them. He knows we'd sue him personally. Getting rid of us wouldn't be worth the hassle!"

By now Ann was convinced. "Oh, Elita! I think it just might work!"

"It will," Elita responded, "unless we let the system get us down. You and I have got to help each other. Nobody else is going to help us--at least not voluntarily!"

As they parted company, Ann felt a return of the sense of hope which had abandoned her after first receiving Provost Bobier's memo recommending she be denied tenure. She also realized that she had for the first time felt a sense of connection with Elita.

* * *

Later that day, after finally being able to get off the phone, Ruth Silverstein got up from her chair and opened the door to her office. "Come on in, Trond. I'm sorry I kept you waiting. I'm afraid things are pretty hectic around here."

"No problem," said Trond unconvincingly.

As they both sat in their accustomed places, Ruth asked, "Now what was it you wanted to see me about?"

"It's about Rob Barnes," replied Trond. "I'm afraid he's not going to change his mind about leaving. Can you do anything to help persuade him to stay?"

Ruth shrugged her shoulders. "He's a big boy. He can make his own decisions. And to tell you the truth, it would be quite useful if he did leave. I'd like to convert his slot into a public policy position. I even think the Public Policy Institute would be able to pick up half the tab, so it would reduce the cost to the department dramatically. In fact, if we get going on this now, we could advertize it and get it filled by the start of the fall semester."

Trond was taken aback. "The international relations people in the department are going to cry foul if you do that. They think of Rob's position as theirs."

Ruth shrugged her shoulders again. "So maybe we make it some kind of international public policy position. The point is that my being acting director of the Public Policy Institute has created a real opportunity for the department. Everyone was afraid that the institute was going to take resources away from the department. But now we have the opportunity to add the institute's resources to ours."

"Yes, but this link might only last for the year that you're acting director. What happens if a permanent director is chosen from outside who wants to swallow up part of our department? We'd have given him half a position already."

Why, Ruth wondered, did academics always just see obstacles and never opportunities? Trying hard to hide her exasperation, she said, "Trond, if we play our cards right, we have the opportunity to swallow the Public Policy Institute--and its resources--into our department. I've already floated the idea with Dominic, and he very much supports it. If I become permanent director of the institute, it just might work!" Yes, this was definitely a time of opportunity.

Trond frowned. "I'm not sure the faculty here wants you to be splitting your time between the department and the institute for more than a year. I'm not sure they want anything to do with the institute, or that they even want it to exist."

Opportunity might be banging on the door, but Trond and his kind would be too fearful to answer it. "Trond, the institute is a fact," said Ruth. "Michaelson has invested too much in it. He's not going to cancel the project just because people in this department aren't sure whether they want it. We either seize the opportunity that fate has provided us with to shape it to our own liking, or we have nothing to do with it--and remain powerless to stop it from competing with us for faculty slots, funding, and everything else that we fear it will do. I think it's pretty obvious which course of action is preferable."

"I see your point, Ruth," said Trond, "but I don't think the department is prepared for this. I'm sure that the IR people are not going to buy converting Rob's slot into an international public policy one--at least not yet. I really think that you're going to have to proceed very, very slowly in the fall if you're going to bring everybody on board."

"There just isn't time for that!" said Ruth, now with no effort to hide her exasperation. "If we're going to convince Michaelson to let us run the institute, we've got to show him that we're prepared to act decisively. We have to present him with a fait accompli. That's why I want to convert Rob's position to a joint appointment with the institute, and get it filled by the end of the summer!"

"I...I just don't know, Ruth..."

"Look, I'm afraid I've got a meeting to go to," she interrupted. They both got up and went their separate ways.

* * *

Later still that day, Rob Barnes was in his office grading final exams from his international political economy class when he heard a knock at his door.

"Come in!" he called.

The door opened to reveal Cindy McMann. She came in and shut the door behind her.

"Oh, hi Cindy!" said Barnes cheerily. "Did you think I have the grades for the IPE class already?"

"Do you?" she asked as she sat down.

Barnes laughed. "I'm only about half way through them, but I do have yours. Once again, you got an A."

"Thank you!" said Cindy.

"Don't thank me," responded Rob. "You earned it!"

"Actually," said Cindy, "there's something else I want to ask you about. A few weeks ago, I signed up for your Latin American politics seminar next fall. But when I checked my registration today on the computer, it said that the class was canceled. Is it?"

This, Rob knew, was Ruth Silverstein's work. When she found out he was leaving, she immediately moved to cancel his classes next fall. That, of course, was only practical, Rob realized. He thought it was interesting, though, that she had made no effort to dissuade him from leaving--unlike President Michaelson.

"I'm afraid it is, Cindy. I won't be coming back in the fall."

Michaelson had not only gone ahead and awarded him promotion and tenure, but had sent his dossier along for ratification by the Board of Trustees--which had now gone through.

"Will you be offering it in the spring, then?" asked Cindy.

Rob had told Michaelson that he already had another job lined up which he would be starting almost as soon as the semester was over. Saying that he still wouldn't yet act on his letter of resignation, Michaelson had asked Rob to write him a letter requesting two years' leave without pay--the maximum period that universities would normally allow a professor to be away.

"I'm afraid I won't be back at all, Cindy."

Trond Knutsen had also been pressing Rob to do this. He had been one of Rob's supporters all along. Trond had also made it clear that a battle was brewing over what to do with Rob's position after he left, which was somehow mixed up with Ruth becoming acting director of the new Public Policy Institute. If Rob would agree to go on leave instead of resign outright, Trond argued, Ruth could only replace him with a one-year-at-a-time restricted appointment during that period.

Rob was certain he wouldn't be coming back. The job with Johnny at Mack & Monk paid more than twice what he'd be earning at NDU even with tenure (Rob was shocked to learn that being promoted from assistant to associate professor would only mean a measly $2,000 raise). Still, he thought he might ask for a leave of absence anyway just to help Trond thwart Ruth in whatever it was they were fighting over.

"Why?" asked Cindy.

That was a good question. He had, after all, gotten tenure in the end--despite Provost Bobier.

"A much higher paying opportunity came along, and I decided to take it," he responded. That opportunity, of course, had first been presented to him last September. He had turned it down then. Why was he accepting it now? What was different?

"You weren't turned down for tenure or anything, were you?"

"No! No!" he responded. "In fact, they've just awarded it to me." Still, it didn't feel like much of a victory somehow. He had assumed that there would be absolutely no question about his being granted tenure. The fact that anyone had questioned it at all--especially the provost in her memo recommending that he be turned down this time--had stung him bitterly. So had the nonsensical sexual assault charge--and even more, how it had been manipulated after the young woman who had made it apparently sought to withdraw it.

"Will you be teaching somewhere else?"

"No, I'm leaving academia altogether."

Rob had sent in his resignation soon after receiving the provost's memo when he thought that he would be turned down for tenure by the president and that he'd better act fast to secure his future. It was clearly better to go work at Mack & Monk than to stay on at NDU after the disgrace of being denied tenure, even though he could apply for it again.

But even after learning that Michaelson had decided to promote him anyway, Rob found the prospect of life with tenure to be just as disturbing as life without it. It's not that Rob objected to tenure per se--far from it. But it would be tenure at NDU. Switching to another university with tenure seemed much more difficult now that he faced the challenge of doing so than it had last September when he told Johnny so self-confidently that that was what he would do after getting tenure here. Far fewer tenured positions were advertized in the APSA Personnel Service Newsletter than tenure-track ones. And each time one was, he could well imagine that there would be intense competition for it as dozens and dozens of tenured professors, dissatisfied with universities similar to NDU, applied for it. And if it wasn't going to be easy to move, that meant he might spend years and years--perhaps even his whole career--in this shabby little office earning a miserable salary and receiving no research support except from money he himself raised outside the university.

No, it was better to move to Mack & Monk while he could. There was no tenure in the financial world, but the salaries were great. There might not be time for writing books or even articles, but he could still be interviewed by the media. Maybe he could move into a high level position at State or Treasury, and then to a think-tank like Brookings or the Carnegie Endowment. Yes, his career would be far better served by moving to Mack & Monk now than by staying at a dump like NDU.

"So how come you didn't tell us in class that you were leaving?"

This question caught Rob up short. He had planned on telling each of his classes on his last day of teaching that he wouldn't be coming back, but found himself choking up before he could begin to say so. The same thing happened at the beginning of each of his final exams. And so he had ended up saying nothing.

"Well, I guess it just slipped my mind," Rob replied.

Cindy looked at him quizzically. "You know, I was really looking forward to taking your Latin American politics seminar next fall. I had also recommended your classes to some of my friends."

Rob felt himself choking up again. He was surprised how sad he was at the prospect of not teaching his classes any more. There was something about teaching, he knew, that earning even a lot more money doing something else wouldn't make up for.

"I'll miss you too!" said Rob, standing up quickly to signal that the visit was over. He was afraid to even look at her. Why was this so difficult?

Cindy stood up too. She reached over and put her hand on his shoulder. "Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yes," he said weakly. "Look, I think you'd better go now."

She put her other hand on his other shoulder. "I'm sorry," she said, "I'm really, really sorry."

But when he looked up, she was gone.

THE END

Chapter 16

2010-09-25T05:22:00.000-07:00

George Michaelson strode into the NDU Board of Trustees room precisely at noon. It was a smaller group of journalists than had attended his press conference last September. There were no cameras this time. Nor was there anyone from the student newspaper, The New Dominion.

"We don't ordinarily hold a press conference in May, and on the last day of classes at that," Michaelson began, "but recent events have made it necessary.

"As was first reported by Kate Morgan in the Post on Monday," Michaelson continued, nodding at Kate, "NDU's provost, Dr. Jeannette Bobier, has been offered and has accepted the presidency of St. Catherine's College on Maryland's Eastern Shore. She shall be missed sorely here, but we wish her well in her new endeavor."

This, George knew, was not quite how he felt. She had created several little messes which she was now walking away from and leaving him to clean up. She had also mentioned just recently how she thought that the contacts she was making on the ZARD Industries board of directors would enable her to raise the $75,000 to cover the expense of the botched Public Policy Institute directorship search. This money, if she had in fact raised it, would now go with her to St. Catherine's College.

"Life here at NDU," he continued, "can and will go on. We are pleased to announce that Dominic DiSola, the dean of NDU's College of Arts and Sciences, has agreed to serve as acting provost next year while a national search is conducted to fill the position. He will also continue to serve as CAS dean. Just raise your hand there, Dominic, in case there's anybody here who doesn't know you already."

It wasn't clear that he was really provost material, Michaelson thought to himself as Dean DiSola timidly raised his hand and smiled weakly at the assemblage. He was far too close to the faculty for Michaelson's taste, and would not willingly play the role of executioner on promotion and tenure decisions as Jeannette Bobier had done. But Michaelson really had no other choice at such short notice. The College of Arts and Sciences was the biggest and most diverse unit within the university. Hence Dominic had some experience dealing with the range of issues that a provost had to deal with, unlike the deans of the smaller, more specialized schools and colleges who were intimately familiar with their own fields and little else.

"As most of you know," said Michaelson, "our search for a director of the new Public Policy Institute didn't quite work out as we had hoped. We are really not disappointed, however, as we would rather take the time to find the person we know is right for the job."

There was no need to reveal that the three candidates who had been offered the job had all turned it down. They were obviously not "right" for the job--or right in the head either, as far as Michaelson was concerned.

"We will reopen the search for a permanent director this coming year," he continued. "In the meantime, though, Ruth Silverstein, chair of our Political Science Department, has graciously agreed to serve as acting director next year in order to get the institute up and running. She will also continue to run the Poli Sci Department. Okay, Ruth, now you raise your hand."

She smiled and waved with much greater self-confidence than Dominic had. Michaelson had his doubts about the more Machiavellian benefits that Jeannette said would result from this appointment. Ruth struck him as enthusiastic but competent when she came to his office to talk about taking on the assignment. He didn't think she would cause him any problems during her year as acting director--at least he hoped not.

"That's all the announcements we have at present," Michaelson concluded. "Are there any questions?"

The first to raise his hand, Michaelson noted with annoyance, was Todd Rawlings from the Richmond Times-Dispatch. "Is it true," he asked, "that NDU paid $75,000 of the tax payers’ money to the headhunting firm of Little & Ball for the search this past year which failed to produce a permanent director for the new Public Policy Institute?"

Oh, shit! How the hell did he find that out? "Yes, I think it was something like that," responded Michaelson, clearly caught off guard. "But you've got to keep in mind, Todd, that that fee included all the costs of advertising the position, correspondence and phone calls with all applicants, and all the expenses of bringing the candidates here which the university would have borne directly if it had conducted the search without the aid of a headhunting firm."

"You've just announced," Rawlings continued, "that next year there would be a national search for provost and that the search for the Public Policy Institute director would be reopened. Are those going to cost $75,000 apiece too?"

Michaelson hadn't quite focused on this. "Well, you've got to understand, Todd, that NDU must compete with other universities for top flight administrative talent. Employing headhunting firms to do so is becoming standard practice in higher education."

"Why not just appoint Dean DiSola as provost and Professor Silverstein as institute director, and save the taxpayers $150,000 next year?"

This was embarrassing. He couldn't just come out and say that it was because these positions were too important to be entrusted to anyone already at NDU. "Now, Todd! Dominic and Ruth already have full-time jobs here. They are free to apply for the permanent positions, if they so choose. Serving on an acting basis will allow them--and me--the opportunity to see whether it is a good fit for them, or whether retaining their regular positions makes more sense.

"Besides," Michaelson added, "if we simply appointed Dominic and Ruth, or anyone else here, to these positions permanently, we'd immediately have to begin searches to fill their old positions."

"I appreciate that," said Todd. "But it sure seems like it would be a waste if you spend $75,000 apiece on searches for these positions next year, and the people chosen to fill them end up being the two acting appointees. And would a headhunting firm then be hired to fill the regular positions they occupy now?"

"Now, Todd, this is getting highly speculative," replied Michaelson. "I can't answer that question since I have no idea what the result of next year's searches will be.

"Does anyone else have a question?" asked Michaelson, hoping to get off this subject.

Kate Morgan raised her hand. "I'd like to follow up on something from last fall. I wrote about how an NDU staff member identified to me a student who had filed a sexual assault complaint about Professor Robert Barnes, but when questioned, that student denied ever having filed such a complaint..."

"I'm sorry, Kate, but it is NDU's policy not to discuss in public anything to do with sexual assault charges or their withdrawal. We realize that we had some unfortunate episodes of sloppy journalism by the student paper last semester--which you wrote about in a little more detail than we would have liked--but that problem has been addressed."

The reporters from these two papers were so predictable, thought Michaelson. While the Times-Dispatch always obsessed about anything to do with how state tax money was spent, the Post always obsessed about anything to do with sex.

"All I want to know," continued Kate, "is this: if there were no such charges filed against Professor Barnes, why is he leaving NDU?"

Now how the hell had she found that out? Nothing remained confidential here.

"Was he denied tenure?" she pressed on. "If so, I thought assistant professors were always allowed a year to appeal if they turned down?"

"No, he was not denied tenure!" Michaelson replied hotly. In a calmer tone, he added, "Nor is it absolutely certain that he's leaving. Information of this nature, of course, is confidential, and I really hope you won't quote me even having said this much. If you want to learn anything more, you'll have to talk to Professor Barnes himself."

As far as Michaelson was concerned, Jeannette's handling of Barnes was a far greater problem than the failure of the search she had overseen for a Public Policy Institute director. Michaelson had affirmed her decision to deny tenure to Elita White and Ann Sweezy. Those two clearly did not deserve it. But her Machiavellian scheme to make their ouster appeal-proof by denying early tenure to the more qualified Barnes had backfired.

Barnes had received a copy of the provost's memo recommending against tenure for him at the same time as Michaelson's office had. It had taken almost three weeks before Michaelson had been able to look at the three dossiers Jeannette was advising him to turn down, talk to her about her reasoning, and decide to award Barnes tenure against her advice. Barnes, though, had also reacted to the provost's memo. Perhaps anticipating that Michaelson would deny him tenure as the provost advised, Barnes had sent Michaelson a terse letter announcing his resignation as of the end of the semester. Michaelson had received it just this past Monday--the very day Michaelson had signed his own letter to Barnes awarding him promotion and tenure.

For Michaelson, attracting and keeping winners like Barnes was far more important than getting rid of losers like White and Sweezy. So much more important, in fact, that Michaelson had abased himself to the extent that he had actually phoned Barnes to say that he had been awarded tenure, and to please reconsider his resignation. Barnes's reply was simply, "Thanks, but I've already accepted a job somewhere else." He even said that it was a job that had no tenure!

Jeannette, of course, had failed to calculate that going elsewhere would be an option for Barnes. And now that she too was leaving, she no longer cared. What Michaelson feared was that word would spread about not just Scott Halpern, but now also Robert Barnes turning down a tenure offer from NDU in favor of an untenured position elsewhere. Would others like them think that there was something wrong with NDU? This was not the sort of reputation Michaelson wanted for his university. He'd try again to persuade Barnes to stay, or if not that, take a leave of absence instead of resigning. He'd ask Ruth and Dominic to work on him, too. They should do this for him, Michaelson thought, since they both now owed him for their new acting positions--as well as higher salaries.

"There's something else I'd like to follow up on," said Todd. "Who was responsible for selecting Little & Ball as the headhunting firm to conduct the Public Policy Institute director search this past year?"

Oh, God! Is he still on that? "It was Provost Bobier who arranged that," responded Michaelson.

"Is it true," continued Todd, "that Little & Ball was also the firm that conducted the search for the presidency of St. Catherine's College?"

That bitch! So Jeannette had hired Little & Ball mainly so they would peddle her to some other college--which, of course, they earned another fat fee from. But since he didn't know for certain whether Todd's information was correct, Michaelson decided that a low-key reaction was in order. "We don't know anything about how the search for the new president of St. Catherine's College was conducted. You'll have to address any questions about that to the administration at St. Catherine's."

And Michaelson knew that Todd would. Maybe Kate would too, although Michaelson couldn't see any sort of sex angle for her. Well, if there was one, she'd find it.

Michaelson looked at his watch. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave," he announced. This time, he really did have a meeting to go to. "If you have any further questions, please address them to Dominic, Ruth, or our media relations director.

"We hope to see you all back here in September when we'll be announcing another exciting new initiative here at NDU."

"Will that entail yet another $75,000 national search?" asked Todd.

Michaelson, though, was already out the door.

Chapter 15

2010-09-18T05:42:00.000-07:00

Jeannette Bobier was annoyed. Things had not gone the way she had planned. And she had put quite a lot of effort into planning them--which only made her more annoyed.

Jeannette was tired of playing second fiddle to George Michaelson here at NDU. She was tired of him announcing some grand new initiative at the beginning of each academic year, and then leaving her to find a dean or director for it as well as get it started. When she did all this well, he took the credit. And when she wasn't able to do it well, he assigned her the blame--as was occurring now with this damned Public Policy Institute.

She had thought that hiring the headhunting firm of Little & Ball to organize the search for the institute director would solve her problems. She had thought it would do a much better job than would a search committee dominated by faculty members on its own. But it had failed--even though it had been paid $75,000. Now it was April, and George was breathing down her neck to find an acting director for the institute from within NDU. And, she knew well, he would hold the $75,000 expenditure against her.

She herself knew she couldn't blame the search firm entirely. It was true that two of the five candidates who came through had been turkeys. But the other three had been acceptable. So acceptable, in fact, that each had been offered the position. And each had turned it down.

The first two had merely used the offer to wangle themselves some sort of administrative promotion at their home universities. This had stung. But what had really stung was being rejected by the last candidate--Scott Halpern. She, as well as Little & Ball, had thought of him as their "safe" candidate--the one most likely to accept if offered the job. He would, after all, be moving from a tenure track to a tenured position, and see his salary triple to boot. How could he turn that down? Somehow or other, he had. Nor did his doing so add luster to NDU's image. And now Jeannette was left holding the ball.

But this wasn't the only reason why Jeannette was annoyed. There was a more personal concern as well. The main reason why she had hired Little & Ball was because of its reputation for successfully recruiting top people in higher education. Her goal in hiring the firm was not just for it to conduct the search for the institute director here, but for it to have her in mind when it conducted searches for university presidents elsewhere.

This had, in fact, happened--to an extent. She had let them know she was interested in moving on from NDU and becoming a university president in her own right. And the firm had obliged: she had made the short list and was--just in the past few weeks--interviewed for the presidency at Southern Arizona University, Hills College in Northern California, and St. Catherine's College on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Unfortunately, though, she heard last week that Hills had made an offer to someone else, and that the offer had been accepted. And she had received similar news just today about Southern Arizona. She had yet to hear from St. Catherine's, but at this point she had resigned herself to spending at least one more year in George Michaelson's shadow.

Furthermore, between interviewing candidates here for the Public Policy Institute directorship and being interviewed herself elsewhere, Jeannette realized that she had let a few things slip. The recent ZARD Industries annual meeting, along with the attendant board meeting and receptions, had also distracted her. But now, she really had to buckle down. Her memos to George on this year's crop of promotion and tenure cases had been due at the end of March. It was now early April and she still had not done them. She decided that she was going to get them done today.

For the most part, her task was easy since all except three cases from the College of Arts and Sciences had unanimous support from lower levels of review. This being the case, she was not in a position to turn down any of these candidates. In fact, she would not even bother to read their thick dossiers, but would merely paraphrase the memo from the dean of the law school, engineering school, arts and sciences, or wherever else the dossier came from in her own memo about each candidate to the president.

There were only three cases that had received split votes at both the department faculty and the P&T committee levels: Elita White, Ann Sweezy, and Robert Barnes--all from the College of Arts and Sciences. She was not at all surprised to see that the CAS dean, Dominic DiSola, had approved all three. He was, she knew from the dossiers he had forwarded in previous years, a spineless wonder. He recommended promotion and tenure, she suspected, for people even he knew were losers in the expectation that Jeannette would do his dirty work for him by recommending rejection.

She had called Dominic to inquire whether he really supported all three of these candidates, or whether she had "misread" any of his memos. Even then the sonofabitch wouldn't tell her anything negative about any of them, stating only that he had said everything he had to say about all three cases in his memos. This lack of candor and excess of caution was most undesirable in a dean, she thought. She would have to do something about Dominic DiSola--whenever the occasion arose.

Her call to the chair of the History Department was far more productive. He was practically frantic about the prospect of Elita White becoming a tenured member of his department. He said that after receiving a damning 6-6-1 vote in the department and an even more damning 3-4-0-1 vote from the P&T committee, he had thought DiSola would surely recommend against her getting tenure. The chair had been shocked when he received the copy of DiSola's memo recommending for. Jeannette reminded him that his own memo had recommended White for tenure, and asked him why he had written that if it was not what he meant. He admitted having done so just to avoid a confrontation with her and because he assumed she would be axed at a higher level anyway. Jeannette thanked him for his input, but warned him to say what he truly meant in future. "Otherwise, you risk getting what you ask for but don't really want." He then pleaded with Jeannette to recommend against tenure for Elita, but Jeannette would only state that she was "still considering" what to do.

Jeannette had every intention of recommending against Elita. Her research record was absolutely pathetic. It was also clear that she was not at all a good colleague. The trouble with Elita, though, was that she was black. What this meant was that if she was rejected for tenure, she would inevitably claim that the decision was made on the basis of racial prejudice. Jeannette knew that she would have to prepare Elita's rejection very carefully if it was to survive the inevitable appeal Elita would file next year and, assuming that was unsuccessful, the lawsuit she would initiate afterward.

The first thing Jeannette did, then, was telephone Charles Gibson--NDU's most prominent African-American scholar--to sound out what his reaction would be if Elita White were to be denied tenure. And here she had hit pay dirt: he indicated that he would not object at all, and then told her of the discussion about Elita in the P&T committee (which Jeannette hadn't been aware he was serving on). And just as she had with the chair of the History Department, Jeannette took careful notes on her conversation with Charles--very careful notes.

The most important step in making sure that the rejection of a black or any other minority candidate for tenure was upheld, Jeannette knew from long experience, was being able to point to a white with a similar or even better record who was also rejected. In this regard, Ann Sweezy's dossier was clearly a godsend. Unlike the chair of the History Department vis-a-vis Elita, the chair of the Political Science Department really did support Ann. Otherwise, however, the dossiers were quite similar: only one book apiece, and just with an unprestigious scholarly commercial press at that. Both had few publications beyond the one book, though both had long service records. Yes, rejecting Ann for tenure would definitely allow the university to point out that it was not singling Elita out just because she was black.

Ann, of course, could be expected to appeal her rejection for tenure on the basis that she was being discriminated against for being a woman. Academic losers were all so predictable, Jeannette thought. Their rejection for tenure was never their own fault, according to them, but always the result of some form of discrimination. They were pathetic!

The ideal antidote to this, she knew, was to show that she had recommended against a white male with equal, or preferably, superior credentials than any woman or minority being turned down. The white male, after all, could not argue that he was being discriminated against--unless, of course, he was gay. (Jeannette had her doubts about gay white males in academia; she thought that at least half of them only pretended to be gay so that they too could claim that any action taken against them was not due to any fault of their own but to discrimination on the part of others). Robert Barnes, though, could make no such claim. As the "finding" against him forwarded by the Sexual Assault Complaint Review Committee indicated, it was girls that he liked to touch.

Jeannette had not been impressed with the committee's "finding" against him or with the "evidence" it was based on--the paper by the roommate describing what happened in Barnes's office. In fact, she had been rather disgusted that Ann Sweezy had actually given academic credit to some girl for writing it--one more reason, she thought, for rejecting Ann's bid for tenure. Besides, the girl who at first complained against Barnes had tried to withdraw the complaint, and had even come to Jeannette's office to bitch about Ellen Stenkovsky not letting her do so.

Jeannette remembered that girl--Cindy her name was. Yes, she was quite attractive. Jeannette was certain that she and Barnes were lovers. There was one thing Jeannette was not certain about: had the girl really come to talk to her on her own initiative without Barnes knowing, as she said, or had he actually sent her there with that story? Either way, the two of them had clearly made up after the incident described in the paper. Jeannette had no doubt that Barnes had been touching a lot more than the girl's shoulder since then.

Nor did Jeannette really care. Unlike Ellen, she wasn't bothered much by consensual sex between faculty and students--as long as they were discreet. But there was no reason to let Barnes know that. He'd raise the roof if he knew his application for early tenure was being rejected mainly to bolster her effort to force Elita and Ann out altogether. But she doubted that he would say anything at all if she let him think that delaying tenure was the price he had to pay for his pleasure with Cindy. Just to make sure he got the message, she'd write him a letter (another one of those things she had not gotten around to) indicating how disappointed she was that his behavior had led to the Sexual Assault Complaint Review Committee's finding against him and how, although she could take disciplinary action against him, she would not do so--this time. Yes, he would get the message.

Still, Jeannette had to admit--if only to herself--that bolstering the rejections of Elita and Ann in their up-or-out year was not her only motive for denying early tenure to Barnes. She had another motive: revenge. She still couldn't believe how that smug Scott Halpern had turned down her offer of the Public Policy Institute directorship and instant tenure, preferring to stay in a tenure track position at Princeton. That bastard had gotten his Ph.D. at M.I.T. So had Barnes. Well, if someone from M.I.T. turned down NDU, it seemed only poetic justice that NDU should reciprocate by turning down someone from M.I.T. She realized, of course, that nobody from M.I.T. would ever know that she had deliberately retaliated against it in this way. But that didn't matter. She knew, and that's what counted!

Yes, Jeannette thought, it was good to have all that settled in her mind. So much for the P&T cases. Next on the list was finding someone to serve as the acting director of the Public Policy Institute next year. This, she knew, would be a thankless task--especially if George insisted on running another national search for a permanent director which everyone would know was unlikely to select the internal acting director. An appointment of a prominent figure from outside would generate far more positive media coverage for NDU than the appointment of somebody already here. And positive media coverage of NDU was what George wanted.

Jeannette knew that the acting director of the Public Policy Institute had to possess three qualifications: 1) some knowledge of public policy issues; 2) some administrative ability to get the damn thing running; and 3) a sufficiently biddable nature which would not protest at being pushed out of the job once a permanent director from outside was found, but which would stick at it until then. Oh, and there was one more thing: the acting director could not have been a member of the search committee this year. That would look bad.

Who could she find at NDU who met all these qualification? Jeannette smiled to herself. The choice was obvious: Ruth Silverstein, chair of the Political Science Department. And Jeannette knew she had a strong incentive to offer to Ruth. If Ruth accepted the acting directorship of the institute, Jeannette would agree to convert her one-year acting chairmanship of the department, which was just about to expire, into a regular four-year appointment. Since she would be doing both jobs at the same time, her salary would be raised accordingly. More importantly, her being department chair would also provide Ruth with something to go back to when her services as acting director of the institute were no longer required.

In fact, the more Jeannette thought about it, the more she had to acknowledge her brilliance in picking Ruth for the acting directorship. The main opposition to the new Public Policy Institute came from two sources: 1) the public administrators (including Ruth) inside the Political Science Department who feared the Institute would encroach on their turf, and 2) Dean Dominic DiSola who feared that CAS would lose future faculty appointments to it. Whatever the merits of the department's fears, the dean's (she knew) were accurate--and hence more of a danger. By appointing her as acting director, Jeannette anticipated that Ruth would succeed in persuading the public administrators into actually supporting the Institute out of the belief that they would come to control it (something, of course, Jeannette had no intention of actually allowing to happen). Further, as an institute director (even if only an acting one), Ruth's administrative rank would be equal to that of a dean--including her own Dean DiSola, to whom she reported as a department chair. This was a situation that was practically guaranteed to cause tensions between Dominic and Ruth--tensions which Jeannette could take advantage of.

Well now, was that everything? Had she correctly calculated how all the parties involved would react to her various moves? Elita White and Ann Sweezy would howl with protest at being denied tenure, but denying it to Robert Barnes too would checkmate them. Ruth Silverstein would be delighted at receiving the acting directorship of the Institute--thus providing her with an incentive, Jeannette realized, for not opposing Jeannette's decisions regarding either Ann or Rob. And, thanks to his little peccadilloes with that Cindy having been revealed, Rob would just have to lay back and take it (albeit less pleasurably than Cindy had done from him, she was sure). Besides, unlike Elita and Ann, Rob could go up for tenure again. She even anticipated recommending him for tenure the next time he applied. If, that is, she was still at NDU.

All that remained now was for George Michaelson to sign off on her recommendations. But she didn't anticipate any opposition from him. Since he was the one demanding that she find an acting director for the Public Policy Institute, she doubted that he would disagree with her choice of Ruth Silverstein. Nor would be gainsay her on turning down both Elita White and Ann Sweezy for tenure. They were just the type he wanted to rid NDU of. He might react negatively to turning down Rob Barnes for early tenure. But she'd convince him that it was a necessary move if he really wanted to get rid of the likes of Ann and Elita. Besides, George would never want it to appear that her standards were higher than his own.

Yes, Jeannette thought, she had it all figured out.

Chapter 14

2010-09-10T13:17:00.000-07:00

As was his custom, Rob Barnes arrived at his office a little before 8:30 a.m.--long before any student was likely to come by. It was the Thursday before the week-long spring break--Rob's last teaching day before it--so he didn't expect a very large attendance anyway.

Rob was feeling good that mid-March morning. He had found it very difficult to concentrate on his research after that horrible `unwanted' poster had appeared last semester. He thought it had all blown over when the Post article describing the problems with the `unwanted' posters came out last December, but there had been that ridiculous Sexual Assault Complaint Review Committee he had been called before at the beginning of the spring semester.

But things were going a lot better now. It had been a pleasant surprise to find that he had a strong and forceful ally in Charles Gibson who had been his liaison to the P&T committee. Needing such a friend, Rob thought ruefully, was not something he had anticipated at the beginning of last semester. Though not unanimous, he had received a strong vote from the P&T committee. And just last week he received a copy of the memo from Dean DiSola recommending him for promotion and tenure. His case was now before the provost. Rob anticipated no problems there, especially now that his second book was actually out and was receiving some favorable publicity.

He had written an op-ed piece summarizing the book's conclusions which was published by the Los Angeles Times. He had also appeared on "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer." Even more than the book, these had led to a number of reporters calling to interview him.

The attention he was getting, of course, was nothing like what his old grad school rival, Scott Halpern, was getting. Rob had become a regular guest on the CBS Evening News, where he seemed to appear at least once a week commenting on events in Russia. And as far as Rob could tell, at least half these interviews with him were conducted in Moscow. How did he manage to get funding for all these trips?

Still, he tried not to dwell on Scott. Life, after all, was not a zero sum game. Scott's success was not hindering him in any way. In fact, the best news Rob had gotten in a while had arrived on Tuesday, when the managing editor of Foreign Affairs had called him asking for an article extending the argument in his new book. Rob had to have it in by the end of March to be considered for the next issue, and so had canceled his planned trip to Boston for spring break in order to write it. But canceling the trip would be worth it, he knew, since an article in Foreign Affairs would get far more attention than his book, and would--more than anything else--enable him to move on from NDU. But thanks to getting tenure here, as now seemed certain, he would be in a strong position to be hired with tenure by a "real" university. He would begin working on this in earnest this coming summer and fall.

It would be great, he thought, if he could start somewhere else next fall, but he knew it was too late for that; hiring at the senior level for next fall was already over and done with. With any luck, next year would be his last here at NDU. In the meantime, though, he would continue the very interesting--and very lucrative--consulting arrangement he had made with Johnny Chang and his firm, Mack & Monk, at the beginning of last semester.

Rob turned on his office computer (which was two generations out of date--one more reason why he hated being at NDU). As usual, he checked his e-mail first. There were only three messages: the first was a "university announcement," the second from Ruth Silverstein--probably to the department as a whole, and the third also from Ruth. All were dated yesterday.

Rob opened the "university announcement" first. It was yet another of these one-day-in-advance notices of a candidate for the directorship of the new Public Policy Institute coming through. Rob had not recognized the names of any of the previous four or bothered to attend their presentations. He thought he'd just look at this message long enough to see if he recognized the candidate...

Holy shit! It was Scott Halpern! And he was coming through today!

How could this be? Scott didn't even have tenure! Was it the same Scott? The brief bio on him indicated that he received his Ph.D. in political science from M.I.T., that he was teaching at Princeton, and that he was a regular consultant on Russian issues for CBS. Yes, it was the same Scott.

After the bio came his schedule for the day. He was having breakfast with the search committee. He was then scheduled to meet President Michaelson, and afterward with Provost Bobier. Rob then saw that he was listed as meeting with the Political Science Department faculty at noon. This would be followed by lunch at 1:00 with the university professors. At 2:0, he would make his academic presentation--which, the message practically gushed, would be covered by C-SPAN. At 3:00, he would meet with the deans of the various colleges and schools. At 4:00, he would make an "administrative presentation." There were then meetings with members of the Board of Trustees, and afterward a by-invitation-only dinner. Good God!

The next message, from Ruth Silverstein, urged the entire department faculty to attend the noon meeting with Scott Halpern, the candidate for the Public Policy Institute directorship, who had specifically asked to meet with them. Various "higher-ups" from the administration, "whom we definitely do not want to give a bad impression of our department to," would also be attending, she noted.

The third message, also from Ruth, asked Rob whether he knew Scott and, since his morning class ended at 11:45, requested that he please go straight over to the provost's office afterward to pick Scott up and walk him over to the departmental conference room. "I've already notified the provost's office that you will be collecting him, so let me know if this is a problem for you." Rob sent her a reply saying he'd be delighted to bring Scott over--even though he wasn't.

* * *

Rob looked at his watch. It was five minutes to noon. He had already been sitting in the reception area of the provost's suite of offices for over five minutes now. Even if Scott came out from his meeting with the provost right now, they would be late for his meeting with the Political Science faculty. But that didn't seem to be bothering either Scott or the provost.

Rob had never been here before. The furniture was certainly much nicer than in his department. Everyone seemed to dress up here in Dominion Hall, where the president, the provost, and the various university vice presidents had their offices. But while the staff here might be well dressed, it did not appear to be particularly well mannered, he noted.

When he had first come in to the provost's suite and announced he was here to pick up Scott, the receptionist--a young woman who was obviously either a student or a very recent graduate--said, "Oh yes, Rob, we've been expecting you." Rob was not used to being addressed by his first name by people her age here on campus. But then she continued, "Provost Bobier is still talking with Dr. Halpern." This implied that, unlike Rob, the provost and Scott were important, and therefore were referred to by their titles and last names. Finally, she had said imperiously, "Just have a seat, Rob," as if to emphasize the distinction between him on the one hand and the provost and Scott on the other. Good Lord!

The door to the provost's office finally opened, but the meeting did not appear to be quite over as Scott and the provost were still talking in the doorway. Rob realized that he had never met the provost before. He was surprised that, although obviously in her forties, she was a very attractive woman. Her clothes and jewelry certainly looked expensive. She was looking up into Scott's face, smiling. "It was such a pleasure to meet you after seeing you on the news so often," she said with just a slight trace of a French accent.

"The pleasure was mine!" Scott responded enthusiastically.

"I think it's very generous of you to volunteer to meet with our Political Science faculty. But I hope you won't judge NDU just on them; remember what I told you!"

And just what was that, Rob wondered.

"Has that friend of yours shown up here?" she asked.

Scott looked around and saw Rob. "Yes, there he is!" said Scott jovially. "Hi Rob!"

Rob stood up and went over to them, shaking hands first with Scott and then the provost.

"So you're Rob Barnes," she said in a rather less jovial tone of voice than she had used to address Scott.

Before Rob could respond, Scott said, "Come on, Rob, we've got to hurry!" As if their being late was somehow Rob's fault.

Turning back to Scott, the provost said, "I'll be seeing you again at your presentations. In fact, I'll be introducing you for the one that C-SPAN is filming."

"Great!" said Scott. After the provost and Scott said their good-byes, Rob set off with him to the Political Science Department.

Once they were out of her office suite and on their way, Rob said, "It's been a long time, Scott. I had no idea you were applying for the Public Policy Institute directorship here. Of course, they've kept it all very quiet, only announcing the candidates the day before they each arrive."

"This is kind of a funny place," observed Scott. "I just assumed that this institute they want to start would have a big budget for the director to get it going. But that doesn't seem to be what they have in mind. The president and provost wouldn't come right out and say it, but they seem to expect whoever is the new director to raise most of the institute's funds. That's not exactly how I want to spend my time. I mean, why the hell would I ever leave Princeton for NDU unless NDU guaranteed me a big annual budget?"

"I see your point," commented Rob. "Did they say anything about whether you'd come here with tenure?"

"Oh yeah, of course," replied Scott. "They said they'd have your department give it to me."

"Oh really?" asked Rob.

"Yeah, and speaking of your department," Scott continued, "it appears to be on the shit list. Both George and Jeannette had a few negative things to say about it. It seems that as a group, you guys aren't fulfilling your quota."

"George and Jeannette?" asked Rob.

Scott laughed. "Surely you jest, Rob! George Michaelson and Jeannette Bobier--your president and provost! I know you like to burrow in and focus on your own work to the exclusion of everything else, but surely you've heard of them!" Scott laughed some more.

"Of course," said Rob sheepishly. "It's just that nobody here refers to them just by their first names."

"They insisted that I do," said Scott.

"Is there anything else annoying them about the Poli Sci Department?" asked Rob.

"They seem to think that your chair (Ruth is it?) and the public administration types have complained about how they weren't consulted about the formation of the Public Policy Institute. They also seem to think that they're going to be taken out of Poli Sci, which George and Jeannette say they pretty much control, and put inside the Institute which they won't."

This was news to Rob. Scott was right: he just concentrated on his own career. He interacted with other faculty in his department who taught international relations, but had not bothered to get to know any of the public administrators--unless, of course, like Trond before and Ruth now they happened to be the chair of the department.

"That's why I asked to speak to your department," Scott continued. "I'm going to reassure them that if I become director of the new institute, I'm not going to do anything to take them or their MPA program away from the department. The truth of the matter, though, is that if they really are the losers that George and Jeannette say they are, I wouldn't want them in my Institute anyway!"

Rob thought there was a lot of dead wood in the Poli Sci department, especially among the public administrators, but he really didn't like hearing Scott ridicule them. It implied that he held Rob in low regard just for being in the same department with them.

"Jeannette also told me," Scott said knowingly, "that you have quite a reputation as a lady's man around here."

"What?" asked Rob, dumbfounded.

"Yeah, she told me that some pretty little thing came in to see her just a few weeks ago to defend you against something or other. What was that all about, Rob?" Scott asked knowingly.

Was this never going to end, Rob wondered. There was some young woman out there who had filed some sort of complaint against him, but who then wanted to withdraw it--and the university wouldn't let her! He wished she would just come and talk to him; maybe together they could get the whole thing resolved. He wondered who she could be, but Rob really had no idea.

Well, even if he didn't know who she was, at least the provost now did--and presumably would believe her. Rob, though, was unhappy that Provost Bobier had been indiscreet enough to say anything about this matter to Scott.

"It's all about nothing," said Rob in answer to Scott's question.

"Oh, don't play dumb with me!" teased Scott. "I remember how when we were T.A.'s back at M.I.T., you always had a flock of Wellesley girls in your sections." Wellesley was M.I.T.'s sister school. The Wellesley women taking classes at M.I.T. were always readily distinguishable from their M.I.T. sisters. Whereas the Wellesley women usually wore dresses, jewelry, even make-up, the M.I.T. women dressed much the same as the M.I.T. men.

"By the way, how are your T.A.'s here?" Scott asked.

Rob had hoped Scott would not ask this. "I don't have any," he replied weakly.

"What?" cried Scott incredulously. "Who does your grading for you?"

"We don't have a Ph.D. program in political science. So I have to do it myself."

"Good Lord! And what's your teaching load here?"

Rob had been dreading this question even more. "Three and three," he responded.

"I can't believe it!" shouted Scott. "The heaviest load I've ever taught at Princeton is two and two--sometimes it's just been two and one. Rob, old boy, you have fallen far!"

Now Rob's back was up. "I don't know about that," he responded. "It's only my third year here and I'm just about to get tenure. Once I do, I'll be on the job market next fall for a tenured position somewhere else. Everyone knows that schools like Princeton chew up assistant professors for six years and then spit them out, forcing them to take assistant professorships somewhere else and start the tenure process all over again."

Scott looked at Rob quizzically. "Yes, that can happen," he admitted. "But it's also possible to get tenure at Princeton. And even if you don't, the school you move to you will often give you tenure right away. I mean, look at me here--being considered for a tenured position at NDU. A tenure track assistant professor like me would never be considered for it if I wasn't at Princeton or a school like it.

"Let's say we were both up for tenure this year at our respective schools and we were both turned down," Scott continued. "I think it would be a hell of a lot easier for me to get a tenured position somewhere else after being turned down by Princeton than it would be for you after being turned down by NDU."

This was not what Rob wanted to hear. "Well, since I'm in the final stages of getting tenure here, that doesn't apply to me," he snapped.

They both walked in silence for a few moments. Rob realized that he had sounded too defensive. "That's our building just up ahead," he commented. "Tell me, Scott: will you take the job if they offer it to you here?"

"Just between you and me," Scott replied, "George and Jeannette already have."

Rob wondered: did Scott ever fail at anything?

"But also just between you and me," Scott continued, "I'm not going to take it. It would take years to get the Public Policy Institute up and running, and that's just not how I want to spend my time. So I'll just be going through the motions for the rest of the day. Still, it won't be a total loss--thanks to Jeannette arranging for C-SPAN to cover my talk this afternoon. And it sure won't hurt me back at Princeton when it gets around that I was offered an institute directorship here."

"I see," said Rob.

"By the way," asked Scott as they entered the building. "I see your new book came out. What are you working on now?"

Trying to keep his pride from showing, Rob told him how Foreign Affairs had asked him to write an article for the upcoming issue.

"That's great!" said Scott. "They had asked me for one too, but I had to tell them I have too much on my plate for the next issue."

He always has to be one up, thought Rob. They had now arrived at the Political Science Department's conference room where Rob handed Scott off to Ruth Silverstein. Rob was surprised to see that the room was practically full; there were several people from outside the department whom he did not recognize. There being no places at the long board room style table in the center of the room, Rob took a seat along the wall.

He tried to follow Scott's talk, but couldn't concentrate on it. All he could think about was that since his next class was at 1:30, he hoped Scott would finish early enough so that he could grab something to eat beforehand.

Chapter 13

2010-09-04T04:54:00.000-07:00

Dean Dominic DiSola entered the main office of the College of Arts and Sciences from the corridor of University Hall. Waiting for him there, as he expected, was Jacob Cohen--full professor of English, but more importantly for today's meeting, chair of the CAS Promotion and Tenure committee. The committee had met last Friday, and Jacob was bringing him the final memos on each of the ten cases it had considered. Even more important for Dominic, though, would be the "after action" account of the committee discussion that Jacob was here to provide.

"Come on into my office," said Dominic. He shut his door after ushering Jacob in. "Please sit down. I'm sorry I'm late. I was just at the presentation being made by the first of these candidates being considered for the directorship of the new Public Policy Institute."

Dominic shook his head. "What a turkey! Someone on the search committee told me that he had glowing letters of recommendations from his colleagues at NYU where he is now. From what I can tell, they must have said great things about him in order to palm him off on us and be rid of him themselves."

"Oh, yeah," responded Jacob. "I got the e-mail notice sent out yesterday about his coming. I wonder how much the provost is paying that headhunting firm coordinating the search for us. And why all the mystery about the candidates, only identifying each the day before he or she actually arrives?"

"Jeannette really has hyped this," observed Dominic, referring to the provost. "Maybe it's because she doesn't want anyone to have enough time to find out what losers these people are before they arrive."

"It sounds like this guy today unmasked himself," said Jacob.

"That's for sure!" laughed Dominic. He looked at his watch. "I'm booked up solid with appointments this afternoon, so let's get down to business."

"Right," said Jacob, pulling out the memos from the manila envelope he had brought them in. "As you know, we had ten cases altogether--three for promotion to full professor, seven for tenure.

"The committee voted unanimously in favor," Jacob continued, "of the three going up for full. Four of the seven tenure cases also received unanimous approval. The committee was, to a greater or lesser extent, divided on the remaining three tenure cases."

"Let's focus on those," said Dominic. There was little point in discussing the others since he was hardly going to recommend against any of the cases which had received unanimous approval from the P&T committee.

"Right," said Jacob. "The three split votes occurred with regard to Rob Barnes and Ann Sweezy from Political Science and Elita White from History. Rob's vote was seven in favor and two against; Ann's was four in favor, three against, and one absence; and Elita's was three in favor, four against, and one absence."

Dominic looked quizzical. "Why the absences in the latter two cases? There's nobody from Political Science or History on the committee this year, is there? Of course, if someone from Poli Sci was on it, there should have been an absence recorded for Barnes too."

"No, nobody from those departments is on the committee this year," Jacob confirmed. "I'm afraid it's a bit of a complicated story."

"Maybe I'd better just let you tell it, then," commented Dominic.

"Right," said Jacob. "Although they were mixed in with the others, I'll talk about them in the order they occurred vis-a-vis one another.

"That means starting first with Robert Barnes. The `vital statistics' are as follows: the vote of the tenured faculty in his department was thirteen in favor, two against, and one abstention; the chair was in favor (though her letter was lukewarm); and the P&T committee vote was seven in favor and two against."

"What was the argument of those opposed to Barnes in the committee?" asked Dominic. "Did they bring up this `unwanted' poster business from last semester?"

"That was not discussed," responded Jacob. "And the reason why is because at our organizational meeting at the end of last semester, Charles Gibson insisted on being Barnes's liaison. Gibson himself, as you know, later became the target of one of those posters--which was why the university stopped any more from being published. When we met last week, nobody else was willing to raise the subject in committee--especially after Gibson himself made an impassioned speech describing Barnes as the innocent victim of a malicious radical feminist conspiracy."

"How did that go over with the rest of the committee?" asked Dominic.

"If anybody else had said it," responded Jacob, "I think there would have been a huge furor. Between you and me, I think that virtually no white professor is willing to challenge a black professor who makes an impassioned statement. There were three women in the room whom I knew wanted to, but none of them did. Each, I'm sure, was hoping one of the others would, but none was willing to risk being denounced by Gibson as a racist for openly disagreeing with him. And considering that Gibson saw himself as the victim of such a conspiracy, he just might have reacted this way if anyone had challenged him on Barnes."

Dominic was very familiar with this reluctance on the part of white professors to openly challenge black ones in meetings for fear of being denounced by them as racist. It was a reluctance that he shared.

"Gibson," continued Jacob, "then presented a strong case for giving Barnes tenure based on his stellar research record. Nobody could point to any deficiency there. In fact, I suspect that Barnes has published more than most people here who already do have tenure. To tell you the truth, he made a very convincing case."

"There were two members of the committee, though, whom he obviously didn't convince," observed Dominic. "Did they present a case for why Barnes shouldn't get tenure? There's no need to mention the names of the people who made the argument--I just need know to what their argument was for when I write up my own memo."

"It was basically the standard old guard position," Jacob replied. "They argued that almost everyone (including themselves) who had been awarded tenure here at NDU had only gone up in their sixth year as an assistant professor. They had put in their dues, and so Barnes should too. They referred to Ruth Silverstein's letter stating that while she supported Barnes, she would have preferred him to go up later after proving himself a good university citizen through the performance of his share of service.

"Gibson pooh-poohed this argument," Jacob continued, "saying that while tenure may have been granted mainly on the basis of service in the past here, a strong research record was now essential if NDU was going to sustain, much less enhance, its growing reputation. One of the old guard actually said to Gibson that that was well and fine for him to say as a university professor who could more easily do research thanks to the lesser teaching and service load than the rest of us carry."

"How did Gibson respond to that?"

"Actually, quite thoughtfully," said Jacob. "He said he understood why university professors might be resented by others here. But he said that we shouldn't take it out on Barnes, who is, after all, an assistant professor who has managed to excel despite the constraints faced by the regular faculty. He even said that for someone like Barnes to be highly productive in terms of research was more of an accomplishment than for someone like himself after becoming a university professor."

"That was quite decent of him," remarked Dominic. "Was anything else said either for or against Barnes?"

"No, I don't think that there were any other points raised," responded Jacob. "We later turned to Sweezy's case. Her vital statistics are: thirteen for, two against, and one abstention in the department (the same as Barnes); a favorable recommendation from the chair (warmer, actually, than Barnes got); and four in favor, three against, and one absence in the P&T committee."

"An absence, not an abstention?" queried Dominic.

"Right."

As they both knew, the difference was important. An abstention was counted as a negative vote while an absence was regarded as neutral. "Technically, then," said Dominic, "that should be recorded as 4-3-0-1," reflecting the usual order in which votes for, votes against, abstentions, and absences were recorded.

"Right," said Jacob again. "That's what I actually have here."

"Good. So what happened?"

"It was very odd. She came under attack from Gibson for having a weak research record--which indeed she has. He said that academics typically publish less after receiving tenure than before it when they face a stronger incentive to do so. And since Sweezy has published so little when she had the incentive to get tenure, he said, we could reasonably expect that she would publish nothing at all when she no longer had that incentive. He then asked us if that was what we really wanted.

"Well, you know how it is," Jacob continued. "When someone on the P&T committee condemns a candidate for a poor research record--and especially when the person doing so is someone as senior as Gibson--nobody wants to step forward and say, `Actually, I think her research record is pretty good.' It would be tantamount to saying, `My standards are lower than yours, and you should accept mine.'"

"Four people ended up voting for her," Dominic observed. "Did any of them make a case for her?"

"Her liaison did," said Jacob. "She acknowledged that Sweezy had not done a lot of research, but had met the minimum standards of her department with the publication of a book. Gibson quickly pointed out that it was only a scholarly commercial press with a reputation for not being terribly selective that was publishing it.

"Sweezy's liaison then went on to argue that the real case for her being awarded tenure was her outstanding service record. She then started to list Ann's accomplishments in this realm. And here is the strange part: when she mentioned that Sweezy was now serving in her third year on the Sexual Assault Complaint Review Committee, Gibson blew up.

"He said that he'd been hauled before what he termed `that kangaroo court' just recently. He hadn't paid much attention to the names of the people serving on it when they were introduced at the beginning of the session. He also said that except for the person he was serving as liaison for, he had not bothered to read the sections on service in the other dossiers we were considering, focusing instead on research records and letters from external referees. If he had known Sweezy had been on this committee which he held in such low regard, he said, he would have recused himself before her case was even discussed. Now that he did know, he continued, he would recuse himself before we voted on her--and then he walked out of the room, telling me to call him back in after we had done so."

"Wow!" said Dominic. "So he had no idea that he had just encountered her? He hadn't ever crossed paths with her before?" Now that he was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and was responsible for overseeing all the departments within it, Dominic was constantly amazed at how little the faculty from different departments interacted with or even knew about one another. People whose departments were located in the same building might never converse with each other even once in their careers unless they happened to serve together on a CAS or university-wide committee--and maybe not even then. There certainly would not be anything to draw together a renowned university professor specializing in African-American literature like Gibson with a low-level assistant professor who combined public administration and women's studies like Sweezy.

"No, he had never been aware of meeting her, and had not recognized her from the parts of her dossier that he had read," said Jacob. "Well, even though Gibson left the room, we had all heard the damning case he had made against her. One of the old guard made the case that Sweezy had put in her dues like the rest of them, and so had earned tenure despite what any university professor might say. There wasn't much additional discussion and so we proceeded with the vote."

"I see," said Dominic. "And what was the story with Elita White?"

"I'm especially familiar with this case," said Jacob, "since I served as her liaison." In response to Dominic's raised eyebrows, he added, "Nobody else volunteered." Considering all the time-consuming work that being chair of the P&T committee involved, its occupant was traditionally exempt from the burden of serving as a liaison.

"Her vital statistics," Jacob continued, "were six for, six against, and one abstention when the tenured history professors voted, and a favorable recommendation from her chair.

"But when I interviewed the chair" (part of the duty of being a liaison was to interview both the candidate and the chair of the candidate's department before the P&T committee meeting), "he indicated that she was an extremely difficult person to deal with, and that he would not be sad if she was denied tenure."

"Why didn't he recommend against her in his memo then?" asked Dominic.

"I asked him that," said Jacob. "He hemmed and hawed, but didn't really give me a straight answer. I had the strong impression, though, that he anticipates her filing a lawsuit if she is denied tenure. He may have calculated that with such a weak vote from the tenured faculty, she'll never make it past the P&T committee, you, or the provost. Thus, we'd do the dirty work of axing her for him, but he would avoid being included in her lawsuit by virtue of his giving her a positive recommendation."

"And again, how did your committee vote on her?"

"Three in favor, four against, and one absence--Gibson again," replied Jacob.

"How did the discussion go?"

"Since I was her liaison, and since I had read her entire dossier," Jacob began, "I was able to state right away that White was also a member of the Sexual Assault Complaint Review Committee, and so I asked Gibson if he wanted to recuse himself in this case too.

"Gibson said that he would absent himself from the voting," Jacob continued, "but that he thought he should say something about her both because he had, after all, talked a lot about Sweezy before leaving the room and because he had some familiarity with this particular candidate and that it was his duty to tell what he knew. He then said something very surprising."

"It seems he was full of surprises that day," remarked Dominic.

"He told us," Jacob said, "that he really didn't hold it against either White or Sweezy for being a member of the Sexual Assault Complaint Review Committee--especially since Elita had telephoned him the Monday after his hearing to say that the committee had decided in his favor, that she had gotten him off the hook, that she was his black sister, and as Gibson put it, `a lot of other shit like that.'

"Gibson went on to say that Elita hadn't fooled him. He suspected she was calling less out of sympathy for him than because she knew, he was sure, that he was on the P&T committee. Once he'd thought about it, he said that he actually had more respect for Ann Sweezy for not pulling a stunt like that.

"Gibson then pointed out that White's research record was even weaker than Sweezy's. He stated that he was intimately familiar with the African-American studies field, and that the publications in which White's few articles appeared were not scholarly, and that her own work could only be described as polemical. I, of course, had read them myself: he was right.

"He then said that she was an extremely difficult and unpleasant person to deal with, and that he doubted her personality would improve much if she were awarded tenure. He also said that for a university to grant tenure to a candidate as weak as Elita White would be the height of what he called `white liberal condescension'--and then he left."

"In body if not in spirit," remarked Dominic. "Were any arguments presented in her favor?"

"Well, I pointed out that, like Sweezy, White has a strong service record. In addition, she does enjoy a following among African-American female students--something that the university likes, considering what a poor retention rate we have for this group. And, of course, her being here contributes to diversity among the faculty. That was about it."

Dominic wondered whether, despite making these arguments in her favor, Jacob had actually voted for her. Unlike the recommendations made by department chairs, the CAS dean, and the provost which were statements made by individuals that the candidate would see, the votes of the tenured faculty in a department as well as in the college P&T committee were conducted in secret. Each P&T candidate would see how the committee voted as well as its memo to the dean, but nobody voting against a candidate had to acknowledge having done so to him or her. Dominic would have loved to ask Jacob how he voted, but such a question would definitely be unethical.

"I guess that wraps it up," said Jacob. "When do you have to make your recommendations by?"

"My recommendations are due to the provost by the end of this month," replied Dominic. "The provost's recommendations to the president are due at the end of March. The president is supposed to make his final decisions by the end of April, and then those he approves are presented for ratification to the Board of Trustees in May."

"Right," said Jacob as he got up to leave. "I don't envy you having to decide these three cases."

"Thanks for all your hard work, Jacob. You don't have to worry about them any more. At least I have a little time to think about the three cases your committee was divided on," said Dominic as he ushered Jacob out.

Dominic, though, had already made up his mind about them. He would approve all three for tenure, but for different reasons. Barnes was a star--and the college sorely needed stars. Sweezy was just a grunt--but the college needed competent grunts, too. And as for White--well, Dominic also wanted to avoid being named in a lawsuit. If the provost wanted to ax her (and he knew from past experience that Jeannette Bobier was highly likely to), then she could face the storm Elita would raise without him.

Chapter 12

2010-08-27T04:05:00.000-07:00

Ann Sweezy came back into Ellen Stenkovsky's office with a cup of coffee in a paper cup. A Styrofoam cup would have been much easier to carry, but that would not have been environmentally correct. Ellen had also returned, as had Elita White--the African-American African-American history professor. Ann was glad she wasn't last. They were just waiting now on Maurice--the contemporary theater professor who was also African-American. Both Ann and Maurice were usually late both to the beginnings and the resumptions of meetings. But while Ann always felt a little guilty about this, Maurice never seemed to notice that he was late. Ann admired his self-confidence.

This was Maurice's first year of his three-year membership on the committee. It was Elita's second year, and Ann's third. The three of them were all tenure track professors, but since Ann had been on the committee the longest, she was the senior faculty member this year and thus officially the chair. Ellen, though, dealt with all the logistics of the committee and, in truth, actually ran it. It was a late January Friday just before the week spring semester classes began.

Ellen seemed preoccupied with paper work while Elita, as usual, had a grim expression on her face which did not invite conversation. Ann, then, silently mused about her own situation while sipping her coffee and waiting for Maurice.

Ann would be sad when her three year term on the committee came to an end with the close of the current academic year. But if she was denied tenure and had both to appeal the decision as well as search for another job next year, she wouldn't have any spare time to devote to the committee anyway. So far, she thought, things were still on track. The vote of the tenured faculty on her case had been thirteen for, two against, and one abstention. This was obviously less favorable than a unanimous vote in her favor, but at least it was the same, she had been told, as Barnes had gotten. In addition, Ruth Silverstein had written a very positive chair's memo for her. She wondered, though, how it compared with the one Silverstein wrote for Barnes.

After the long winter break, both their dossiers now advanced to the promotion and tenure committee of the College of Arts and Sciences--which, Ann understood from her liaison to the committee, would probably meet next Friday, the last day of the first week of classes. Ann was glad that she was a habitual saver and filer. She had recently looked back through her fall semester collection of What's New at NDU, the faculty/staff information newsletter, and saw that Charles Gibson was a member of the college P&T committee. For once, she had succeeded in not revealing this bit of intelligence to anyone else on the Sexual Assault Complaint Review Committee. With any luck, he would not remember that he had encountered her here when the P&T committee met next week.

The fact that she served on the Sexual Assault Complaint Review Committee was noted in her dossier. She wondered, though, how thoroughly each P&T committee member could read each of the thick dossiers being considered in addition to the dossier that they each had to become very familiar with when serving as the liaison who presented the case to the committee.

In any event, Ann had not said anything to provoke Gibson this morning. Indeed, she was inclined to side with his version of events. But this was not, she assured herself, because he was on the P&T committee. It had, however, been a grueling morning. But then, the deliberations of the Sexual Assault Complaint Review Committee always were.

Maurice came into the room with a can of Diet Coke. "I'm not late, am I?" he asked jovially. "Whew! Nobody told me just how intense this committee was going to be! I'm glad we didn't have any more cases to deal with!"

Ellen looked up from her writing. "Okay, let's get started again," she said in a very serious voice. "Let me remind you of the differences between these two cases, and what we're expected to do now.

"The first complaint we heard this morning was a formal complaint lodged by a student, Genevieve Lacouture, against a professor, Charles Gibson. Because it was a formal complaint, the complainant herself was here to state her grievances against Professor Gibson and he had the opportunity to challenge her--which, I am sure you recall, he did."

"Yes, I think we all recall that," interrupted Maurice. "It was quite a shouting match they had!"

"The second complaint we heard," continued Ellen, ignoring the interruption, "was an informal complaint. This procedure is allowed when the complainant does not wish to reveal her name to the accused."

"I really have to admit," commented Maurice, "that I have some problems with that. Doesn't that sort of violate the whole notion of due process? Right to face one's accuser and all that?"

"I realize, Maurice, that this is your first year on the committee," responded Ellen condescendingly. "As I tried to explain to Professor Barnes earlier, universities enjoy special legal status to govern and adjudicate their own internal affairs. Because there are usually no third party witnesses to sexual assault cases, observing the patriarchal legalism requiring the victim of sexual assault to actually prove it occurred places an undue and unfair burden on her. It is the presumption at this and other progressive universities that sexual assault victims do not file complaints frivolously or maliciously. Indeed, there is reason to believe that they usually do not file complaints at all. When they do, then, they must be taken seriously. The fact that the complaint is an informal one does not detract from the seriousness of the charge. An informal complaint places even more of a burden on the committee than a formal one to question the accused on behalf of a victim fearing retaliation.

"It is now our responsibility," Ellen continued, "to reflect on each case and to draft a memo to the Provost stating our findings. Let's start with the Gibson case since we heard that one first. Since you're the chair, Ann, would you like to begin?"

After expressing what Ann felt was a sufficient number of self-deprecating remarks proclaiming that being chair shouldn't entitle her to speak first and that she wanted to hear the views of her colleagues, she noted that Ellen really ran the committee anyway so she may as well speak first after all. She also noted that her two previous years on the committee might have given her some additional experience to put this particular case in perspective. After all this, Ann paused. "It's difficult to know what to say about this particular case. I must confess that it's very unusual for me to see two people of color so adamantly opposed to each other."

"Not for me!" said Maurice. "I see it all the time! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

A hissing noise appeared to issue from Elita.

Maurice may be both African-American and gay, thought Ann, but he still had what she considered to be some annoyingly male characteristics. She wondered if he was part white. "It seems to me," Ann continued, "that while Professor Gibson did say something a little...untoward...and that the student understandably felt...offended, it appears to me that she just may have overreacted somewhat. And I do think Professor Gibson made a strong case that her charge against him was being manipulated by racist elements to attack not just him but all African-American professors."

"Oh, come on!" said Maurice. "He's just trying to hide behind the fact that he's black. He didn't deny telling Genevieve that if she wanted a higher grade, she should wear a shorter skirt. In fact, he admitted saying it when he claimed it was just a joke."

Elita hissed again. "This case should never have been brought before this committee," she pronounced. "It should have been dealt with quietly by the Minority Affairs Office."

"And why's that?" asked Maurice. "Just because the two parties involved are African-American? Whether the charge is valid or not, it is about sexual assault, not racial discrimination."

Continuing not to look at Maurice, Elita stated tersely, "This is a case that should be dealt with inside the African-American community. It should never have been aired to outsiders who want to use it both to discredit and divide African-Americans. This Lacouture girl can never be forgiven for writing graffiti about Brother Gibson in a woman's bathroom knowing full well that white racists would publish it in the student paper! She even admitted that she did it! I just wonder what she was offered to betray her own kind."

"Oh, come on, Elita!" responded Maurice. "Genevieve just complained about Gibson the same way a lot of other young women complained about their sexual assailants here. There was no great white conspiracy to find this girl and pay her to write something false about Gibson."

Elita, again refusing to look at Maurice, hissed again. "I don't know that that is what happened," she said, "but you don't know that it didn't!"

"From what Genevieve told me," Ellen interjected, "she did go first with her complaint to the Minority Affairs Office. But once they realized who she was complaining about, they threw her out..."

"Just what they should have done," muttered Elita.

"...and so she came here," continued Ellen. "As we all know, there are a number of offices on campus that can take complaints about sexual assault. I, of course, would prefer that they all come here, but the way it works is that whatever office gets it has the responsibility to investigate. Whatever this or any other office receiving such a complaint decides, though, all report to the provost who then makes the final determination about guilt as well as disciplinary action. Were you going to say anything more, Ann?"

"Well," she began slowly, taken slightly by surprise at this sudden opportunity to try once again to reassert control over the conversation, "I think really what we have here is a case of... miscommunication. Professor Gibson made a joke, the student thought he was serious and reacted accordingly. I just think Genevieve misunderstood his meaning."

"Au contraire!" said Maurice, "I think she understood his meaning all too well!"

"Nobody who is not an African-American can possibly judge whether or not two African-Americans did or did not understand each other," pronounced Elita.

Ann knew this was a jab at her. She was mystified. Wasn't it obvious that Ann and Elita had expressed similar views on this case, and so should be allies? Ann had tried repeatedly to befriend her when Elita first came on to the committee last year, but all her attempts were rebuffed. Elita seemed to regard all whites as enemies. Didn't she understand that Ann was a liberal and a progressive who consistently supported and spoke out for the rights of people of color? Why didn't Elita appreciate this?

"On the other hand," Elita continued, "nobody who isn't female can tell whether or not another female is being honest when she claims she's been sexually assaulted. It's obvious to me that this Genevieve is just a little black rich bitch who’s turned her back on her own."

"That's pretty strong stuff, Elita," commented Maurice. "Would you care to explain how you arrived at that conclusion?”

Elita appeared to be profoundly affronted. Still not looking at Maurice but with an obvious effort to keep her voice under control, she replied, "It's perfectly obvious. There's no need for further explanation."

"Perhaps this would be an appropriate time," intervened Ellen, "to take a vote to see if there is a majority on the committee which would recommend disciplinary action against Professor Gibson to the provost. Would anyone approve such a step?"

Only Maurice raised his hand.

"Would anyone oppose this?" Ellen asked.

Both Ann and Elita raised their hands.

"Aren't you voting?" Maurice asked Ellen.

"I don't vote in cases involving faculty members," Ellen responded. "But it is clear that the majority of the faculty on the committee is not willing to recommend disciplinary action in this case. Unless anyone wishes to change her--or his--mind, I will record this as your decision and advise the provost accordingly."

Maurice seemed about to say something, but then just shook his head. "If there's nothing further to say on this matter," Ellen continued, "then I propose we turn to the case of Professor Barnes. Let's start with you, Ann."

After once again going through the obligatory self-deprecation, Ann said, "I think this is a much more serious case. I also think that the negative attitude Barnes displayed here this morning is symptomatic of his arrogance. After all, if that is how he treats other professors, imagine how he must treat his students!"

Barnes had come in with the now famous Washington Post article by Kate Morgan stating that the student identified by a member of the staff as having filed a complaint against him denied it (Ann knew that Ellen was still angry with her for talking to Kate about this). Ellen countered by saying that, on the contrary, a student had come to her with an informal complaint about him, and that there was even a witness--the student's roommate.

Barnes had then demanded to know who had filed the complaint. Ellen refused to tell him, stating that the informal complaint process existed for those occasions when a complainant felt "uncomfortable" about revealing her name--possibly, Ellen had pointedly stated, due to fear of retaliation. Barnes then had the effrontery to state that he was being denied due process and that this committee amounted to nothing more than a kangaroo court. He said that he had consulted with an attorney, and that if any action was taken against him on the basis of an anonymous accusation, which he had good reason to believe had either never been filed or had been withdrawn, then he intended to file suit against both the university and each member of the committee individually.

Ellen then explained (rather helpfully, Ann thought) that universities enjoyed a special legal status enabling them to govern and adjudicate their own internal affairs, and that due to sexual assault being an un-witnessed crime, "progressive" universities had abandoned the anachronistic legalism requiring a victim to prove that it had occurred.

Ellen next asked Barnes whether he had ever touched a student "inappropriately" or spoken to any in his office with the door closed. He categorically denied having done the former and stated that he certainly had not done the latter since the publication of what he termed "that damned `unwanted' poster." Whether a student had been in his office with the door closed prior to that occasion he claimed not to remember. Nobody else having any questions for him (actually, Ann did have questions she wanted to pose, but Barnes's demeanor intimidated her--a sure sign of his guilt as far as she was concerned), Ellen declared that the hearing was over. Barnes reiterated his warning about filing suit and then left.

What had upset Ann more than anything else was that Barnes didn't even seem to recognize her. It is true that they didn't have much opportunity to interact as she taught on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule while he taught on the more desirable Tuesday, Thursday schedule. And, as she well knew, he had been away last year. But surely these were not adequate excuses! They had attended some of the same department meetings--though he had not come to all of them the way she had (Ann wondered whether Ruth had taken adequate note of this).

"Well," said Ann, "given the belligerent way in which he addressed the members of this committee, and from what I've seen of his arrogant behavior in our department, I see no reason to doubt the allegations made against him in the informal complaint. Indeed, I can well understand why the student in question would be too intimidated to file a formal complaint in which she would have had to face him."

"Point of order!" said Maurice. "Don't you have something of a conflict of interests here, Ann, in that you’re passing judgment on someone in your own department?"

"We're both tenure track," Ann replied. "He has no say over my future, and I have no say over his--at least within the department. It would be different if one of us had tenure and the other didn't."

Ann was glad that Maurice didn't have any objection to this reasoning. But she was not happy to hear him say, "I have to admit, I sympathize with Barnes. If I first read an anonymous accusation in the student paper that I had inappropriately touched someone (whatever that means!), then read in the Washington Post (no less!) that the student who someone on the staff says filed a complaint against me denies having done so, and then I'm called in to answer questions about a charge that I was led to believe was either never filed or withdrawn, and I couldn't find out who made it, I'd be pretty mad too! In fact, I'd have been a lot more belligerent than Barnes was here!"

"Oh, Maurice! Ellen has already explained how the process works," Ann said with exasperation. "What do you think, Elita?"

"I have no opinion on this case," said Elita perfunctorily.

Now Ann was really upset. She needed at least one person to side with her against Barnes in order for the committee to recommend disciplinary action to the provost.

Ann anguished over how difficult Elita was being. What was wrong with her? Ann had sided with Elita on Gibson. The least Elita could do was to side with Ann about Barnes, she thought.

Ann was desperate. "Did the student who filed the informal complaint against Barnes actually withdraw it?" Ann asked.

The look on Ellen's face immediately told Ann that she had asked the wrong question. She should have coordinated with Ellen on this in advance.

Ellen explained how in fact the complainant had asked to withdraw her complaint, how this occurred frequently in sexual assault cases, and how this and other "progressive" universities ignored these requests and proceeded on the basis of the original complaint. She also expressed her private view that the complainant's near hysteria about Professor Barnes facing negative consequences after being told she could not withdraw her complaint "suggested" to Ellen that an "inappropriate" relationship had developed between them.

Maurice shook his head. "If the complainant has withdrawn her complaint, then I see no reason for us to press it. This is ridiculous!"

Ellen informed him that consensual sex between a professor and student was considered to be just as "offensive" as sexual assault given the favoritism that would naturally arise from such a "conflict of interests."

"I'm sorry," said Maurice, "but there's no case here."

Elita said nothing. "Would you be convinced of the seriousness of the charge against Barnes if further evidence were available?" asked Ellen.

"What evidence?" asked Maurice.

Ann had been dreading this. Ellen had been furious with Ann over showing Tiffany's paper identifying Cindy McMann as the complainant against Rob Barnes to that Post reporter, which led to the fiasco of Cindy denying to Kate that she had filed a complaint against him. Ellen had demanded that Ann present Tiffany's paper (which Ann had, characteristically, told Ellen about), but Ann did not want to do this for fear of it becoming known and finding its way to Barnes. Ellen had accused Ann of talking about the paper so much that Barnes was bound to hear about it, though he had not mentioned anything earlier today. As a peace offering, Ann suggested that the committee not be informed about the paper unless it looked like Barnes would get off, in which case Ann would produce it--which she now did.

After explaining what the document was and how she came by it, both Maurice and Elita read through it quickly (something professors are practiced at doing with student papers). Written by Tiffany when Cindy's complaints against Professor Barnes were quite fresh, the paper made dramatic reading. Maurice, though, was still not convinced that any action should be taken against Barnes. But that didn't matter since Elita was.

"He's obviously insensitive," she pronounced. "He clearly needs some sensitivity training." Ann, Elita, and Ellen all agreed that this was what the committee's memo to the provost should recommend. Although registering his dissent, Maurice did not do so strenuously: recommending sensitivity training did not seem like such a terrible thing anyway. He did not realize, Ann knew and congratulated herself heartily for not revealing, that Barnes was going up for tenure and that the provost would see the committee's memo on this sexual assault matter well before she made her decision on that.

Ann detected a feeling of relief pervade the room as everyone got ready to leave. In that Ann and Elita had ended up being on the same side in both cases after all, and that together they had prevailed, Ann thought that Elita might finally be receptive to a friendly overture from her.

As Maurice and Ellen talked together, Ann went over to Elita and asked, "So tell me: are you working on anything special this year?"

Without looking directly at her, Elita stated simply, "I'm going up for tenure." And then, without asking anything of Ann in return, she picked up her things and left the room.

Her friendly overture had failed. But Ann now had a clearer understanding of why Elita had voted the way she had on the Gibson case.

Chapter 11

2010-08-21T04:13:00.000-07:00

As Ellen Stenkovsky started to reread the article by Kate Morgan appearing in that morning's Washington Post, she remembered how Lenin had described some setback suffered by the Bolsheviks in the pre-revolutionary period in a book entitled, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. This article, she knew, would result in at least two steps back for the women's revolution here at NDU.

The article began on the very front page of the paper, though "below the fold." It certainly had a lurid headline: "Campus Furor over Anonymous Sex Charge against Renowned Black NDU Prof." As soon as she had seen this headline earlier that morning, she knew that this would spell the end of the `unwanted' posters in The New Dominion.

The article began: "NDU University Professor Charles Gibson, a leading authority on African-American literature, declared that racial prejudice was the motive for the NDU student newspaper reprinting an anonymous complaint against him allegedly written in the stall of a woman's lavatory on campus.

"The alleged graffiti reprinted by The New Dominion read, `Prof. Gibson told me: If I want a higher grade, I should wear a shorter skirt.'"

Ellen knew one thing: she herself hadn't written this. She was sure, though, that this was probably a real complaint. But she also knew that nobody had filed a charge against Professor Gibson here at SASO.

"`The African-American professors at NDU,' said Gibson, `have long been aware that certain parties within the university do not want us here. But since they can't move against us openly, they resort to this kind of dirty trick to discredit us.'"

The article then quoted Gibson saying that he was contemplating filing a lawsuit against the student newspaper for publishing this unsubstantiated allegation, and against the university for allowing it to do so.

The article continued: "When asked to comment, New Dominion editor and NDU student Tricia Raditz said, `We had no idea Professor Gibson was black. We would never have reprinted this if we had known he was.'"

The fact that Gibson was black shouldn't make a difference, Ellen knew. Sexual assault was an "equal opportunity" offense, committed by males from all races. Whenever they were charged with it, though, Ellen's experience was that men from minority groups always claimed that they were the victims of racism.

Actually, Ellen had doubts about some of these claims to minority status. What were Hispanics, after all? As far as she could see, most of them were white people who spoke Spanish. She could definitely see through their little game. This was not the time, however, for the battle against "Hispanic" males.

In any case, the white male was the ideal sexual assailant since he couldn't claim that he was the victim of racism. Proceeding against white males, then, was far easier than proceeding against non-white ones. But since white males were the main oppressors of women, it was necessary to proceed against them first anyway.

As Lenin had argued in another context, it was sometimes necessary to form a "united front" with less powerful adversaries against more powerful ones. In the context of the women's revolution of today, then, it was essential for the movement to maintain an alliance with black males against the white male patriarchy.

It was only after the more powerful adversaries were defeated that the revolutionaries could then turn their attention to the less powerful ones. Before then, it was imperative for the revolutionaries to avoid antagonizing their less powerful opponents to the point where they joined forces with their more powerful ones.

But thanks to Tricia Raditz, that is exactly what was happening. The Post article then went on to quote President Michaelson condemning The New Dominion for having printed this unsubstantiated charge against a prominent African-American scholar and announcing the dismissal of Tricia Raditz as editor-in-chief.

"`At first I thought these "unwanted" posters were useful since they did expose two real sexual assailants,' said Michaelson. `But reprinting unsubstantiated charges against faculty members obviously crosses the line into irresponsible journalism. The paper's editor has displayed gross racial insensitivity.'"

What was happening was clear: the white male patriarchs were allying with the black males against the women's revolution here at NDU. They were also seizing upon The New Dominion's effort to "out" Professor Gibson as an excuse to prevent the publication of future "unwanted" posters and purge the paper's feminist leadership. Thanks to Tricia Raditz, the opportunity provided by racial difference to prevent cross-racial male solidarity had been squandered, at least for now.

How could she have done this? Why hadn't Tricia checked with her first before publishing the graffiti about Gibson? The patriarchy would undoubtedly find a suitably reactionary male to replace her.

The article in the paper then went on to recount the history of the "unwanted" posters, pointing out that they had led to the arrest, and subsequently to the conviction of, two real sexual assailants. But, the article went on to point out, they had led to confusion in other cases.

Morgan then related how the poster reprinting the "Charles Truehart fondled me!" graffiti had been widely interpreted on campus as referring to a student of that name. In fact, though, it had been written about a food service manager who was abusing his female employees. He was later caught doing this on one of the campus police's security cameras. This had been news to Ellen. As usual, the campus police had not bothered to inform her about this but had operated on their own. Ellen wished that she could install security cameras herself in the offices of all male professors, but sufficient progress in the women's revolution had not yet been made to allow this.

It was the next section of the article, though, which had made Ellen angry. "Another `unwanted' poster," the article continued, "reprinted graffiti stating, `Prof. Barnes touched me inappropriately.' A student was identified by an NDU staff member (who insisted on anonymity) as having written the graffiti and filed a complaint against Professor Barnes. When questioned, however, the student told this reporter that she had neither authored the graffiti nor filed any complaint about Professor Barnes."

What the hell was going on here? It was true that Cindy McMann had not written the graffiti; Ellen was well aware of who had done that. But why had she denied filing a complaint against Barnes when she actually had? Ellen had tried to phone her immediately after reading the article the first time, but Cindy’s cell phone was turned off. Ellen had left a message on her voice mail asking her to call back as soon as possible.

It was not difficult for Ellen to figure out who Kate Morgan had learned about Cindy from: Ann Sweezy. Ann hadn't let Ellen or anyone else at NDU (Ann claimed) see it, but she had told her about the paper written by Tiffany Rodriguez. Ellen knew that Ann was capable of showing the paper to the Post reporter in the hopes that it would discredit Barnes. God, what a fool! Ann thought of herself as such a clever little Machiavellian who could manipulate things this way and that for her own advantage. Instead, she'd screwed everything up. Wasn't it obvious to Ann that Kate Morgan would contact Cindy McMann after reading Tiffany's paper? Of course, Ellen thought ruefully, Ann had no way of knowing that Cindy hadn't written that graffiti about Barnes. And neither she nor Ellen would have anticipated that Cindy McMann would deny having filed a complaint against him. Why had Cindy done that? Ellen wished she would hurry up and call.

The article ended with a smug little quote from a male journalism professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. about how reprinting anonymous charges without verifying their accuracy was not only unethical for a newspaper, but also extremely unwise for it if the charges turned out to be false. Ellen suspected that Kate Morgan must have gone to Georgetown and that this guy had been her professor. Didn't people from these elite private universities just love to look down on public schools like NDU? It was this sort of snobbishness, Ellen was sure, that had motivated Kate Morgan to write an article like this which would result in setting back the women's revolution. Ellen could think of no other explanation for Kate being such a traitor to her gender.

Ellen's phone rang and she picked it up immediately. Leticia Cummings, her assistant who worked in the outer office, informed her that Cindy McMann was on the line. Ellen said that she would take the call.

"Hello, Cindy," said Ellen. "Have you seen this morning's Washington Post?"

"I have," said Cindy. She and Tiffany had already had a furious argument about it. "I've actually been meaning to call you for some time now."

"This paragraph about Professor Barnes obviously refers to you," Ellen interrupted. What does this mean that you denied filing a complaint against him? We both know that you did!"

"Well," said Cindy hesitantly, "I've been thinking it over. I may have overreacted to what happened. Besides, it wasn't a formal complaint--just an informal one. And who the hell identified me to the reporter as having both written the graffiti--which I didn't do--and filing a complaint? I thought this kind of thing was supposed to be confidential."

"That I don't know," said Ellen. Technically, this was not a lie: she would not know it was true until Ann Sweezy actually confessed. But Ellen had every intention of pressing her to do so. "It certainly wasn't me. But as far as filing an informal complaint is concerned, remember this: we allow this procedure in cases where victims are too afraid to give their names for fear of retaliation. It is just as serious, if not more so, than the formal process. When you came in here toward the beginning of the semester, I recall you expressing the fear that his touching you with the door to his office closed was a signal that he would only raise your grade in return for sexual favors."

"Well actually," said Cindy a little more brightly, "that fear proved to be unfounded. Since then, I've been doing really well in his class. I'm sure I'll get at least an A- from him. And there's been no hint from him about wanting sex in exchange--even when I've gone back to talk to him in his office."

Ellen instantly recognized that Cindy had disobeyed her instructions about this. "Can't you see through his little game?" she asked. "He must have assumed that you were the one who wrote that graffiti reprinted in the `unwanted poster' about him. It's a quid pro quo situation again. But instead of an A for a lay, he's offering you one just for dropping your complaint against him."

"I resent that!" Cindy responded angrily. "I've earned my grade in that class! And why do you say that I wrote that graffiti? I had just assumed that another student had done that. Has nobody else filed a complaint against Barnes?"

Ellen knew she had to be cautious in how she replied to Cindy. "SASO's files are strictly confidential. So I can't even tell you whether or not anyone else has filed a complaint against Barnes. But if you didn't write that graffiti about Barnes, then it should be clear that he's a serial abuser." Ellen was proud of herself for thinking of this argument so quickly. Like all successful revolutionaries, she could improvise in a crisis. "Do you want him to get away with it?"

"If Barnes ever did touch anybody inappropriately before that `unwanted' poster appeared," said Cindy, "he certainly hasn't afterward. He appears to be scared to death of me and every other woman I know who's gone to see him in his office since then.

"Besides," Cindy continued, "that graffiti about Professor Barnes could have been false or mistaken somehow, just like it was against my boyfriend, Charles Truehart. The article in the paper talked about that. Or maybe someone wrote this graffiti on my behalf, thinking that they were somehow being helpful. It could have been Tiffany. It could have been that strange Professor Sweezy she wrote that paper for. It even could have been you."

This was too close for comfort. "That's libel!" said Ellen coldly. "If you ever repeat what you just said, you're going to face a lawsuit!"

"I'm not accusing anyone in particular," said Cindy. "All I'm saying is that I have no idea who wrote that graffiti or whether it was true or false. I just know that it wasn't me. And I also know that I am withdrawing whatever complaint I filed against Professor Barnes."

"You can't," said Ellen quietly.

"What?" asked Cindy.

"Just what I said: you can't."

"And why not?"

"It is very common both here and at other universities," she informed Cindy, "for victims of sexual assault first to file complaints against their assailants, but later try to withdraw them. Psychologists studying this phenomenon have not reached definitive conclusions about why it occurs. It may be that particularly sensitive individuals--such as women--feel guilty after they complain about their assailants if measures are then taken against them.

"But for whatever reason that victims of sexual assault file complaints and then attempt to withdraw them," continued Ellen, "it is standard procedure for SASO here at NDU and similar offices at other universities to ignore these withdrawal attempts and to act on the original complaints. And as you may know, universities have special status allowing them to establish their own norms as well as to both investigate and punish their violation outside the normal legal process. Although your continued cooperation in this matter is highly desirable, it is by no means essential after your complaint has been filed. The university can proceed against a sexual assailant on the basis of the complaint alone.

"I would have arranged for Barnes to be questioned by the Sexual Assault Complaint Review Committee before, but I was waiting to see whether he would launch any new assaults on you over the course of the semester. Now that I see he has gotten you to withdraw your complaint against him, we will--with or without your cooperation--initiate proceedings on the basis of your original complaint, which, you may recall was witnessed by Tiffany Rodriguez."

"You can't do this!" shouted Cindy. "I just overreacted earlier this semester. It wasn't my idea to file a complaint against him, it was Tiffany's! I won't let you hurt him!"

"Defending him now, are you?" mocked Ellen. "Let me warn you, Cindy: a professor can be disciplined for making unwanted sexual advances against a student, but a professor and a student who engage in a consensual sexual relationship can both be disciplined."

"How dare you accuse me of having sex with him!" yelled Cindy.

"I'm not accusing you at all," Ellen replied scornfully. "I'm just telling you what can happen if a professor and student engage in consensual sex. But something has just dawned on me: Professor Barnes has no idea that you filed a complaint against him, does he?"

"I...I don't think so," Cindy stammered.

Now I have her, Ellen gloated to herself. "I think I understand the situation, Cindy. You're looking forward to getting an A from him in this class, and maybe in other classes later. Perhaps you're even counting on him to write your letters of recommendation to graduate school, or whatever. Yes, I can see why you might not want to cooperate further in the investigation of the complaint you filed against him before you and he reached this...understanding.

Ellen paused, and then continued icily: "Let me just tell you this: if you do not choose to cooperate with our investigation, that is your privilege. We can proceed without you. But any effort on your part to impede or discredit our investigation may well have the unfortunate consequence of revealing to Professor Barnes that you filed a sexual assault complaint against him. He might not think quite as highly of you then."

"This is blackmail!" shouted Cindy. "I can't believe it! You'd stop at nothing to get your way, wouldn't you?"

"I'd stop at nothing to stamp out sexual assault," replied Ellen. "It's a pity that you seem willing to tolerate it for an A or two and some letters of recommendation.

"Have a nice holiday, Cindy. Don't forget what I told you," said Ellen as she hung up.

The phone on her desk immediately rang. It was Leticia saying that the provost, Jeannette Bobier, had tried to phone her, saying it was urgent that they talk as soon as possible.

Ellen dialed her number immediately and was quickly put through to the provost herself.

"Hello, Ellen. I'm sure you've seen the article about Charles Gibson on the front page of this morning's Post."

"Yes I have, Dr. Bobier." Ellen would never dream of calling the provost by her first name.

"As I'm sure you understand," the provost continued, "this is a public relations disaster. Tell me: has a complaint been filed against Gibson with your office?"

"No, one has not," Ellen admitted. SASO's records were confidential, but since SASO reported to the provost, Ellen had to tell her.

"Well, I'm glad to hear that!" said the provost. "The campus police haven't received a complaint either. Of course, there are so many damn offices where these can be filed; I can't check them all. I want you to let me know right away if you do receive a complaint."

"Of course," responded Ellen.

"Now, I would never presume to tell you how to do your job," said the provost. Ellen understood that this was, in fact, exactly what the provost was about to do. "But this is obviously a delicate case. If there is overwhelming evidence against Gibson, that's one thing. But if it's just an unsubstantiated charge, we can't afford to have this thing played out in the press.

"It's not just that Gibson is likely to sue," the provost continued, "though that by itself would be bad enough. But as you know, we face a difficult situation with our funding from the state legislature. As you know, the Republicans down there are always trying to cut our budget, especially with regard to non-academic services."

Ellen knew what that included: SASO.

"But if the black liberals in both houses turn against us too over this thing, we are sunk," the provost continued. "I don't have to remind you that the conservatives tried to cut out funding altogether for SASO last year. If the black liberals join them because of Gibson, SASO will be history." Along with, of course, Ellen's job.

"You need to handle this very sensitively, Ellen," Bobier continued. "A lot is at stake."

"I understand." Cindy McMann was wrong, thought Ellen. Jeannette Bobier was the real blackmailer here at NDU.

"Good girl, Ellen. And what was this bit about Robert Barnes? Was there, or was there not, a complaint filed against him?"

"There was," said Ellen emphatically.

"They tell me he's going up for tenure," said the provost. "If you have anything, I'm going to need it early next semester before his dossier gets to my desk--if he doesn't withdraw first."

"I'm going to try to arrange a meeting of the Sexual Assault Complaint Review Committee by the beginning of spring semester."

"All right, Ellen. I know how conscientious you are about these matters."

Almost as soon as this conversation ended, Ellen's phone rang yet again. "There's a student here who wants to file a sexual assault complaint," Leticia informed her.

"Do you think you could get her to come back later?" asked Ellen. "I'm frazzled right now."

"I think you need to see this one right away."

God, what a morning. "All right, send her in."

A few seconds later, a young black woman came into her office holding a copy of today's Washington Post. "My name is Genevieve Lacouture," she said forthrightly. "And I want to file a complaint about Professor Charles Gibson."

Ellen's heart sank. This is just what she and the provost didn't need.

Ellen wondered: did Lenin and the reds ever get the blues?

Chapter 10

2010-08-14T04:33:00.000-07:00

Although only a quarter past six, it was already dark outside on the relatively warm December evening of the last day of classes. Cindy McMann knew the feeling wouldn't last for more than a day or two, but it seemed like the beginning of a long holiday since the weekend and a two day reading period lay ahead before the start of final exams. Cindy knew she was fifteen minutes late as she entered the Turkish restaurant, but there was Charles Truehart sitting in the waiting area--wearing his black suit, just as she had asked him to.

He stood up when he saw her. "Hello, Cindy. It's been a long time. It was quite a surprise to get that call from you yesterday."

"Hi Charles! Let me just hang up my coat." Cindy quickly dashed into the self-serve cloak room (it was that kind of restaurant) and re-emerged revealing herself in a short, black cocktail dress and black stockings.

"Wow! You sure look nice!" exclaimed Charles. "What is going on? What's the mystery reason for calling me to meet here tonight all dressed up?"

"Let's sit down and I'll tell you," she responded. They were quickly ushered to a table and given menus. Charles had never been to a Turkish restaurant, so Cindy recommended that they start with dolma and then have doner kebabs. When the waitress came to their table, Cindy gave their order and also asked for a bottle of merlot.

"That's kind of expensive, isn't it?" asked Charles.

"Not really," said Cindy. "Besides, this is all my treat, so don't worry about it."

"Cindy, what is this all about?" Charles asked again.

Cindy looked downward as she said, "I found out it wasn't you. And I'm really sorry."

"You found out what wasn't me?"

"You weren't the Charles Truehart that the graffiti was written about."

"I could have told you that," said Charles. "In fact, I tried to but you wouldn't listen. But all that was a long time ago. Why is it being brought up again now? And who has convinced you that I am innocent?"

Cindy was glad that Charles did not appear to be angry. The fact that he had agreed to meet her at all had led her to expect that he wouldn't be.

"Something odd happened yesterday morning, before I called you," began Cindy. "I actually got a call from a Washington Post reporter--Kate Morgan. She was the one who told me that it wasn't you."

Charles looked at her incredulously. "A Washington Post reporter called you to say that some graffiti written about me in a woman's lavatory a couple of months ago was not true?"

Cindy laughed. "No, that's not the main reason why she called. I'm not quite sure why she wanted to talk to me in particular. She said she was talking to a number of people at NDU about the whole sexual harassment situation and those `unwanted' posters in The New Dominion."

"Oh, yeah," said Charles. "I remember seeing a new one this week--something about a professor telling someone that if she wanted a higher grade, she should wear a shorter skirt."

"It was about a Professor Gibson. I've never heard of him. Have you?"

"No," said Charles. Like most white students, they were only vaguely aware that African-American literature was even taught at NDU, and were not at all aware of who taught it. "I'm kind of surprised that a professor would say that."

"Well, yeah. Wasn't that outrageous?"

"No, what I mean," said Charles, "is that I wouldn't have thought it was necessary. Although not surprising at the end of spring semester, I'm always amazed at the number of girls who wear incredibly short skirts to final exams even at the end of the fall semester. Have you ever noticed that?"

"I have actually," Cindy said laughing. She usually did it herself, but didn't think Charles needed to know. "I remember during my first semester at NDU, one of my girlfriends who was a sophomore told me: `Wear a short skirt to all in-class exams. It might not help your grade, but it sure can't hurt it either!"

Both of them laughed, but Charles shook his head. "I feel sorry for these professors with girls teasing them like that. It's kind of sad that these older guys must think you're attracted to them, only to find out that you're just working on your grade."

Cindy snorted in contempt. "They know better than that! And any who don't should!"

The wine arrived. When the waitress began the ritual of pouring a small amount in the man's glass for him to taste it first, Cindy grabbed the glass, swallowed the wine, and pronounced it acceptable. The waitress looked scandalized but said nothing. She poured out their two glasses and left the bottle with them on the table.

"I don't think women in Turkey would do what you just did," commented Charles.

"Well, shit!" said Cindy. "I'm the one that's buying. It's a sexist ritual anyway. They should pour a little in both glasses."

"If there were a party of ten or more, the bottle would be practically empty by the time everyone was given a taste. It's more efficient if just one person tries it," said Charles.

"Yeah, but does it always have to be the man?" countered Cindy, her voice rising. Then, in a lower voice: "But this wasn't what I wanted to talk to you about. Let me tell you more about what that reporter said. One of the things she asked me was if I remembered what one of the `unwanted' posters said about a Charles Truehart. When I told her I remembered it, she asked if I knew a Charles Truehart. Without telling her about us, I said that I knew you and that you were a student. Then," Cindy said dramatically, "she asked me if I knew the other Charles Truehart at NDU--apparently someone in food service. I said that I didn't. Then she said that he was observed by a security camera repeatedly molesting several of his female assistants. He's been fired and is being sued both by the women and by the university."

"That's funny," observed Charles. "I don't remember reading anything about this in The New Dominion."

"I don't think it was in The New Dominion," said Cindy. The reporter, Kate, said she learned about it from the university administration."

The dolma arrived. Charles started to pick one up with his fingers, but Cindy indicated that he should eat it with a fork. Cindy refilled their wine glasses.

Charles shook his head. "I still don't see why anyone from the Post would be interested in something as unimportant as this--even if it does vindicate me."

"Sexual assault is not unimportant, Charles," Cindy informed him primly. "Besides, it wasn't just you--I mean, the other Charles Truehart--which she was mainly asking me about. She was more interested in talking to me about Professor Barnes."

"Professor Barnes?"

"Yeah, you remember that `unwanted' poster: `Prof. Barnes touched me inappropriately.' She wanted to know if I was the one who wrote that."

Charles sat upright. "Were you?" he asked. "More importantly, did he?"

"No and no," Cindy replied. She was touched that he seemed both jealous and protective. "Well, the answer to your second question is a little more complicated." She then told him the whole story of what happened when she went to Prof. Barnes's office after the first midterm in his IR Theory class, though in considerably less emotional tones than she had originally related it to her roommate, Tiffany.

"He touched you on the shoulder because you were crying? I don't think that constitutes sexual assault, or harassment, or whatever," commented Charles.

"Well, I guess not," Cindy admitted. "At the time, though, I was really indignant. In fact, I went and complained about him to the Sexual Assault Services Office."

"Cindy, you didn't!" exclaimed Charles.

"It wasn't a formal complaint," she explained. "Just an informal one. It's not really serious. It was Tiffany who talked me into going there."

Cindy giggled. "Actually, the main reason I went was to try and find out if anyone had filed a complaint against you."

The doner kebab arrived. They were both quiet for a few minutes as they ate the tender meat and the pomegranates in the yogurt sauce it was smothered in.

"I wonder if Professor Barnes thinks you're the one who wrote, `Prof. Barnes touched me in `intimately' or whatever it was," mused Charles.

"`Inappropriately,'" Cindy corrected. "I don't think so. Why would he think that?"

"If I were him and I knew you filed some sort of complaint against him, I would just assume that you were the one who wrote that graffiti. I presume he knows that you filed a complaint against him?" asked Charles.

"No," said Cindy. "Like I said, it was an informal complaint. I didn't sign anything or officially give my name."

They ate in silence for awhile longer.

"Well, if it wasn't you, I wonder who wrote, `Prof. Barnes touched me inappropriately,' then," said Charles.

"I don't know," responded Cindy. "When that `unwanted' poster was first published, I just assumed that it was another female student describing a separate incident with him."

"But as my own case shows," Charles remarked, "this sort of graffiti is not always accurate."

"It was accurate about Charles Truehart the food service manager," Cindy corrected, "but not about Charles Truehart the student."

They ate a little more. This time, Charles refilled their wine glasses.

"I wonder if that Washington Post reporter somehow knew that you had filed a complaint against Barnes," suggested Charles. "Maybe that's why she called to see if you wrote that graffiti about him."

Cindy considered this over a sip of merlot. "I'm trying to think of the exact words she used. She asked if I knew who might have written the graffiti about Professor Barnes, not whether I had actually done so. But she then asked if I or anybody I knew had filed a sexual assault complaint against him."

"What did you tell her?" asked Charles.

"I told her that I knew of no such complaint, and that I myself thought he was a terrific professor," Cindy answered. "Since I'm not going to follow through on that complaint, I didn't see any point in telling her about it."

"Why are you so positive about him now? I thought you didn't like him."

"I didn't at first, but I've warmed up to him since then," Cindy explained. I really studied hard after the first midterm and came to understand what he meant about the difference between description and analysis. I got an A on the second midterm, I feel very confident that I'm going to ace the final as well.

"Besides," she continued, "I found IR theory to be pretty interesting, especially as the class looked at the twentieth century. Barnes even gave a pretty good lecture about feminist IR theory. That was pretty cool!"

Someone took away their empty plates. When the waitress came to enquire whether they wanted dessert, Cindy ordered baklava and Turkish coffee for them both.

"I've already signed up for his International Political Economy class in the spring, and I plan on taking his Latin American politics seminar next fall," Cindy continued.

"Wow! You've really become a fan of his," commented Charles. "I think I'm jealous."

"Oh, Charles! It's not like that," she reassured him. "You know what I like about Barnes? He's one of the few professors I've had here who will go to the bother of telling you what you're doing wrong and how you need to improve. Most don't care enough to do that, you know? And when someone like Barnes does tell you that you're doing well--you know you've earned it! I have to admit, though, that being away from you for most of the semester gave me a lot more time to concentrate on my classes."

"Oh, so it's my fault you didn't do well on that first midterm, is it? By the way, what was it like in his class after that `unwanted' poster appeared about him?" asked Charles. "I certainly received some negative reaction for a week or so after the one my name was in appeared."

Cindy hung her head. "Yes, Charles, I know. I slapped you. I'm really sorry."

"I wasn't talking about that," said Charles. "I meant that for a week or so, the girls in my classes tried to sit as far away from me as possible. Some even put their arms across their breasts if I looked in their direction. But then it all died down. What was it like to be in Barnes's class when the `unwanted' poster came out about him?"

Cindy thought about this as the coffee and baklava were served. "Normally when he walks into the classroom, people just keep on talking with one another until he starts lecturing. But I remember when he came into class for the first time after the poster appeared, everyone stopped talking. He didn't say anything, and nobody said anything to him--at least, not in class. After that, it went back to normal. Still, he completely stopped making wisecracks the way he did beforehand."

They ate their dessert and were sipping their thick Turkish coffee. "This is really sweet!" remarked Charles. "So Barnes never indicated that he suspected you of writing that graffiti even after the scene you two had in his office?"

"It's funny," said Cindy, "but I don't think he even remembered that. The Sexual Assault Services Office told me not to go back to his office, but I did after the second midterm to ask him about his class next semester. He didn't even remember my name! I had to introduce myself to him all over again. I thought he would remember what happened before, but he sure didn't seem to."

"Most of the professors I've had wouldn't recognize me outside of class," said Charles. "I guess there's a lot more of us than there is of them. Still, I would think a pretty girl like you would be more memorable."

"That's a sexist thing to say, Charles," Cindy admonished, "but I do appreciate the compliment."

The bill came, and Cindy grabbed it. When Charles reached for his wallet, Cindy insisted that she was paying in order to atone for having slapped him and for doubting his loyalty to her. "You haven't been seeing anyone since then, have you?"

"I haven't, actually," he said. "I guess I've been concentrating on my studies too this semester. Well, thank you so very much for the dinner. By the way--why did you choose this place? We never came here before."

Cindy smiled mischievously. "I chose this restaurant because it is right next to the Holiday Inn where I booked a room for us. Actually, I've already checked in; that's why I was a little late. This way, we get to avoid having to deal either with your roommate or with mine."

Charles beamed with happy anticipation. "Cindy, what a great idea!"

"Shall we go?"

"All right!" As they stood up, Charles furled his brow. "So is there going to be a story in the Post about Professor Barnes and me?"

"I think it's going to have more do with Professor Gibson," she said. "He's some sort of big fish or other. Sorry, but I think you--or Charles Truehart--won't get much attention."

As they went inside the cloak room, Charles said, "You know, Cindy, if you're
not serious about pursuing a complaint against Professor Barnes, I hope you withdraw it. He might be in trouble because of it."

"Don't worry, I will. Barnes doesn't know it yet, but he's going to be writing law school recommendations for me next fall. I can't have him resigning in disgrace or anything before that!"

Alone in the cloak room, Cindy and Charles indulged themselves in a long kiss.

"In just a few minutes," she said afterward, "I too will truthfully be able to write that Charles Truehart fondled me." Taking his hand in hers, she added, "But it won't be a complaint."

Chapter 9

2010-08-07T06:18:00.000-07:00

Charles Gibson was the only African-American who was a university professor at NDU. A highly prominent scholar in the field of African-American literature, he had been lured to NDU from Duke University three years ago with a nine month salary of $125,000 plus guaranteed summer support money. Gibson loved being in the Washington, D.C. area where he received far more media coverage than he ever had before. He had rapidly discovered, though, that the quality of both the students and the faculty at NDU was not nearly as high as at Duke. Still, it was nice to be a big fish in a small pond.

Someone knocked on the door of his office. "Come on in," he called.

The door opened and in walked a very attractive African-American woman wearing what was obviously an expensive suit--something he would expect to see a young woman wear in an office but not on campus. He recognized that she was one of his students but did not know her name.

"Hello, Professor Gibson," she said. "I'm Genevieve Lacouture from your Introduction to African-American Literature class."

"Oh yes," said Gibson. "Please sit down. What can I do for you?"

"I know I shouldn't have waited until the last week of the semester to come talk to you," she said as she sat down. "I'm afraid I've been very busy with my part-time job this semester. In fact, I'm going there right after I talk to you. The point is this: I'm very worried about my grade in your class. You gave me a B+ on the midterm and an A- on the paper. There's only the final exam left, and I want to do as well as possible on it. So I thought I'd better come and talk to you about what I need to do to improve my grade.

"I'm a computer science major," she continued. "I'm taking this course to fulfill my humanities requirement. I'm not used to literature courses which contain a high degree of ambiguity."

Gibson was a little taken aback by this. "Computer science?" he asked incredulously. "Why are you majoring in that? Why aren't you majoring in African-American studies, or sociology, or something else that's relevant to black folks?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, I was just never very interested in all that. In fact," she confessed with some embarrassment, "I'm only in your course mainly because it's the one lit class that best fit into my schedule. I got into computer science when I was in high school. And, I'm proud to admit, I'm pretty good at it.

"Besides," she said with a knowing smile, "I think that a B.S. in computer science will get me a much higher paying job than a B.A. in African-American studies."

"So is money all that you're interested in?" asked Gibson, shaking his head. "I really just don't understand the black students here at NDU. All you're interested in is yourselves as individuals. You seem to have no concern for advancing civil rights or other black causes like my generation did. Why, when I was at Berkeley in the '60s..."

"Yes, yes," Genevieve interrupted, displaying some impatience. "We know you were at Berkeley in the '60s. You've mentioned it in class several times this semester."

Gibson wondered: Am I getting old? Am I repeating myself without knowing it? "The point I'm trying to make," he said, "is that my generation worked together for black rights. Yours isn't doing that."

Genevieve shrugged her shoulders. "Since your generation largely succeeded at this task, my generation can now move on to something else. Perhaps we could move on to discussing your expectations for the final."

Now Gibson was annoyed. "Your generation may think it can move on, but it is deluding itself. My generation worked hard for affirmative action. But affirmative action is now being destroyed bit by bit."

"I just see it differently," responded Genevieve. "Whatever benefits affirmative action may have provided decades ago, it's a program that has now outlived its usefulness. Educated African-Americans--especially ones with technical training--can get jobs as easily as anybody else. And isn't it better that corporations want to hire us because we have knowledge and skills they value instead of because they need to fill some federally mandated quota?"

"And look what's happening," Gibson continued, "to congressional redistricting to ensure black representation in the House. The courts are slowly but surely overturning it, resulting in the election of a less and less diverse House of Representatives with each passing election."

"My father says that the only thing redistricting to create congressional districts with black majorities ever accomplished," countered Genevieve, "was to ensure the election of white Republicans in all the surrounding districts."

"And it's the Republicans in Congress," thundered Gibson, "that have slashed social programs which help disadvantaged blacks."

"My father also says that it's these misguided social programs of the past that have provided skewed incentives to African-Americans, actually making it unprofitable for those on welfare to work their way out of it," said Genevieve. "We don't need welfare! We don't need special programs! We can succeed on our own!"

Gibson was disgusted. "Just what does this father of yours do for a living anyway?"

"He's a vice president at Dillo Petroleum Services in Fairfax," Genevieve replied proudly.

"Aha!" said Gibson. "He's one of those lucky blacks who succeeded thanks to affirmative action but who now want to end it for the rest of us."

"My father succeeded," Genevieve responded hotly, "through hard work and determination! His parents were poor immigrants from Haiti! They worked hard to send him to college to become a petroleum engineer! It wasn't easy--nobody handed him anything. He got where he is through his own hard work--and through his ability to work with others.

"I've traveled with my father to the Caribbean and to Africa," she continued. "Believe me: African-Americans are far better off and have far more opportunities than do blacks in those countries. And I wouldn't want to be a black person in Europe either. Whatever their situation here, nobody questions the fact that African-Americans are American. In Europe, though, blacks can never be anything besides West Indians, West Africans, East Africans, or even Americans--but never Europeans."

Gibson knew that immigrant blacks from the Caribbean and Africa as a group scored far higher than other African-Americans in indicators such as level of education and income. There was no consensus of opinion as to why this anomaly existed. Gibson couldn't explain it either. But at least now, he thought, he understood where this Genevieve was coming from.

"I don't deny," he said, "that blacks in the U.S. are far better off than blacks elsewhere. Nor do I deny that black progress received a lot of help from whites, especially during the 1960s and early 1970s. What I see now, though, is that a lot of that progress--affirmative action, congressional redistricting, and social programs--is being reversed, mainly by whites.

"It kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it?" he asked. "Why did whites go to the bother of furthering black progress back then only to reverse it now? Well, it just so happens that I have a theory about that. Would you like to hear it?"

Gibson didn't wait for her to answer. "In the past, whites were not an undifferentiated group in this country. You had the Irish, the Italians, the Scandinavians, the East Europeans, and others. Up through the 1950s, though, the whites that controlled America were the WASPs--the white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. But thanks to all the changes resulting from the New Deal in the 1930s and World War II, these other whites became increasingly powerful and threatened to displace the WASPs.

"It was no accident," he continued, "that most of the white liberals in the 1960s were WASPs. They decided to support the cause of black progress not out of any love for us blacks, but as a way of controlling these other, rising white groups.

"Now since then, ironically enough, distinctions among whites have virtually disappeared. Whereas before whites tended to marry strictly within their narrower ethnic groups (WASPs with WASPs, Italians with Italians, etc.), these barriers have now completely broken down. WASPs can hardly be said to form a distinct group any more. I guess they all got bored with each other and married someone else--just as long as they were white.

"But also since then, something happened that the white liberals who supported black progress in the 1960s never seem to have actually expected: the creation of a strong, vibrant black middle class. Just like the WASPs felt threatened by the rise of other white groups in the past, whites as a whole feel threatened by the rise of blacks now. And just as in the past the WASPs sought to keep down those other white groups through supporting blacks, whites now seek to keep down blacks through supporting other groups. And do you know who those other groups are?"

Again, Gibson did not wait for Genevieve to answer. "Hispanics and Asians to some extent. But an even more insidious way of keeping down blacks is the white enthusiasm for the women's movement. And here their intentions are blatant: the women they mainly have in mind to support are white women. So right at the point where more and more talented black men are poised to move into the top ranks of society, they are being pushed aside by white women in the name of gender equality."

"If all that is true," responded Genevieve, "I wonder where that leaves me. It seems to me that as an African-American I would lose, but as a woman I would win."

Gibson shook his head. "This is the problem with today's young blacks--especially young black women. You don't seem to realize that what little you gain as a woman from the white-inspired women's movement would be greatly outweighed by what you would lose as a black."

"I'm not sure about that argument," said Genevieve. "It seems to me that progress for African-American women is hindered far more by African-American men than it is by white women. It's not white women who are getting black teenage girls pregnant and then abandoning them."

"I can see," said Gibson, "that their strategy of divide and conquer has certainly worked with you!"

"Maybe women of all races really have more in common with one another than with the men from their own. Maybe it's the false barrier of race that has kept women divided up to now," she countered.

Gibson shook his head again. "You know, I really don't understand today's young women--black, white, or whatever. You say you're for women's rights. But you've accepted restrictions on yourselves that the women of my generation never would have accepted." At least, not back in the 1960s and 1970s when they were young, he thought.

"What do you mean?" asked Genevieve.

"I mean all these new rules preventing relationships between men and women who work together. But when they do get together--as they inevitably do--and it's somehow discovered, it's always considered to be the man's `fault' that it happened."

"It is clearly inappropriate," Genevieve informed him, "for male supervisors to be pressuring their female subordinates for sex."

"Oh, Lord! Listen to you!" said Gibson. "Not every male is a supervisor to every female in an organization. And sex doesn't happen just because men `pressure' women for it."

"Are you sure about that?" asked Genevieve sarcastically.

"It seems to me," continued Gibson, "that if a man and woman who work in the same organization want to get together, it's nobody's business but their own."

"Can we please talk about the final exam," implored Genevieve.

"And what does it matter if they are supervisor and subordinate anyway? If they're both consenting adults, what does it matter? Who else's business is it?

"What if the shoe were on the other foot?" he continued. "With all these women getting ahead, they have subordinates now. What if a female supervisor wanted to get together with one of her male subordinates? Would you modern women oppose that?"

Genevieve did not respond.

"I can just tell what you're thinking," said Gibson. "You're thinking no female supervisor would want to get together with a male subordinate, aren't you? That wouldn't benefit her nearly as much as having an affair with a male supervisor, and then reporting him for taking advantage of her after she's gotten everything she can possibly get from him."

Genevieve did not look happy. "You know, I really don't think..." she began.

"Whenever I read these stories," Gibson plowed on, "about women charging male supervisors with pressuring them for sex after being in a relationship with them for a considerable period of time, I really wonder what the truth actually is. Women aren't all innocent little angels. Look at the way they dress! They're sure not trying to hide the fact that they're women!

"Let me tell you, things were a lot different when I was at Berkeley in the '60s. Back then, young women were trying to break away from sexual restrictions, not wrap themselves up in them. There was none of this nonsense about `inappropriate relationships' either. I remember that it was quite common for female students to have affairs with their professors. And nobody objected either--except the professors' wives, if they found out," he laughed.

"Professor Gibson!" exclaimed Genevieve.

"And the women were open and honest about it, too. I well remember how female students would boast about their conquests among the professors and the graduate teaching assistants."

Gibson had been a T.A. back then. There must have been half a dozen girls he ended up in bed with whom he met through their being students in his discussion sections. They had all been white girls too. Each had told him that she had never had sex with a black man before. He was `exotic' for them--just as they were for him. But so what? That was cool!

"With the new Victorianism that reigns at universities now, though," he continued, "male professors are scared that if they even glance at their female students, they'll be charged with `sexual assault' or some such nonsense!"

There had been three other student girlfriends later when he was a young professor at Duke. These relationships had lasted longer. Unlike his girlfriends at Berkeley, these three had all been graduate students. Like the others, they had also been white. Now that he was thinking about it, he realized that none of his student girlfriends had ever been black. More to the point, he hadn't had any student girlfriend--whether black, white, or whatever--in many years. This was a result, Gibson thought, of the new Victorianism on college campuses. At least, that's what he hoped it was. He certainly hoped it wasn't because of the age difference between him and the students. It was funny how, with their coming and going, the students he taught remained in a constant age range while he got older. Not that being in his late fifties was really all that old, of course.

"Look what's happened right here at NDU," he went on. "The `unwanted' poster in this worthless student newspaper--nothing like what we had at Berkeley--claimed to reprint graffiti written in one of the women's bathrooms about a professor here. I think his name was Barnes. What did it say about him?"

"`Prof. Barnes touched me inappropriately,'" said Genevieve

He certainly wouldn't mind touching this Genevieve, he thought. It would probably do this over serious girl a world of good. "Oh, so you saw that?" he asked. "I guess everyone did. Well, I bet the whole thing is a fraud. I'll bet he never touched anyone. Some girl tried to get him to raise her grade, and when he wouldn't, she wrote this thing about him just to cause trouble for him."

Gibson had heard that Barnes was going up for tenure this year. If that was true, he knew that this statement published in the paper--no matter how false--would cause him quite a lot of trouble. The bitch who wrote it probably knew Barnes was going up and was deliberately trying to sabotage him. Well, she wouldn't succeed if Charles Gibson had anything to say about the matter. And he did: he was on the promotion and tenure committee for the College of Arts and Sciences this year. If Barnes really was going up, Gibson decided that he would get himself appointed as the guy's liaison to the committee. And that reminded him...

Gibson looked at his watch. "Oh, shit!" he exclaimed. I've got to get going. The organizing meeting for P&T committee is about to start."

Genevieve had no choice but to stand up just as he did. "But we didn't talk about the final!" she said with exasperation. "I really wanted your advice! I've got to do well on it if I'm going to keep up my GPA and have a shot at getting into a really good graduate school!"

This girl really had to lighten up, thought Gibson. "I tell you what," he said teasingly. "If you want an A in my class, just wear a shorter skirt than you've got on now to the final--and sit in the front row. You'll feel so good about yourself that I'm sure you'll do fine."

"Professor Gibson!" exclaimed Genevieve. "I can't believe you said that to me! Would you talk to a white girl that way?"

"Only if she looked as good as you do," he said laughing as he ushered her out of his office and closed his door behind him.

As she watched Professor Gibson stride down the hall on his way to his meeting, Genevieve made three decisions. First, she would wear pants to the final. Second, she would sit in the back row during it. And third, since she was carrying a felt tip marker in her purse, she would pay a visit to the first women's lavatory she could find.

Chapter 8

2010-07-31T05:08:00.000-07:00

When several political science professors suddenly walked past her open door on the way either to class or a long-delayed lunch, Ruth Silverstein could tell that this year's departmental promotion and tenure meeting had finally ended. This meeting was always held in November during those years that the department had promotion and tenure cases to consider. The meeting was open only to departmental faculty who already had tenure--but not to the chair of the department.

After this meeting, a professor designated during it would draft a memo stating what the vote on the candidate had been and summarizing the discussion held. A second meeting would then be held a week later to review the draft and propose any modifications. This second meeting, though, was usually less well attended as the draft memo was available several days ahead of time for the faculty to review and informally suggest changes to its author--something most professors preferred to do privately rather than in front of others. After being revised by its author (without any further recourse to the rest of the department), this memo would be placed in the candidate's dossier, which already contained both the material he or she submitted as well as letters received from external reviewers. Unlike these outside letters which the candidate wasn't supposed to see, he or she would receive a copy of the memo written at this and all subsequent stages of the review process--the next step in which would be the memo from the department chair. The chair would also receive copies of the memos about the candidate generated at later stages.

As Ruth knew, the memo from the chair would have the greatest impact if the vote of the faculty was divided. In other words, if the faculty unanimously supported a candidate for promotion and tenure, a chair who recommended against this would be seen as out of touch with his or her department at later stages in the process. Similarly, if the faculty voted heavily against a candidate, a chair's positive recommendation would probably not do much good. It was when the tenured faculty was divided on a candidate that the chair's recommendation--whether positive or negative--was most likely to carry crucial weight later on.

As Ruth anticipated, it was Trond Knutsen who came into her office and closed the door behind him. He looked exhausted; it was clear that the meeting had been difficult.

"Our colleagues decided to punish me for my past sins as chair by appointing me to write memos for both Barnes and Sweezy," he said, trying to sound jovial.

"I'm not surprised," said Ruth. "After all, you had a lot of practice at this when you were chair. So what happened? What was the vote?"

"The vote was the same for both of them," Trond informed her. "Thirteen for, two against, and one abstention."

"That's not good," Ruth observed. As she well knew, one vote against a candidate for tenure was usually not harmful. Two votes against, though, was considered evidence of the faculty being divided. And since an abstaining vote (as opposed to an absence from the meeting) was given the same weight as a no vote, this meant that both actually had received three negative votes--evidence that the faculty was seriously divided. "So tell me what was said."

"These two dossiers brought out all the divisions within the department--young vs. old, male vs. female, research vs. service, and political science vs. public administration."

Ruth shuddered. It was this last division that concerned her the most.

Trond continued: "Let me start with Ann. Those for her pointed to her record of service to the department. They argued that she had put in her dues, and that she was owed tenure. And while it wasn't said explicitly, it was clear that those who favored her most strongly were the female members of the department."

This didn't surprise Ruth. She knew from her own experience that being female and carrying a heavy service load usually went together.

"But those against her argued quite strongly that her research record was woefully insufficient, and that awarding her tenure would be an embarrassment to the department. At a time when other units in the university are raising their standards, our voting to give her tenure would signal that this department is not doing so."

Before becoming acting chair, Ruth had--like most professors--focused on her own department and was barely cognizant of what went on in others. Since attending the monthly meeting of College of Arts and Sciences department chairs, she had begun to perceive that there was a hierarchy among departments in terms of how favorably they were regarded by the dean's office as well as the central administration. And the Political Science Department, Ruth had come to realize, was not at the top of that hierarchy here at NDU.

What all departments always wanted from the dean and the central administration was new faculty positions. What had been brought home to her through her interaction with other chairs and the college dean, Dominic DiSola, was that new faculty positions did not necessarily go to departments with the largest enrollments, like political science. They tended to go instead to the departments that brought in the most grant money, such as psychology, economics, and those in the natural sciences. Indeed, the fact that these departments were bringing in ever larger grants was a testament to President Michaelson's policy of seeding them with the bright young professors who were now bringing them in; the older faculty--teachers, not researchers--had not done much of this.

Ruth remembered how Trond had constantly exhorted the political science faculty to aggressively seek research grants. Doing this, it had appeared to Ruth before becoming acting chair, was extremely difficult for a professor with a heavy teaching and service load who barely had time to work on her own individual, unsupported research. It was, she realized now, a vicious circle: the department would not be able to raise its status at the university without establishing a record of regularly winning major research grants, but it was unlikely to win such grants unless it could somehow raise its status and acquire the necessary resources from the dean and central administration that would allow it to acquire the additional bright young professors who were most likely to win these grants.

This, Ruth thought, was yet another reason why she was annoyed with Rob Barnes. Winning himself an individual fellowship to go up to Harvard last year had allowed the department to redeploy most of his salary (Trond and Dean DiSola, she had learned to her amazement, had allowed him to keep part of it), but did not bring in any funds, including the all important overhead which major research grants came with, to the department or the university. Rob was someone who could--was in fact, she remembered, hired with the expectation that he would--bring in research grants. His winning an individual fellowship which benefited him personally but not the department or university was just one more sign of his unwillingness to be a team player.

"The fear was expressed," Trond continued, "that a strong vote from our department for a marginal candidate would be reversed by the college P&T committee. Instead of helping Ann, we would only be worsening our own reputation.

This was a consideration. Since becoming acting chair, Ruth had learned that while political science was not considered to be one of the best departments in the college, it was not considered to be one of the worst either. The departments which tended to get little or no additional resources were low enrollment ones like philosophy, religion, sociology, and geography, or worse still, high enrollment but low research productivity ones like foreign languages and communications. These last two departments in particular had a reputation for awarding tenure to time servers--and for having their decisions reversed at the college level. Ruth realized that it was crucial that the Political Science Department not let itself fall into this category.

"I think Ann would have gotten fewer votes than she did," said Trond, "except that the public administrators in the department were afraid that if she didn't get tenure, the department would eventually lose her position to the new Public Policy Institute."

This, Ruth knew, was a possibility to be taken seriously. No department had a rock solid claim to a faculty position once it was vacated. The dean could reallocate it to another department. Far more likely in this case, though, was the prospect that the provost could take the position away from the College of Arts and Sciences altogether and give it to the new Public Policy Institute that was being formed.

"By the way," asked Trond, "have you been able to learn anything more about how the search for the institute directorship is going?"

Ruth shook her head. "Ever since the provost decided that the initial screening should be done by an outside headhunting firm instead of the search committee, there's been no news. I heard that even the members of the search committee are not being shown the list of applicants until the headhunters present them with a short list of ten."

This had never been done before at NDU. Up to now, search committees for high academic administrative positions (deans, their equivalent, and above) had been carried out solely by search committees. Although supposed to conduct their business in private, information about who all had applied for whatever position was being filled had always leaked out. Individual professors would then lobby committee members they knew either for or against particular candidates. News of what was happening would sometimes reach some of the candidates themselves, who would then actively--and usually unsuccessfully--lobby the committee too. Creating a short list of ten from a hundred or more candidates was difficult enough by itself, but doing so in such a public manner made it more so. By entrusting this task to an outside search firm, the provost ensured that the short list of candidates for the institute directorship would definitely be conducted in secret.

"I also heard," she continued, "that after the search committee narrows the short list down to the four or five who will be interviewed, the names of those coming to campus won't be released until the day before each one actually arrives." What this meant was not only would there be no opportunity for any of the faculty to lobby to include someone on the short list, but there would be no time for anyone not on the committee to bump a candidate off the short list before being interviewed either. Since this new institute was likely to impinge more on her department's turf than any other, Ruth regretted more than ever that the Political Science Department had not managed to get one of its faculty members onto the search committee for this position.

"Rob's strengths and weaknesses were assessed rather differently," said Trond. "Those for him emphasized his stellar research record. His teaching evaluations also show that he is popular with the students--as do Ann's, I should note. On the negative side, there was some complaint about his going up early and not having all that strong a service record, but these weren't considered serious problems by the majority."

Ruth understood that Trond was one of Rob's supporters, as were virtually all the men in the department. Many of them, of course, had published little but served the department and the university much before getting tenure in their sixth year. Ruth thought it strange that they--unlike the women in the department with similar records--did not seem to resent Rob for going up early without having performed much service. But since there were only three women in the department besides herself who had tenure (undoubtedly the source of the two no votes and the abstention that he received), Ruth knew that what the department's tenured females as a group thought about Rob mattered little in this process. But what she as chair thought about him, she knew, would matter much in it.

"As you might imagine," Trond continued, "those most opposed to Rob focused on this statement about him that was printed in the student newspaper--`Prof. Barnes touched me inappropriately.' And on this, Ruth, the faculty divided strictly on male-female lines. The men argued--quite heatedly--that such a statement written in a lavatory stall was meaningless. Just because such a statement was written there doesn't make it true. Indeed, statements written in lavatory stalls, by their very nature, must be considered suspect. The three women in the meeting, by contrast, argued just as heatedly that no woman would write such a thing if it was not true--or, at least, if she did not believe it was true. They thought that since Rob was going up early anyway, he should withdraw his application for promotion and tenure until this matter could be investigated and cleared up. That, of course, was a ridiculous suggestion."

"Was it?" asked Ruth.

"Of course it was," said Trond, obviously irritated. "Look, I've spoken to Rob at length about this matter. He told me that nobody has notified him about any sort of complaint being filed against him. He said he's had absolutely no problem with any of his students and that he has no idea who would have written anything like this about him in a lavatory stall or anywhere else."

"But wouldn't he say that even if--especially if--he did touch some girl `inappropriately?'" Ruth inquired.

"Rob says he cannot think of any incident that could have remotely inspired any student to write such a statement about him. He thinks the whole think is some sort of malicious prank perpetrated by someone who wants to derail his tenure application."

"That seems a little farfetched," commented Ruth. "I doubt if any of the students even know he's going up for tenure." She realized that just as Trond had revealed his support for Rob, Ruth was revealing her lack of it for him. "I suppose I could try to find out whether a complaint has been filed against him. The trouble, though, is that it could have been done at any of a dozen different offices--the NDU police, the dean's office, the Sexual Assault Services Office, the Minority Student Affairs Office, or several other places."

Trond looked increasingly annoyed. "Even if a complaint has been filed," he said, "that information is confidential. If a negative finding is made in the case of a faculty member, it is referred to the provost who is responsible for deciding upon any disciplinary action."

"Oh, so the chair is not automatically notified if a complaint against someone in her department has been filed?" she asked.

"No," said Trond. "The only way you would know is if the faculty member informed you--or if the complaint was made to you in the first place."

Ruth was relieved that nobody had filed a complaint about anyone in the department with her--yet. It would obviously be a nuisance to have to deal with.

"Some of these offices are so byzantine," Trond continued, "that they might not even inform the person accused that a complaint about him or her has been filed for months--if at all."

"So a complaint could have been filed against Rob without my knowing it," observed Ruth. "You know what bothers me most about Rob's case? It would be one thing if a sexual assault charge had been filed against him and I didn't know about it--or even if I did but it was kept confidential. Because of this damned `unwanted' poster, though, the whole thing is so public. If we recommend him for tenure, we'll be sending a message that we're not concerned about whether he gropes the girls here. It really would be better if he withdrew his application and submitted it again next year after everything has either been cleared up or forgotten."

"He's not going to do that, Ruth."

"Well, then, it will be his own fault if he's turned down as a result."

Trond sat back in his chair. "I can tell you this," he said. "The memo from the tenured faculty in the department that I am writing will make no reference to any anonymous, unsubstantiated charge made against Rob either in a woman's lavatory or the student newspaper. The memo from the faculty will be based on the material in his dossier alone. If you, in your memo, should choose to cite such a charge as a reason to turn Rob down for tenure, you will be leaving yourself open to a lawsuit from Rob later if he is denied tenure."

Ruth wondered: Was this a threat?

"And if and when the time comes at the end of the academic year for the dean to decide whether or not an acting chair should be confirmed for a full four year term," he continued, "I sincerely doubt that he would look favorably on her if she were facing a lawsuit filed against her by someone with an absolutely stellar dossier but whom she recommended not receive tenure on the basis of an anonymous, unsubstantiated complaint."

Yes, Ruth realized, this was definitely a threat. "Thank you for your report about the meeting, Trond," she said in an icy voice. "I will expect to receive your two memos after the meeting next week. That will be all for now." Looking surprised, he immediately got up and left.

The problem with Trond, Ruth decided, was that he didn't seem to understand that he was no longer chair of this department.

Chapter 7

2010-07-24T05:57:00.000-07:00

Ann Sweezy knew she had to contain her enthusiasm somewhat, to try to appear objective, detached. She didn't want, Kate Morgan, the Washington Post reporter who had come to interview her, to see just how much she was loving this situation. And, Ann knew, she had to be a little bit careful about what she said. She was, after all, going up for tenure this year. But now that Robert Barnes had been "outed" in the second "unwanted" poster, she felt much more confident about her own prospects for success. For surely now Barnes would be forced to postpone going up for tenure--perhaps even resign from the university altogether.

Ann, for one, would not be sorry to see him go. He was an arrogant bastard. His disgustingly prodigious output of research publications made others in the department, including Ann, look bad in comparison. He was only able to accomplish this, Ann was convinced, through not doing his share of service work for the department like Ann did. A female professor like Ann would never have been allowed to get away with something like this. He had never even thanked her for taking on his advisees last year when he was at Harvard. Ann doubted that he was even aware that the previous chair, Trond Knutsen, had asked her to do this. Thank God he wasn't chair anymore! Being a woman too, Ruth was far more sympathetic to Ann's plight.

But ever since the appearance of the second "unwanted" poster, Ann gloated to herself, Robert Barnes had lost a little of his overweening self-confidence. It was Ann who had made sure that he saw it first. Having learned of its forthcoming appearance a day in advance from Tricia Raditz, Ann had come to campus early the next day and scooped up half a dozen copies of The New Dominion. She then went to her office and carefully clipped the back page off of each issue. Making sure nobody else was in the hallway, she quickly taped one of the "unwanted" posters right on Barnes's door. An hour later, she saw him walk past her open door (without, of course, saying so much as "hello" to her). She had gotten up and pretended to be working at her filing cabinet in order to watch what happened next.

When he reached his door, she saw him pause and then heard him say, "Good Lord! I can't believe this!" This second "unwanted" poster looked basically the same as the first one had, but there was only one item on it: "Prof. Barnes touched me inappropriately." Barnes had quickly ripped down the "unwanted" poster and brought it into his office. Ann had hardly been able to contain her elation! Each time she went out of her office that day, she made sure she picked up one or two more copies of The New Dominion. Since then, Ann had come in early every morning--even on days she didn't teach--and taped up a fresh copy of the "unwanted" poster on Barnes's door if one was not there. Barnes, of course, ripped them down on the days he came in to teach. But what Ann thought was particularly revealing about departmental sentiment was that nobody--not even the male professors--tore down the "unwanted" poster from his door on the days that Barnes didn't come in. Clearly, Ann deduced, support for Barnes within the department was weak!

"As I said on the phone," Kate Morgan began as she settled into the one guest chair (orange plastic) in Ann's office, "I wanted to talk to someone who taught women's studies here about this whole sexual assault graffiti business. Why do you suppose it's coming to light now? I mean, I know this `unwanted' poster phenomenon has publicized the graffiti. But the posters could only do so if the graffiti was there first to be publicized--unless, of course, the kids running the campus paper have just made the whole thing up."

"Oh, they couldn't have done that!" Ann quickly interjected. "As your own article in the Post reported, two very real sexual assailants who were tormenting two very real victims came to light as a result of the first `unwanted' poster. The New Dominion staff certainly didn't make that up!"

"No, what I meant to ask," Kate continued, "is whether this sort of graffiti has appeared before and just not been publicized, or whether its appearance is something new altogether. You've been teaching here several years now. Have you ever seen this sort of graffiti in the women's bathrooms before?"

Ann had not--aside, of course, from the typically non-specific graffiti identifying this or that particular male as a dickhead, shit-for-brains, motherfucker, or--most frequently--asshole. These complaints, however, did not detail specific charges of sexual assault. Nor, in fact, had Ann seen any of this more serious type of graffiti recently either. Maybe she was going to the wrong bathrooms.

"I would say that this sort of sexual assault graffiti has existed all along," Ann pronounced anyway. "This is the first year, though, that we've had a militant feminist as editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper. It's thanks to her that these cries of pain from assaulted women are finally being heard."

Kate nodded her head thoughtfully at this. "Yes, well--I suppose it's not the sort of thing that a male editor would have been in a position to notice, in that this graffiti only seems to appear in women's bathrooms."

Ann frowned somewhat. This comment seemed beside the point. "But it would have been visible to the paper's female reporters." Ann paused a moment to improvise. "Either they reported it to male editors in the past who refused to do anything about it, or they didn't bother to report it since they knew the males wouldn't care." That must have been what happened, Ann thought.

Kate nodded her head again. "Yes, it would have been visible to the paper's female reporters--and presumably to any other female, if she went to the right toilet. But I have yet to find anyone who remembers seeing graffiti like this in the past. And except for some of the women at The New Dominion I spoke to, I haven't found anyone else who has seen it this year either."

Ann was becoming a little annoyed. "So you really do seem to think that they made it up themselves?" she asked accusingly.

"Not at all," Kate assured her. "As you said, publicizing the graffiti uncovered a rapist and a stalker. And I'm positive that their victims--Irene and Victoria--had no connection with the student paper whatsoever. They knew nobody there even casually, much less somebody well enough to confide in who would have written the graffiti for them."

Ann was puzzled. "Why do you say that? Surely these two women wrote those messages themselves."

"I don't think so," said Kate. "They were identified in The New Dominion after Smith and Garcia were arrested, so I was able to interview them for my story in the Post. Both of them told me their sad histories with these two jerks, but both of them completely denied having written the graffiti which was published in the `unwanted' poster."

"So what are you saying?" asked Ann.

"I'm not saying anything," said Kate. "I'm trying to figure out what is happening here. That's why I came to talk to you."

"Well," said Ann, "I have never spoken to those two young women--Irene and Victoria. Since you have, you know more about them than I do. Maybe when you interviewed them they were too distraught to remember precisely what happened. Maybe they wrote out those messages unconsciously." Yes, that could be the explanation.

Now Kate looked puzzled. "Maybe," she said. After a moment she continued, "Why do you suppose The New Dominion published the graffiti in this `unwanted' poster format? Why not just publish them in the body of a news story, or just in a simple box by themselves with a brief explanation?"

Ann couldn't help but swell with pride. "Well actually," she admitted, "that was my idea."

"Oho!" said Kate conspiratorially, "I thought maybe you knew more about this than you let on!"

Ann smiled broadly. She knew she shouldn't be indiscreet, but this was just too delicious to let pass. Besides, she wanted Kate Morgan to regard her as a reliable source and come back to her in the future for information about what was really happening at NDU. "Is this off the record?" she asked coyly.

"If that's what you want, of course," Kate responded.

"Well, when Tricia Raditz first told me that she planned to publish a regular feature publicizing sexual assault graffiti, I was the one who suggested the `unwanted' poster format!"

"How creative!" observed Kate. "Have you ever thought of writing fiction?"

"As a matter of fact," Ann responded, "I do have this idea for a feminist novel. I can show you the outline if you like."

"Well, maybe we can talk about that some other time," said Kate. "Right now, I'm wondering if you can shed any light on this business with Robert Barnes--`Prof. Barnes touched me inappropriately,' I think the message said."

"That arrogant bastard!" Ann said emotionally. "You would not believe what a total, pompous jerk he is!"

"You don't seem to like him, Ann," Kate observed, concern in her voice.

"No I don't!" Ann replied. She then related the whole story about how she was forced to do so much service work in the department that she had little time for research while he had been allowed to do his research without doing any service, how this all came about under the previous sexist male chair of the department, and how unfair it all was. But this time, Ann was a little more discreet: she didn't mention how the two of them were going up for tenure this year.

"No, that doesn't sound fair," Kate commented. "But aside from that, do you really think he's the type who would touch his female students `inappropriately?'"

"Aren't all men that type?" Ann shot back. "I'm sure I don't have to tell you what male professors must be thinking when they see these young girls who wear next to nothing in their classrooms and in their offices."

"Yes, yes, no doubt you're right," said Kate. "But thinking about their female students is one thing. Actually touching them is quite another. Do you think Barnes is really the type who would touch any of them?"

"I certainly have no reason to think that he wouldn't touch them if he thought he had the opportunity," responded Ann.

"I'm not so sure," observed Kate.

Ann was beginning to wonder just whose side this woman was on. "Why on earth do you say that?" she asked.

"Well, as long as this conversation is off the record, I'll tell you," Kate said, sitting forward in her chair. "You know, I don't exactly wear a badge stating that I'm a reporter. And sometimes, if I happen to fall into conversation with someone, I don't even mention that I am.

"The other day, I was passing through this hall. I saw Robert Barnes was in his office, so I asked if I could speak to him. It just so happens that I was wearing something of a short skirt then," she said, indicating a point on her thigh significantly higher up than the hemline of the skirt she was now wearing. "The sweater I had on didn't exactly hide how I look either.

"When I went inside his office, I closed the door behind me. The poor man went into a panic! He immediately jumped up and opened it again, saying something about how he was looking out for someone who might pass by. We talked for about ten minutes. He never touched me once--inappropriately or otherwise. In fact, he sat as far away from me as he possibly could the entire time. He didn't even tell me if he thought I looked nice. He certainly didn't do anything for my ego that day! However true the graffiti items published in the first `unwanted' poster may have been, I think the one in the second poster about Robert Barnes was either a mistake or a lie."

Ann shook her head in disbelief. "The `unwanted' poster must have put him on his guard. Besides, it's my understanding that his door was closed when he inappropriately touched a female student."

Kate's eyes opened wide. "My, you do seem to know a lot about this, Ann," she said, sitting back in her chair.

Ann realized that she had been indiscreet, but she didn't want this reporter casting doubt on the veracity of the `unwanted' posters--this second one in particular. Letting Kate know what was really going on involved some risk, but it was also a golden opportunity to really discredit Barnes. In fact, if the story got into the Post, Barnes would probably have to resign at once, in total disgrace! Ann decided to show her the paper Tiffany Rodriguez had written for her Experiential Learning in Women's Studies practicum detailing what Cindy McMann had told her about Robert Barnes and their meeting with Ellen Stenkovsky of SASO. "I can't let you keep this," Ann said as she got the paper out from the top drawer of her desk, "but I can let you look at it here."

"Thanks," said Kate, taking the paper and reading through it quickly. There was one section in particular she turned back to. "It says here that he touched this girl's shoulder." Kate looked up at Ann. "Not a breast or even a thigh. This doesn't exactly sound like sexual assault to me."

"It was her bare shoulder that he touched," Ann pointed out. What was wrong with this woman? "All the elements of what we call a quid pro quo case were present: they were alone in his office with the door closed discussing her grade--which he exercises power over--when he first humiliated her and then touched her suggestively. As the paper says, he was clearly signaling her that he would raise her grade in exchange for sex."

"`Prof. Barnes touched me inappropriately,'" Kate repeated. "I suppose that refers to this incident with," she glanced at the paper, "Cindy McMann."

"I'm sure it does!" said Kate.

"But do you know for sure? Did Cindy tell you that she wrote that graffiti message in the woman’s bathroom?"

"No," responded Ann. "But I don't know what else that graffiti message could have been referring to--unless there's another female student Barnes assaulted!" If this was true, Ann hoped this second student would step forward and file a formal complaint. Then Barnes would really be history!

"Let's assume that the message in the bathroom does refer to Cindy McMann," said Kate. "Either Cindy wrote the graffiti herself--or someone wrote it for her."

"I don't think the latter happened," observed Ann.

"Why not? It appears that someone did this for Irene and Veronica. Why not for Cindy too?"

"Who would do such a thing?"

"How about you, Ann?" Kate asked, looking straight into her eyes. "You don't seem to like Robert Barnes much."

"I did no such thing!" Ann replied hotly. "You are going too far! What are you trying to prove?"

Kate raised her hands above her head, as if in surrender. "I'm sorry!" she said. "But a reporter has to think about all possible angles." She lowered her hands back down. "I doubt that it would be possible to prove that anyone in particular wrote that graffiti anyway.

"Another possibility, though," Kate continued, "is that this could be a case of mistaken identity. I understand there is another Professor Barnes here at NDU--in the biology department."

"That would be Jenny Barnes, the environmental policy specialist," said Ann, shaking her head. "I don't think so! Women just don't behave that way. Besides, we have Tiffany's paper indicating that it was Robert Barnes who touched someone inappropriately. I have no doubt that the graffiti refers to him."

"You're probably right," said Kate. "Still, the possibility of mistaken identity should not be discounted. Do you remember that one graffiti item that appeared in the first `unwanted' poster--`Charles Truehart fondled me?'"

"Yes?"

"The article appearing in The New Dominion about the reaction to that first poster interviewed a student named Charles Truehart who denied having done any such thing."

"That's what you would expect from someone like that, though, isn't it?" Ann asked smugly. She knew men.

"He might have been telling the truth," continued Kate. "I looked through the NDU phone directory afterward. It turns out that there's another Charles Truehart here--a food service manager, apparently. Maybe the graffiti was actually talking about him, not the student with the same name."

"I didn't know there was anyone on the staff by that name," said Ann. Like most members of the faculty, she did not know the names of more than a handful of the non-academic staff besides those in her department's main office. And except for Ellen Stenkovsky, she didn't consider any of them to be worth knowing. She made a mental note to say something to Tricia Raditz about there being another Charles Truehart on campus.

Kate looked at her watch. "I've really got to be going," she said. "This has been a most interesting conversation."

"Thanks for coming by. So tell me? Are you going to write a story about this Robert Barnes business?" asked Ann hopefully.

"I don't think I can," responded Ann. "What Brian and Oscar did to Irene and Victoria was news. They committed criminal acts, and they were arrested. The only thing I have on Robert Barnes is that he touched some girl--sorry, woman--on the shoulder. Neither Cindy nor the graffiti author said that he explicitly asked her for sex, or that he got any."

"But..." Ann began to protest.

"I'm sorry," Kate interrupted, handing Tiffany's paper back to her. "This might make exciting reading here at the university, but what actually happened--if anything--seems pretty obscure to me. Everything I write has to compete with dozens of hard stories--murders, rapes, robberies--for space in the paper. Not even all these make it in. What little I have here about Robert Barnes would never make it past my editor--who, by the way, is also a woman. I'm afraid that this story is going to have to `await further developments,' as we say, if it is ever going to make it into the paper.

"Can I call you if I hear of anything?" asked Ann.

"Of course," Kate replied. She reached inside her handbag and retrieved one of her business cards for Ann. "The number's on here, but since I'm often away from my office, just leave a message on my voice mail—-or send me an e-mail."

"Okay," said Ann. "And here's my card in return."

Both then stood up, shook hands, and said good-bye. “I should have told her that Barnes is going up for tenure this year,” Ann said to herself after Kate had left.

Chapter 6

2010-07-17T03:16:00.000-07:00

Ellen Stenkovsky, the director of the Sexual Assault Services Office (or SASO, as insiders called it), was sitting on a toilet, with her pants and panties down around her ankles, in the woman's lavatory on the third floor of the Student Union Building. This, however, was just for cover in case anyone came in while she was there. It was ironic, Ellen thought, that it was sometimes necessary for her to bare her ass in order to cover it. For Ellen had not come there to use the toilet. She had come there instead to further the revolution--the women's revolution. And the weapon she would use to do this, as she had before, was the black felt tipped marker she was holding in her right hand.

There were plenty of women here at NDU who were women's rights activists. But they were not revolutionaries. In comparing the women's movement at the dawn of the twenty-first century to the socialist movement at the beginning of the twentieth, as Ellen was fond of doing, she saw most of the women's rights activists of today as being the equivalent of yesterday's social democrats. These people believed what they were doing was revolutionary, but they were really only reformists who worked within the established system. Yet how much progress could women make if they played by the rules set by reactionary males to perpetuate their own patriarchy? Not much, Ellen knew, especially when so many women sold out to the patriarchy by accepting positions of authority within it.

Ellen, though, could see through this: most of these positions possessed very little real authority. But by gratifying the egos of those women chosen to fill them, the patriarchy usually succeeded in turning them into defenders of the status quo system which had promoted them. And those few women who filled positions that really were powerful were chosen primarily for their willingness to keep other women in subjugation.

Unlike these social democrats of the women's movement, Ellen was the equivalent of a Leninist--a true revolutionary who knew that no real progress for women could be made just playing by the rules of the patriarchal system. Whatever space allowed to women by the patriarchy, of course, had to be exploited to the maximum. But there was no reason for a true revolutionary to allow the patriarchy's rules--which were illegitimate anyway--to limit her activity. It was obvious to Ellen, if not to the mere social democrats of the women's movement, that if the patriarchy maintained its dominance over women by means of the rules it had established, then the revolution was going to have to smash those rules in order to end its dominance. And that is exactly what Ellen was doing there in that stall in the women's lavatory.

But like a good Leninist, Ellen was a realist. She knew that there were limits on what the women's revolutionary movement could accomplish at present. There was no question of actually seizing control of the state, as Lenin and the Bolsheviks had done. This, however, was where she parted company with Lenin--who, no matter what he accomplished as a revolutionary, had still been a male. It was not necessary for the women's revolution to succeed by seizing control of the state in the violent, messy sort of revolution that men typically perpetrated. For in addition to everything else, the women's revolution embodied a revolution in how to make revolution! It would occur through women seizing the initiative in gender discourse, through ignoring the rules the patriarchy had established to maintain its dominance, and by creating a new matriarchal order--situation by situation, institution by institution--until one day women would control everything in the world that was worth controlling.

Ellen's battlefield was NDU. Like everywhere else, the women's revolution at NDU faced three obstacles: 1) an entrenched patriarchy--headed here by President Michaelson; 2) co-opted women who helped prop it up--such as Ruth Silverman, the chair of the Political Science Department; and 3) ineffective, play-by-the-rules, "social democrat" type women's activists--such as Ann Sweezy. Then there were women, such as Provost Jeannette Bobier (who was in charge of, among many other things, the Sexual Assault Services Office which Ellen directed) who switched back and forth between being a women's rights activist (though only, of course, of the play-by-the-rules variety) challenging the patriarchy on the one hand and defending it on the other, as her own personal career interests dictated.

Ellen was not sure what to make of the provost. It had been Bobier, after all, who had chosen Ellen, out of many applicants, to become director of SASO. But the provost was, Ellen knew, extremely stingy when it came time each year for her to allocate SASO's budget for the following year. Nor was the provost predictable when she reviewed appeals of decisions made on cases decided upon by the Sexual Assault Complaint Review Committee, which Ellen served as an ex officio member of. Sometimes Bobier upheld the committee's decision, but sometimes she overruled it. Ellen prided herself on being able to see through other people's little games, but she found the provost's to be impenetrable.

Ann Sweezy, Ellen smiled to herself, was a different sort of woman altogether. Ann was a "play-by-the-rules" women's activist, and not even a particularly effective one. But Ann actually thought of herself as a revolutionary! When she and Ellen had had lunch a few weeks ago, Ann had told her with such pride how Tricia Raditz of The New Dominion had told her she was thinking about a feature in which graffiti from women's lavatories at NDU "outing" sexual assailants would be published regularly in the paper now that she had become editor-in-chief. Ellen applauded Ann for allowing Tricia, who was extraordinarily busy with the paper, to undertake this activity (plus write a paper about the results of doing so) for her Experiential Learning in Women's Studies practicum which Tricia needed to do for the women's studies minor. Ann had taken special delight in relating to Ellen how she told Tricia that this was to be a "clandestine practicum"--something which was so sensitive that Tricia was not to reveal that she was getting academic credit for it.

How stupid Ann was! With Tricia publishing the "unwanted" poster on the back page of her paper, this was hardly a clandestine activity! All Ann really wanted was to keep her own involvement in the affair a secret. Yes, Ellen could easily see through her little game. But if Ann was blabbing about it to Ellen, she was probably blabbing about it to others too. Tricia, Ellen suspected, would in fact not say anything about this project receiving academic credit from Ann, but Ann's own big mouth might lead to her role in the affair coming to light.

All Ellen had said to Ann at the time was that she thought this was an excellent idea--one that was long overdue. Ellen had not told her that Tricia had actually discussed this idea with Ellen first. Further, Ellen had not told Ann, Tricia, or anyone else (nor would she ever tell them) that it was she, Ellen Stenkovsky, who had written the first two graffiti items which appeared in the "unwanted" poster: "Brian Smith is a rapist!" and "Oscar Garcia is stalking me!" In fact, she had done this in the exact self-same women's lavatory she was sitting in now. It was the perfect place to do this since the offices of The New Dominion were located on the same floor as SASO, and so this was the bathroom used by Tricia Raditz and other female staff members on the paper, and hence the one where they were most likely to read (as well as to, Ellen noted, frequently write surprisingly literate) graffiti.

If it were ever discovered that Ellen had written these messages, she knew, it would, at minimum, cost her her job. But just because doing this was against the patriarchy's rules did not make it wrong; in fact, it was absolutely the right thing for her to do. Nor was it in any sense dishonest. For Ellen had not made these messages up out of the blue. She had distilled them from two sexual assault cases filed last year with SASO that had not been resolved satisfactorily due to one of two problems that routinely plagued such cases.

In the first case--"Brian Smith raped me!"--the victim, Irene Pappas, had come to SASO only several months after being raped, as was typical in these cases. Irene primarily wanted counseling for herself as well as assistance persuading her professors to allow her to complete last fall's course work late (she had stopped coming to school altogether after it happened). Ellen had arranged these things for her, but while Irene admitted that she knew who her attacker was and that he had been her boyfriend, she refused to identify him either to Ellen or the NDU police. Ellen tried to persuade her to identify him since if she did not, he was likely to rape again. But as in so many such cases, Irene refused to tell--fearful, Ellen suspected, that her assailant would definitely attack her again if she did.

It had not been hard, though, for Ellen to identify him. She simply called Irene's mother, who readily told her that her daughter's relationship with one Brian Smith had turned sour a few months ago, though her daughter had not given her any details as to why.

In the second case--"Oscar Garcia is stalking me!"--the other recurrent problem was present: the young woman being victimized--Victoria Torres--had filed a complaint with the NDU police, but they could not or would not do much of anything for her. Here again, a young woman wanted to break off her relationship with a young man with a violent temper who (why were they all the same?) refused to let her go. Convinced that she was seeing someone else (which, of course, would have been her business and not his), he often waited in his car near her apartment and followed her to wherever she drove to. She tried speeding through yellow lights to get away from him, but he would just follow on the red afterward. And when she was at her apartment, she would receive harassing phone calls--often late at night--in which he would either shout at her abusively or say nothing.

Ellen had helped Victoria contact the police in every jurisdiction where this Oscar Garcia had stalked her, but they all indicated that there was little they could do unless and until he either attacked or forcibly obstructed her. Victoria had gotten an unlisted phone number to stop the harassing phone calls, but he had managed to get hold of it within days. In the meantime, Victoria was not getting enough sleep and her grades were suffering--all because, as far as Ellen was concerned, the ruling patriarchy condoned all but the most egregious forms of sexual assault.

In both cases, the "unwanted" poster had brought about positive results very quickly. Some students had apparently cut the back page from the paper and taped the poster on Smith's dorm room door. He, of course, tore it down, but the poster kept reappearing. Young women residing in the same dorm as Smith and their parents bombarded the university administration with phone calls demanding his immediate expulsion.

More importantly, the "unwanted" poster pushed Irene--as Ellen hoped it would--into filing charges against him preemptively for fear that Smith would assume that she had written the "Brian Smith is a rapist!" message in a lavatory stall. According to the story in the following week's New Dominion, his fellow students cheered when the police came and arrested him in his dorm shortly afterward. It was this public humiliation of a sexual assailant which Ellen particularly relished.

Since Oscar Garcia lived off campus, his neighbors did not know about the "unwanted" poster. Garcia's friends (apparently he had a few), though, did see it and pointed it out to him. Assuming that it was Victoria who had written the "Oscar Garcia is stalking me!" message, he became enraged and attacked her as she approached her car in her apartment parking lot. Oscar, though, had been so busy stalking Victoria that he did not even notice that half a dozen New Dominion reporters were stalking him. As the student paper later reported, the three male reporters in the group (males were good for something some of the time) rushed Oscar and subdued him while one of the female reporters summoned the police on her cell phone. Victoria had suffered several cuts and bruises. This might not have happened, Ellen knew, if the "unwanted" poster had not been published, but nor would Oscar Garcia's stalking have been halted either. As she had been told that Lenin had once said: "If you want to make an omelet, you've got to crack a few eggs!"

Ellen had heard from Tricia that President Michaelson and the university's legal affairs office had been very unhappy about the "unwanted" poster. Michaelson had even had one of his minions call the paper's faculty adviser to "suggest" that no further "unwanted" posters be published until the legality of doing so could be "clarified." But because of the posters overwhelming popularity on campus--especially among the women--and because the first one had resulted in the arrests of Smith and Garcia, the "central administration" (as it styled itself) backed off. In fact, in his comments appearing in The Washington Post's Metro section article about the two arrests and the role played by the "unwanted" poster in bringing them about, Michaelson implied that he had known about and approved of it in advance! What a shithead! Michaelson would do or say anything if he thought it would bring him good publicity.

Tricia Raditz, of course, was absolutely elated. She was determined to do more "unwanted" posters even if--indeed, especially if--the administration objected. Ellen was quite proud of herself for not succumbing to what she considered to be the petit bourgeois temptation to brag about her role in the affair. Ellen had told no one--absolutely no one--about what she had done.

Ellen wondered, though, whether Tricia suspected something. She had commented recently how strange it was that two of these sexual assault messages should be found in the same bathroom on the third floor of the Student Union Building--not a place that received a lot of foot traffic. Ellen had responded that she was not surprised. Since this was the floor where SASO was located, this was where women would come to file sexual assault complaints. If they had it in their minds to file such a complaint, then this would be a logical lavatory to write such graffiti in if they were going to do so anywhere. Besides, Ellen had asked her, did the female staff of The New Dominion visit every other woman’s lavatory on campus as often as they did the one near their office on the third floor of the Student Union Building? Perhaps they would find as much--or more--such graffiti in them. And now that the first "unwanted" poster was out, Ellen had told her, she suspected that many more women would write their complaints about sexual assault in women's lavatories all over campus.

Ellen had not written the third graffiti item that was published in the "unwanted" poster: "Charles Truehart fondled me!" Tricia or her reporters had found this instead--which was good. Publishing this other complaint had also gotten some results. Rumor had it that Charles Truehart was being shunned by the women in his classes, who either made a point of sitting far away from him, or if they couldn't, exaggeratedly crossing their arms in front of their breasts for protection whenever he appeared to be looking their way. His former girlfriend, Cindy McMann, had slapped his face when she first saw him after seeing the "unwanted" poster, but he had not filed any sort of complaint--he didn't dare! Truehart, though, was quoted in the next issue of The New Dominion stoutly denying the charge that he had fondled anyone. Ellen was quite confident, though, that he was not telling the truth since women, she believed fiercely, never lied about these matters. Still, whoever it was who had "outed" him had not yet come forward with a complaint. She had better, Ellen thought, if she didn't want it to happen again.

In the larger scheme, though, Ellen knew that these three guys--Smith, Garcia, and Truehart--were relatively unimportant. Students all, they were just pawns whom the patriarchy could easily sacrifice while remaining firmly entrenched itself. In order to really damage the patriarchy, it was necessary to strike at its upper ranks. And thanks to Tiffany Rodriguez bringing Cindy McMann into SASO to complain about Professor Robert Barnes, Ellen exulted that she was now in a position to do just this.

In one sense, what Barnes had done to Cindy was not as serious as anything that the three males featured in the "unwanted" poster had done: he had not raped her, stalked her, or even attempted to fondle her. Cindy had been clear on this last point--Barnes had touched her on the shoulder and nowhere else. In touching her, though, Barnes had done something that none of these other males had done to their victims. For unlike any of them, Prof. Barnes was in a position of authority, and thus his behavior vis-a-vis a student had to be held to a much higher standard than was expected of a male student vis-a-vis a female student.

And from what Cindy had told her (with frequent prompts and reminders from Tiffany), it seemed clear to Ellen that Barnes had not met that higher standard. The incident Cindy related possessed all the elements of a quid pro quo sexual harassment case: 1) they were in his office discussing her grade--the very thing that he exercised control over; 2) the door to his office was closed (Cindy couldn't remember which of them had closed it); and 3) after ridiculing her so much that she started crying, he then touched her shoulder and suggested that she could improve her grade after all. The clear implication of this, of course, was that he would raise her grade if she provided him with sexual favors.

Victims of sexual assault were usually distraught when they came to SASO, but Cindy seemed more distracted than usual. Instead of answering Ellen's questions about the incident with Professor Barnes, Cindy seemed intent on grilling Ellen for information on whether the person who had written "Charles Truehart fondled me!" had filed a complaint against him with SASO and who she might be. Although not strictly ethical, Ellen had finally told Cindy that nobody had filed a complaint against Charles as of yet just so Cindy would concentrate on describing the incident with Barnes.

Despite Ellen's and Tiffany's urging, Cindy had not been prepared to file a formal, written complaint at that meeting. As was her privilege, she had just made an informal, oral statement. As in previous quid pro quo sexual harassment cases where the student had only filed an informal--and hence, anonymous--complaint against a professor, Ellen advised Cindy not to go back to Barnes's office without first notifying SASO, but to attend all remaining classes in her course with him religiously. She should even try to learn to write analytically, as Barnes had suggested (Cindy appeared crestfallen at this, but Tiffany offered to give her some tutoring). Ellen explained that it was essential for her to do everything possible to get an "A" in his class legitimately. By doing this, it would be more difficult for him to discredit her complaint about receiving a low grade due to her refusal to comply with demands for sex with a claim that the low grade was due instead to lack of attendance and poor performance on assignments. Cindy had agreed and the meeting ended with Ellen admonishing her to report any further untoward behavior on the part of Professor Barnes to SASO immediately.

All this had taken place last week. But while Cindy was willing to wait until the end of the semester before pursuing the matter any further, Ellen was not. She had, of course, received complaints from students about unwanted sexual advances from professors in previous years. Many of these cases had been far more serious than Cindy's charges against Professor Barnes. It had been highly gratifying to Ellen that she had been able to help get some--though by no means all--of these jerks fired. Doing this, however, took a long, long time due to the patriarchal insistence on "due process" which discouraged female victims from filing or pursuing complaints against male professors who assailed them sexually.

Now, however, there was the "unwanted" poster which could be used to expedite such cases. And just as Ellen's "outing" of Smith and Garcia had resulted in their quickly being arrested, she calculated that "outing" Professor Barnes would force the central administration at the university to deal with his case far more quickly than it would through the ordinary complaint channels which the patriarchy obstructed through shrouding them in "confidentiality." Ellen saw through that little game! The patriarchy, though, could not protect one of its own so easily if a case received negative publicity.

What, though, should she write on Cindy's behalf? Ellen had at first thought of "Prof. Barnes fondled me," but this was too similar to what had been written about Charles Truehart. Nor was it quite accurate. She also considered writing, "Prof. Barnes hit on me," but this overstated what Cindy had actually said--Ellen was far too scrupulous to do this. But then, sitting there on the toilet, Ellen was inspired to write, "Prof. Barnes touched me inappropriately." This was indefinite, yet suggestive. Yes, this was perfect. It would definitely shake up the patriarchy--provided, of course, that Tricia or someone else from the paper saw it before the Spanish-speaking janitorial staff--being unable to distinguish serious from frivolous graffiti (in English anyway)--scrubbed it away.

* * *

Three hours later, Ellen was back in her office, waiting for the call from Tricia that had not yet come. It was six o'clock in the evening. Regular university offices were closed, but The New Dominion staff was just settling down to work. And so, she anxiously noted, was the janitorial staff that, a quick trip into the corridors of the third floor revealed, had just arrived off the elevator. Luckily, they had started at the opposite end of the floor.

Ellen did not want to be the one who brought any of these sexual assault graffiti items to Tricia's attention for fear that this would eventually result in her being suspected of being their author. Nor did she want to have to write the message again after the janitors washed away the original. She had no way of knowing whether anyone had seen what she had written yet, and she didn't want to risk anyone growing suspicious after seeing the same message appear again after being erased. There would be no reason for anyone to suspect Ellen in particular, but she didn't want any doubt to arise over the integrity of the sexual assault graffiti.

It was getting late. Ellen decided that she had better call Tricia and tell her she had just seen a new message in the women's lavatory when the phone rang. It was Tricia!

"Ellen!" said Tricia breathlessly. "I've been meaning to call you all afternoon! Did you see it? There's been another message in the women's room right here."

"You're kidding!" replied Ellen, feigning surprise.

"I'm not kidding," said Tricia. "And it's not about just some small fry student either. This time, we've caught a big fish professor!"

Chapter 5

2010-07-10T06:18:00.000-07:00

Tiffany Rodriguez, dressed as usual in a long pair of jeans, t-shirt, and an unbuttoned long-sleeve flannel shirt, was sitting at her desk in her dorm looking through the latest issue of The New Dominion. She was, she knew, just postponing work on a problem that she hadn't yet figured out how to solve.

Tiffany was a senior majoring in Spanish and minoring in women's studies. She would have majored in women's studies, but there was no such major or department at NDU. The minor was known as an "interdisciplinary" one with courses and faculty drawn from several established departments. This was all the resources, Professor Ann Sweezy had told the students in the Introduction to Women's Studies class Tiffany had taken with her, which the patriarchy running the university would give to this emerging new field which it saw as a threat.

This semester, Tiffany was taking Professor Sweezy's upper division class on Current Issues in Women's Studies. This was going fine, which was not surprising: Tiffany was a serious--a very serious--student. The women's studies minor, though, also required students to enroll in an Experiential Learning in Women's Studies practicum. This was not a regular course per se, but was to be taken concurrently with a regular women's studies course. The student was required to become involved in a community- or campus-based service project which would enable the development of "competencies" in the women's studies field. A paper describing the project and what the student had learned from it was required for the practicum.

Tiffany had no problem writing papers. She was having trouble, though, identifying a project to work on related to the Current Issues in Women's Studies class. Tiffany had asked Professor Sweezy for ideas, but she refused to help, insisting that Tiffany come up with a project on her own. She had said that Tiffany was too academic and needed to become more practical. It was people with practical skills who would be the ones to advance women's causes.

Tiffany attributed Professor Sweezy's emphasis on practicality to her background in public administration. The problem for Tiffany, though, was time. She was already taking a full load of courses and working over twenty hours a week. She simply didn't have the time to serve as an unpaid volunteer for any university offices or community groups dealing with women's issues as several of the other students in the class were doing. Further, the Experiential Learning in Women's Studies practicum specifically excluded projects for which a student received payment. Being paid was allowed in the Internship in Women's Studies, but unlike the practicum which was required for the minor, internships were elective.

What Tiffany really wanted was to design a project that would benefit specific women--maybe even just one woman. She was a little skeptical about some of the projects that other women in the class (everyone in the class happened to be female) were working on which purported to help women in general, even if just in the community or on campus. Tiffany's academic nature led her to question whether volunteer work for a semester in an ongoing program would provide "added value" that would not accrue otherwise, and how this could be measured even if it did. She wanted to prove that she really was practical--more practical, in fact, than the other women in the class who were less academically sophisticated than Tiffany (surely Professor Sweezy could see this). Of course, she wasn't sure what the practicum projects were that all the other students in the class were doing. A few, like that overbearing Tricia Raditz who was in charge of The New Dominion, were being very secretive about theirs. That was not very sisterly.

Whatever they were doing, however, time was slipping away from Tiffany. Professor Sweezy told her after class today that she had to come up with something by next week or drop the practicum. But what?

Tiffany's thoughts were suddenly interrupted when her roommate, Cindy McMann, burst into the room. "That Barnes is a bastard!" she announced in a bitter voice. Cindy then threw herself onto her bed, sobbing.

Tiffany quickly got up from her chair and closed the door to their room. "Cindy, what happened?" she asked with concern.

Cindy picked herself up and sat cross-legged on her bed. Slightly calmer now, she launched into her story. "Remember the midterm I showed you on which he so unfairly gave me a B+?"

Tiffany went and sat on the edge of her own bed, nodding her head in acknowledgement.

"Well, I went to his office to confront him about it," Cindy continued, "and he just ridiculed me!"

"What did he say to you?" asked Tiffany, her eyes growing wide.

"Well, when I first told him that I wasn't satisfied with the grade he gave me, he just snapped back saying he wasn't satisfied with my exam. Then when I told him that you had read it over and that you said it was good, he just laughed at me and asked, `Who's the professor--her or me?'"

Tiffany wished Cindy had not mentioned her name to Professor Barnes. Yes, she had read Cindy's midterm over after it had been returned to her, and yes, she had said she thought it was good. But she had also emphasized that she thought Cindy should go talk to him and seek advice on how to improve her writing. Tiffany, in fact, saw the point of Professor Barnes's comment at the end of Cindy's exam calling for less description and more analysis. Tiffany had not said this herself to Cindy out of fear that they would get into an argument--as they had this past Sunday. Besides, Tiffany was not Cindy's professor; it was Barnes's job to give her guidance about her writing, not Tiffany's. But not through ridiculing her!

"He kept telling me," Cindy continued, "that I needed to write analytically, not descriptively. But instead of telling me clearly what `writing analytically' means, he just confused me--deliberately!"

"How do you mean?" asked Tiffany. She really was fond of Cindy. Cindy, of course, was not Tiffany's intellectual equal, and Cindy knew it. Tiffany realized that she wouldn't have liked her as much--indeed, not much at all--if Cindy hadn't known this. Cindy, though, seemed happy to look up to, seek advice from, and admire Tiffany in the intellectual realm--something that Tiffany found deeply satisfying. But Tiffany also admired Cindy. If left to her own devices, Tiffany knew that she would have little--if any--social life. Cindy, though, met people easily and attracted a stream of visitors to their room, some of whom Tiffany became friends with too. Tiffany knew that she would never have met them if Cindy had not been her roommate, and so Tiffany was grateful for her friendship. Nevertheless, Cindy's sociability was not always something positive as far as Tiffany was concerned. In fact, it had been the cause of their confrontation this past Sunday.

Cindy had a boyfriend. That didn't bother Tiffany, but what did was feeling pressured by Cindy to leave their room when he came to visit so that the two of them could be alone--obviously to have sex. This was not a situation Tiffany was used to. The woman she had roomed with during her first two years at NDU had not had a boyfriend; she and Tiffany would still be roommates except that she transferred to UVA. Tiffany's roommate last year did have a boyfriend, but she had always gone to visit him at his place; they were now living together.

The situation that arose with Cindy, then, was not one Tiffany had been prepared for. Each Saturday evening since the start of this school year, Tiffany had felt pressured to leave the room--sometimes quite late at night--when Cindy and her boyfriend had begun kissing on Cindy's bed. They had not actually asked her to leave. Indeed, they didn't even seem to be aware that she was still there. Each time, though, Tiffany had announced that she was going to the library and left--partly out of fear that they would copulate right there in front of her if she didn't. And each time she had been so angry at feeling pressured to leave her room when she hadn't wanted to that she couldn't do any studying, but just sat in the current periodicals section of the library looking through feminist journals. Each time there had also been the little problem of trying to calculate when it was safe to return. She tried to telephone, but Cindy had always turned her cell phone off, and so all Tiffany would get was her voice mail. This either meant that Cindy was still busy with her boyfriend and Tiffany should stay away, or that they had finished, Cindy was asleep, and Tiffany could go back.

Each time, Tiffany had returned to the dorm precisely after one hour, knocked softly on the door, and quietly re-entered their room when there was no answer. Luckily, the boyfriend had left and Cindy was asleep on each occasion. But then Tiffany felt annoyed because, after Cindy had inconvenienced her, she now felt she had to tiptoe around the room so as not to waken her. Tiffany's anger would then keep her lying awake for hours and would still be there the next morning, freshly aroused by Cindy waking up in an annoyingly happy mood.

Tiffany would never have done this to Cindy. Of course, Tiffany did not have--had never had or even felt the desire for--a boyfriend, and so was not in a position to do unto Cindy what Cindy had done unto her. It's not that she had ruled out having a boyfriend. But she certainly would never have one whom she considered to be her intellectual inferior. She had never met a male, though, who wasn't. Nor did males ever seem to recognize this deficiency in themselves--which, of course, was the most obvious proof of its existence.

In addition, Tiffany was frightened about the possibility of contracting AIDS. She recognized that males were so obsessed with sex that they would do anything--even risk contracting AIDS--to get it. She did not, though, understand how women could be--it had to be acknowledged--promiscuous. Tiffany had never felt such an overwhelming desire for sex that she would seek it no matter what the possible consequences. That was just not sensible. Such urges could and should be controlled.

Finally, she had too much studying and work to accomplish at this point in her life. A boyfriend--even one with progressive views--would at best be a distraction. What she really feared, though, was that a "boyfriend" would turn out to be a "boyenemy" and try to prevent her from accomplishing all the things she needed to accomplish. That's what men did to women. This had been demonstrated to her repeatedly both through the readings and lectures in her women's studies classes as well as her own personal observation. Why didn't Cindy seem to understand something as basic as this?

"At first he told me," said Cindy, "that he wanted me to tell him what I thought about Hobbes's theory of international relations. But later he said he didn't care what my opinion about Hobbes was."

The blowup had come on Sunday when Cindy's boyfriend (Tiffany could not--would not--remember his name) came back to their room. Tiffany was determined that she was not going to be forced out two days in a row. As the two of them began kissing on Cindy's bed, Tiffany continued to work on her computer at her desk. When after a few minutes Cindy asked if it wasn't time for her to go to the library, Tiffany had turned around and said, "I think it's high time you two went there--and maybe did some reading up about AIDS." Cindy and her boyfriend, obviously embarrassed, quickly got up and left the room.

Two hours later, Cindy returned alone, and the two of them had then exchanged angry words. Cindy had criticized Tiffany for not leaving the room earlier that day; Tiffany had said that pressuring her to leave the room on several occasions was far ruder. Cindy had accused Tiffany of being jealous of her for having a boyfriend, and of being too stiff to ever have one herself.

Cindy later apologized for having made Tiffany feel pressured to leave the room in the past (Cindy, much to Tiffany's amazement, said that she hadn't realized this bothered her), and promised that it wouldn't happen again. They agreed to put the episode behind them. Still, some of the things Cindy had said about her had stung.

"Oh, and you know what else he said?" Cindy continued. "He said that the view that women are inferior to men is just as valid as the view that women are equal to men. Can you believe that?"

Tiffany's eyes opened wider. Up to now, she thought that Cindy had been overreacting, even if Professor Barnes appeared to have been rude. But this was different. This was serious. It was an affront to all women. "I can't believe he'd say something that blatant!" commented Tiffany.

"And do you know what else he did?" asked Cindy. "He put his fucking hand on my shoulder! Can you believe that?"

Yes, Tiffany could believe it. It was a very pretty shoulder, especially bare like it was in the sleeveless top Cindy was wearing. "No!" exclaimed Tiffany. "He touched you like that? Was the door open?"

Cindy thought for a moment. "No, it was closed."

Tiffany knew that this was extremely serious--too serious not to do something about. "Cindy," she said solemnly, "that was a sexual assault. Professor Barnes assaulted you sexually."

Cindy looked puzzled. "I...I'm not sure..."

"Oh, come on, Cindy!" Tiffany interrupted. "A male professor touches a female student on the shoulder--on her bare shoulder--in his office with the door closed when she came to ask him to raise her midterm grade? That's a classic quid pro quo case."

"Quid pro quo?" asked Cindy.

Poor Cindy! She really wasn't very bright, thought Tiffany. But that's exactly why she needed to be protected. "You know: `You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.' By touching your shoulder, he was signaling that he would change your grade---for a price."

"Yeah?" asked Cindy.

"Of course!" said Tiffany in exasperation. "What else?" She thought of something else. "What did you do when he touched you?"

"I...I got up and left," replied Cindy.

"Good for you!" Tiffany praised her. "But look, Cindy, this isn't over yet. You're still in his class. He might either make this little proposal again or he might retaliate against you for not giving him what he obviously wants. You've got to put a stop to him--not just for yourself, but for all women. Because you know that if he's done this to you, he's probably done it to other sisters too."

"Maybe I should file a complaint," said Cindy. She suddenly laughed. "I overheard him say that he is going up for tenure this year. I wouldn't mind doing something to mess that up for him!"

"So he's going up for tenure, is he? That's important to know," observed Tiffany. "It means we have some leverage over him. I know that once they get tenure, it's almost impossible to get rid of them no matter what they do. If something is going to be done about Barnes, it has to be done now."

"Perhaps I should say something to the chair of the Political Science Department, Dr. Silverstein," mused Cindy. "She's a woman! I had gone to her office to complain about Barnes just after leaving his office. She was in some meeting. I waited fifteen minutes until it was over, but then she ran out saying she couldn't talk to me because she was late for something else. I'll call her office now and make an appointment."

"Forget her!" Tiffany said emphatically. "Professor Sweezy told us in class that Silverstein had sold out to the patriarchy here long ago. Why else would the male powers-that-be let her become chair of the department? They put her there, Professor Sweezy told us, because she was willing to keep other women down."

Cindy laughed again. "I'm not surprised if the male powers-that-be don't consider her a threat, considering Silverstein looks more like a man than a woman," she said.

Tiffany frowned. She wished she could teach Cindy that for a woman to criticize another woman's appearance was neither progressive nor sisterly. Tiffany and Professor Sweezy, by contrast, had criticized Silverstein on principle, so that, of course, was different. But Tiffany decided not to take this up with Cindy just now: she had to go one step at a time with her.

"Let me show you something," said Tiffany who then got up from her bed, picked up the copy of The New Dominion from her desk, and sat next to Cindy with it on the other bed. "Have you seen this yet?" asked Tiffany, showing Cindy the inside back page of the paper. There was a quarter page ad that read, "Report sexual assault and other unwanted sexual behavior to the Sexual Assault Services Office" along with its room number in the Student Union Building, phone number, and e-mail address.

Cindy took the paper in her hands, giving the ad a cursory glance. She then closed the page over and looked at the very back page. "Hey, look at this!"

The outside back page was done up to look like a wanted poster from the days of the "Wild West." Instead of reading, "Wanted!" however, the banner headline at the top read, "UNWANTED!" In smaller type underneath appeared, "Sexual Predators at NDU Revealed!" And in smaller type still was printed, "The female staff of The New Dominion witnessed the following cries of pain written on the walls and the stalls of the women's lavatories at NDU."

And below this in quotation marks:

"Brian Smith is a rapist!"

"Oscar Garcia is stalking me!"

"Charles Truehart fondled me!"

At the bottom of the page was printed, "Don't tolerate unwanted sexual behavior! Out it!"

"I don't fucking believe it!" shouted Cindy.

"It's a sad comment on what women have to endure here," observed Tiffany. "You see, you're not alone."

"Did you see this about Charles Truehart?" asked Cindy.

"Is he someone you know?" asked Tiffany.

"Surely you haven't forgotten," said Cindy. "He's my boyfriend! But it looks like he's been hitting on someone else at the same time! God, men are all assholes!"

Tiffany was embarrassed. Yes, of course: that was his name. Secretly, though, she was glad that he had been "outed." Now Cindy would no longer be entertaining him in their dorm room.

"You know what I think?" asked Tiffany. "I think you should report this incident with Professor Barnes to the Sexual Assault Services Office. If you like, I can go over with you to lend moral support. Do you want me to call and make an appointment?"

Cindy nodded her head. While Tiffany talked on the phone, she just sat on her bed staring at the unwanted poster page. After putting the phone down, Tiffany came back over to where Cindy was sitting. "It's all set!" she said cheerfully. "You have an appointment next week!"

And, Tiffany thought, she herself finally had a project for her women's studies practicum, one that she knew Professor Sweezy would approve of: helping guide Cindy through this sexual assault crisis she was experiencing.

Chapter 4

2010-07-03T06:55:00.000-07:00

"It still seems funny," said Ruth Silverstein, laughing gently, "for me to be sitting in the chair's chair and you to be sitting in the guest chair." She was talking to the previous chair of the Political Science Department, Trond Knutsen, in what was now her office.

"I sat in that chair long enough," Trond returned. "I don't want to ever sit there again. And when the time comes, I'll bet that you'll be happy to give it up to someone else too."

Ruth wasn't prepared to give it up yet, though. She had only just become chair--actually, acting chair--on September 1. After just over a month on the job, she had found it to be exhilarating in some ways. As a department chair, she was invited--in fact, expected--to attend important meetings with senior administrators at the university with whom she had had almost no contact with before. This would give her, she hoped, the opportunity to interact with them and make a positive impact on university decision-making. And just by virtue of her being chair, she had begun receiving invitations to serve on important committees both in the university and outside it in the profession. She had even been invited to give some talks herself.

On the other hand, she had also found that being a department chair had many frustrations. The OTPS (other than personnel services) budget for the department was small--only $30,000 for the year. This did not go very far, though, in a department with twenty-one professors and an office staff of four. Not only did this sum have to cover the postage, telephone, photocopy, office supplies, and other miscellaneous charges for this group, but it also had to pay for professional travel. Back in the old days, Ruth remembered, the department faculty did not present papers at professional conferences all that frequently, and so travel money was available for those who did. Now, however, more departmental faculty--especially the younger ones--were presenting papers at conferences. This, of course, was excellent for the visibility of the department, but a real strain on the budget. Although she had chafed at it when Trond was chair, she felt that she had no other choice but to continue his policy of allocating no more than $250 in travel money per professor per year--a sum which obviously did not go very far.

What she had also discovered in just the past few weeks was just how uncooperative the department's faculty could be. It took a lot of work to keep a department running smoothly. The chair depended on faculty members to participate in departmental meetings, to serve on departmental committees, and to vigorously defend the department's interests on college- and university-level committees.

Much to her dismay, though, she found that it was often very difficult to get some of the faculty to do these things, or to do them well even when they consented to serve. Some of the tenured faculty she had asked to serve on committees had simply refused, saying that their plates were already full. Nor could she force them to serve: they already had tenure and they knew that the chair did not have the power to reward extra service with higher pay.

This, however, was to be expected. She had herself refused some additional service responsibilities that Trond had asked her to perform when he was chair. But she, of course, had been justified: she was then, after all, performing the time consuming task of running the department's MPA program. What she had not expected, however, was that even some of the tenure track faculty would turn down her requests to serve on various committees. They said it would get in the way of the research they needed to get done in order to be awarded tenure! The worst offender by far, though, was Rob Barnes. As far as she was concerned, he was just a little too big for his britches.

"One of the things I wanted to talk to you about," she said, "is your agreement with Rob Barnes about when he would go up for tenure. As you can see," she said pointing to a thickly packed three-ring binder, "he's already prepared his dossier. But it's just his third year. That's awfully early. I would prefer that he wait a year. Besides, this is Ann Sweezy's sixth year, when she has to go up. Her publication record is not as strong as his, and I'm afraid that if they both go up together, she's not going to look good in comparison."

Both Ruth and Trond were intimately familiar with the academic year-long process that promotion and tenure decisions took. The candidate prepared a dossier detailing his or her teaching, research, and service record, attaching copies of publications. The candidate also submitted a list of half a dozen tenured professors at other universities who were prominent specialists in the candidate's area of research. The chair would select three professors from this list, plus select at least one other not on it, to serve as external reviewers who would write a letter evaluating the candidate's suitability for promotion and tenure.

Sometimes it was difficult to assemble a group of external reviewers for a candidate. But once this had been done and their letters received by the chair, they would be added to the candidate's dossier. The dossier would then be considered by and receive a written recommendation which would be added to the dossier from 1) the tenured members of the candidate's department; 2) the chair of the candidate's department; 3) the promotion and tenure committee of the college or school the candidate's department was located in; 4) the dean of that college or school; and 5) the provost. Although the candidate would not be allowed to see the letters from external reviewers (at least, not officially), he or she would receive copies of the recommendations received in these five stages.

These recommendations, though, were purely advisory. The final decision would then be made in a sixth stage by the president. If the president's decision was positive, the dossier would be sent on to a seventh stage--ratification by the board of trustees--but this was a formality. If the president's decision was negative, the dossier would not be sent to the board of trustees. Candidates who received a negative decision during their "up or out" sixth year normally received reappointment for one last year during which they could appeal the decision--as well as search for another job. If their appeal was unsuccessful, there would be no further reappointment at the end of that seventh year.

"I have to tell you, Ruth," said Trond. "Rob and I had an agreement from the time he was hired that he would go up in this third year. He's had this expectation all along. I don't think we can tell him now that he can't. If you did, we might well lose him. Considering what a young hot shot he is, I don't think the administration would appreciate that. And besides, anyone who wants to can decide to go up early for tenure."

But virtually no one did, Ruth thought, without the blessing of his or her chair. "But Trond: that boy has not done one lick of service at the department, college, or university level. He turned me down flat when I asked him to serve as the department's representative on that new committee that's supposed to revise the general education requirements."

Trond rolled his eyes at this, and she knew why. No one was happy with the existing gen ed requirements, but no one could agree on how to revise them. Committees to do this had been appointed in each of the last five years. Even when they did, after months of rancorous debate, agree on a plan to present to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences, the faculty had unfailingly voted it down.

"When I asked him why he wouldn't serve on it," she continued, "he actually had the nerve to tell me that it was just something he wasn't interested in! Can you believe that? Whoever said that assistant professors have to be interested in the work of a committee before being assigned to it?"

"Now look, Ruth, you and I both know that Rob's research record more than qualifies him for tenure."

"But why shouldn't he do service work the way Ann has--the way most of us, including me, did? If he gets away without having done his share before he gets tenure, do you think he's ever going to do any for us after he gets it?"

"That's not the point, Ruth. We all did a lot of service before getting tenure because we didn't do all that much research. Rob has done a lot of research, therefore he doesn't have to do as much service. And you know as well as I do that a dossier like his is going to sail through without a problem. He's the kind of person the administration wants here at NDU."

"But look Trond: I am really worried about Ann. That book she's been working on since before she even came here is finally coming out. But the publisher is SPA."

SPA was short for Scholastic Press of America, Inc. It was not a university press, but a "scholarly commercial" one instead. In the academic world, scholarly commercial presses were considered to be much less prestigious than university presses. And while some scholarly commercial presses were quite reputable due to their being as selective about what they accepted for publication as any university press, SPA was not in this group. Indeed, it had a reputation for being willing to publish just about anything (but only printing a few hundred hard back copies which they sold for $40-60 each just to libraries). Ruth, though, knew that this reputation was unfair as she understood that poor Ann had had a tough time getting her manuscript even through SPA's review process.

"Ann's had as much time as anyone to write and publish," said Trond. "She only has herself to blame if she hasn't."

"Oh, come on, Trond! You know as well as I do that she's undertaken a backbreaking load of service work ever since she came here. You certainly didn't spare her in that regard."

"Hey, I admit that I asked her to serve on several departmental committees and that she never said, `No,'" Trond acknowledged. "But I never asked her to serve on committees outside the department. She volunteered for that herself. In fact, I tried to dissuade her from volunteering for that Sexual Assault Complaint Review Committee because it might eat up her research time, but she insisted on doing it anyway."

Yes, Ruth knew that Ann was a highly enthusiastic committeewoman. At department meetings, she had the annoying habit of wanting to argue on and on in defense of her position even when it was clear that the rest of the faculty didn't support her and wanted to move on to something else or end the meeting. Still, she had been a real trooper about taking on extra student advisees when the faculty member they had been assigned to was on leave. She had taken some of Rob Barnes's students last year when he was at Harvard, but Ruth doubted that Rob was even aware of that.

"I don't want to beat this to death, Trond, but here's the point: Ann has to go up this year but Rob doesn't. I tried to persuade Rob to wait a year so that Ann's dossier won't be compared with his, but he, of course, wouldn't budge. My only hope is that you might be able to persuade him."

Trond shook his head. "I'm sorry, Ruth, but I can't help you. I'm far more worried about losing Rob than I am about losing Ann. Don't you see how embarrassing it would be for our department if someone like Rob decided to go elsewhere? And while I hope Ann gets tenure, it won't be the end of the world for the department if she doesn't. I think we both know that if her position suddenly opened up, we would be able to fill it with someone far more qualified--someone more on Rob's level."

"God, what a typical way for a man to think!" Ruth exclaimed. "You use a woman for all she's worth, and then toss her aside when you're done with her!"

"If gets shot down this year, she can always appeal next year," said Trond.

"Oh, won't that be fun for us all!" rejoined Ruth. As both knew from previous experience in the department, dealing with someone going through the emotional strain of a marginal up-or-out tenure application was hard enough, but was nothing compared to dealing with someone who had been denied tenure and was appealing the decision in a terminal seventh year.

"All right," she continued, "I didn't think I could convince you to get Rob to delay going up, but I promised Ann that I'd try. She became frantic when she realized that Rob would be going up at the same time that she was. But she's just going to have to get over it. Besides, there's something else we need to talk about--this new Public Policy Institute."

Unlike Rob Barnes, this was a subject which they shared similar views on. The entire Political Science Department had been caught off guard by the announcement of its creation last month; no one from the department had been involved in the planning for it. Worse yet, Ruth's memos to both the president and the provost pointing out the overlap between the department's and the new institute's research interests and suggesting that the former play a role in shaping the latter had so far received only evasive answers.

To top it off, Ruth and Trond had between them blown what little opportunity the department may have had to select the institute's first director. Shortly after President Michaelson's press conference announcing the creation of the institute, the provost had sent an e-mail to all faculty announcing that the five faculty members on the selection committee for its director would be chosen by mail ballot, and called for nominations. Without consulting each other or anyone else in the department, Ruth and Trond had both sent back an e-mail to the provost asking to be placed on the ballot.

When she and Trond had realized that both of their names were on the ballot, they had naively hoped that they both would be elected to the selection committee. Whether by accident or design, though, each of the other five professors listed on the ballot was the only nominee from his or her particular department or school. Although Ruth didn't know for sure, she suspected that these other departments or schools had rallied their faculty members to vote for their nominee. While political science was one of the larger departments, its votes ended up being split between Trond and Ruth. These factors were what made the difference in a low turnout election--as most faculty mail ballots at NDU were.

In retrospect, it seemed obvious that if only one of them had run, he or she probably would have been elected. This was not the first time that the Political Science Department had proven itself to be far less adept at university politics than other departments. Ruth was pissed at Trond for not checking with her before nominating himself for the ballot. There was no point, though, in engaging in recriminations over this now that it was too late to do anything.

"You know," said Trond, "this Public Policy Institute may really spoil our plans for building up our department's public administration program.”

She knew--only too well. Over the past few years when she and Trond had hoped that an expanding MPA program would allow them to receive permission from the central administration to add faculty to the public administration section of the department. They had even hoped to get permission from the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences to grant a one class course release per year for one PA faculty member to devote serious attention to writing grant proposals. They feared, though, that this was a lot to ask, and so they had postponed asking for it.

Grants were wonderful things not only because they provided the direct costs to do whatever had been proposed in them, but also a substantial additional amount for "overhead"--that is, money to subsidize the ongoing operations of the university. The department would be able to keep a portion of the overhead received on any grants awarded to it--something that could do much to augment the meager OTPS budget provided by the central administration. The College of Arts and Sciences would also get a cut--thus helping to improve the department's standing with the dean. But grants awarded to this new institute would provide no money from overhead either to the department or the college, but just to itself and the central administration. It would be especially galling if, as the report about the president's press conference in What's New at NDU stated, professors would be encouraged to solicit grants through the institute and hence not through their departments.

"I think," said Ruth, "that this might be a good time to approach Dominic with our request for a course release for grant proposal writing." Dominic DiSola was the dean of the college of arts and sciences.

"Yes," agreed Trond. "Dominic should be our ally in this." He had not always been the Political Science Department's ally in the past, but this new institute threatened the college's interests as much as it did the department's.

"I don't think that it will come as a surprise to you," said Ruth, "that I would like to receive a regular four-year appointment as chair after this one-year acting appointment. Now, if our external chair search had succeeded, that would have added one more person to our faculty allocation. If I remain as chair, I wonder if we can get the dean to give us the extra position we would have gotten for an additional PA slot."

"That's possible," said Trond slowly. "I think he might go for that. The question is, of course, can he get the provost to go along?"

"Yeah, I know it's a long shot," she responded. "But we've at least got to try." One way, of course, to get that extra position would be to re-open the external chair search. Ruth would either have to compete with others for the job or step down from it after her year as acting chair. She did not want to do either.

"You know something?" she asked, with a malicious twinkle. "If Rob Barnes really did leave, we could convert his slot from an international relations to a public administration position. Maybe I should tell him that he can't go up this year so that he'll get mad enough to go somewhere else."

"Ruth!" exclaimed Trond. "That wouldn't be right! Besides, if you tried to convert his position to PA, the IR faculty really would revolt."

The Political Science Department had three main components: public administration, American government and politics, and international relations. There had been talk among the IR faculty about seceding from political science and forming their own department, but fortunately they were not agreed on this--although Ruth doubted they could do it even if they were.

"It was just a thought," said Ruth. "Of course, since Ann's in public administration, losing her wouldn't allow us to gain another PA position, but only to replace her."

"If we're lucky!" said Trond. "The dean could give her slot--or Rob's if he left--to another department. But assuming Rob stayed and Ann left, the dean might let us keep her position but could give it either to American government or IR." Both being PA types themselves, neither Ruth nor Trond wanted that.

Ruth looked at her watch. "Whoops! There's a chairs' meeting I've got to get to."

"Better you than me!" said Trond grinning as they both got up and left.

Chapter 3

2010-06-26T05:16:00.000-07:00

Cindy McMann was outraged! Prof. Barnes had only given her a B+ on the IR Theory midterm! This was obviously unfair!

She had come to his office to demand that he raise her grade, but, as she could hear through his partly open door, he was talking on the phone. The bastard had not even put a chair outside his office, so she had to sit on the floor. She was glad she had decided to wear shorts and a spaghetti-strap top that day instead of that short sun dress she'd been thinking of--she would have had to wait standing up then.

This was the first semester of Cindy's junior year. She had been an honors student at Annandale High where she finished with a 3.81 GPA. Unfortunately, she hadn't done well on the SAT's, and so had not gotten in to either UVA or William and Mary as she and her parents had hoped. That, she knew, was unfair: those schools, it was widely rumored, strictly limited the number of students they admitted from Northern Virginia, giving preference to less qualified "downstate dummies," as everyone in the honors program at her high school referred to them, from other parts of Virginia.

NDU had been her last choice for college, as it was for everyone else she knew. That being the case, she had assumed that NDU would be easy to get through, and so had not worked all that hard her first two years. As a result, her GPA was only 3.3--not good enough, she knew, to get into the kind of law school from which she could actually get a good job. It wasn't even good enough to get into the NDU Law School!

The problem with B+'s was that while professors game them out on exams and on papers, NDU was one of those schools that didn't allow pluses or minuses on transcripts. A B+ average on course assignments, then, would result in a B for the final grade--and that would serve to lower her overall GPA. By contrast, an A- average on course assignments would result in an A for the final grade--which would raise her GPA.

Why this was the case wasn't quite clear to Cindy. One professor had told the class that pluses and minuses had been done away with at the insistence of a previous generation of student activists who had thought that they created a too competitive environment. Cindy couldn't imagine that there had ever been activists at NDU where over 90% of the students were commuters, few of whom ever got involved in any campus activities. She suspected that the faculty was just too lazy to assign pluses or minuses (though why so many did on course assignments was puzzling). Or maybe the decision had been made--like so much else at NDU--just arbitrarily. But whatever the reason, what this practice meant was that all those B+'s she should have gotten appeared as B's on her transcript and had, she was sure, lowered her GPA unnecessarily. Even if she didn't quite deserve A's, she thought she was due a few A-'s which would result in A's on her transcript to counterbalance the B's she surely didn't deserve.

But if there were real justice in this world, thought Cindy, she already deserved an A+ for Barnes's IR Theory class. God, was it boring! So far, all they had been studying was a bunch of dead white men--Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau and some other jerks like that. Cindy had looked through the syllabus. Barnes wasn't even going to get to the post-Cold War era until around Thanksgiving! She was angry that almost all November before that was devoted to IR theory during the Cold War. How irrelevant! Didn't Barnes know it was over? And after Thanksgiving, he devoted only one lecture to "Feminist IR Theory." Fifteen whole weeks in the semester, and he planned on devoting only one lecture to the feminist viewpoint! That really sucked! For such a young professor, Barnes sure was behind the times.

"Getting tenure at a place like NDU is a lot easier," she heard Barnes say through the door. "Once I get it, I figure that I'll be in a good position to move on to somewhere else with tenure."

So NDU wasn't good enough for him, was it? Well, it wasn't good enough for Cindy either! But there she was: stuck.

"It's a terrific place, Johnny! Don't get me wrong. But you know how it is--greener pastures and all that," he continued. "Seriously, though, there is one thing lacking in my department: the opportunity to work with graduate students. And it looks like I will have to go elsewhere in order to get that opportunity."

So he didn't like the undergraduates here? Well, they didn't like him either. He was a pompous, arrogant bastard who was always complaining about the lack of class discussion but then telling students why they were wrong whenever they did say anything in class. But some of the more talkative men in the class, she had to admit, were air heads who deserved to be put down.

"Their writing leaves much to be desired, but we've got some good ones," she heard him say.

Cindy knew what the remark about writing referred to. When he handed back the midterms the other day, he had made a little speech about how poorly NDU students wrote, and how they had better improve if they wanted to get ahead in graduate school or any sort of professional career. But it wasn't Cindy's fault if she was out of practice with her writing: there had been no essay exams in any of the lower division classes (except English comp--which had been a joke) that she had taken during her first two years at NDU. When someone in her Intro to IR class last year asked the professor why this was, he had stated quite openly that it would take him two full days to grade essay exams for the hundred students in the class whereas it took him less than two full minutes to grade the hundred machine scannable forms on which the students marked answers to multiple choice exams.

"I've had some success," Barnes continued. "I got one of my undergrads into Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs."

Only one of his students got into that graduate school? Well, if he gave out higher grades, maybe more would! Even she could figure that out. Why couldn't he? But, she realized, he was probably only mentioning the one student who got into some snooty school like he had gone to. She also thought that most students were too smart to give an asshole like him the opportunity to trash them on a recommendation form. Anyone dumb enough to ask him for a recommendation deserved to be rejected. When she thought about it, she was surprised that even one of his students had been accepted anywhere--or at least, anywhere that Barnes would mention to whoever he was talking to.

"Why, thank you, Johnny. This comes as quite a surprise."

This she couldn't follow. Was this Johnny propositioning Barnes? Was Barnes gay? A lot of bright but pompous men were, it seemed to her.

"Listen, Johnny, I appreciate the offer. But when it comes down to it, NDU is too good a place to leave right now, even without graduate students. Besides, I've already started the tenure process rolling and I want to see it through."

Oh, so it was a job he was being offered! Why the hell didn't he take it? Maybe the university would find someone decent to take over his IR Theory class--someone who believed in equal opportunity who would devote half the class sessions to feminist theory. Now that would be interesting!

Cindy didn't believe for one second that crap about NDU being "too good a place to leave right now" after what Barnes had said earlier. He probably just wanted tenure to increase his chances to get an even better job than this Johnny was offering. And wasn't he oh-so-confident that he was going to get tenure? Wouldn't it be fun, she thought, if he tripped up somehow?

"It's a deal, Johnny!"

Now what was that about? All Cindy knew was that Barnes's mood seemed to be improving. She hoped the conversation would end soon so she could hit him up for a grade change while it lasted.

"Okay, Johnny. Thanks for calling." She heard him hang up the phone.

At last! Cindy quickly got to her feet and knocked on the door before, she feared, Barnes could get involved in another phone conversation.

"Come in," she heard him respond.

Cindy opened the door and then closed it completely behind her. She didn't want anyone overhearing her conversation with him like she had overheard his phone conversation.

"Hi, Professor Barnes, I'm Cindy McMann from your IR Theory class?" her voice rising, implicitly asking if he recognized her.

"Oh yes," he replied. "Have a seat."

His good mood seemed to be holding, she thought as she sat down and crossed her legs. But what man wouldn't be in a good mood seeing her in those shorts she was wearing? Of course, she had not--she assured herself--deliberately worn them to influence Barnes. Still, coming here to his office in them would have been a waste if it turned out he really was gay.

Okay, she thought, let's get down to business. "Professor Barnes, I'm sorry to say that I was not completely satisfied with the B+ you gave me on the midterm..."

"And I was not completely satisfied with the essay you wrote. That's why I gave you a B+."

She looked at him in what she hoped he understood was a reproving manner. She had not expected him to interrupt her. "When I read it over after you handed it back, I didn't see anything wrong with it..."

"Well, I must have."

"And neither did my roommate," she continued, interrupting him in return. "My Mom and Dad both read it too, and they thought it was fine." Considering that they didn't agree on much and had gotten divorced just after she graduated from high school, this was really saying something, thought Cindy.

But instead of being impressed by what she said, Professor Barnes had laughed. "Who’s the professor in this class? Is it your roommate, your Mom or Dad, or me?"

Cindy didn't like his attitude. It was time to take control of this conversation. "Professor Barnes," she said quietly but sternly, "you don't seem to be taking me very seriously, and I wish you would. I think you made a mistake when you graded my midterm, and I think you should change my grade now."

This at least got him to stop laughing. "And what makes you think that the B+ I gave you was a mistake and not what you actually earned?" he asked.

Cindy was ready for that. "Because I checked the textbook afterward," she answered confidently. "What I wrote in my exam was very similar to what was in the book. I didn't get it wrong."

Cindy was quite proud of herself for having done this. In fact, she thought that she should be given extra credit just for having read the unbelievably boring chapters Barnes had assigned in it in the first place. And there was still a lot more in it to be read. The book had been written, she remembered, by some dull dude from Norway.

"Now I think," responded Professor Barnes, "that we are getting to the nub of the problem. I have a copy of the exam itself here. Which question did you address?"

"Number three," answered Cindy. "The one on Hobbes."

"And would you kindly read to me what number three says?" he asked, handing her the piece of paper.

She took it from him and began reading: "`To what extent does Thomas Hobbes's theory of international relations accurately describe world politics in the post-Cold War era?'"

"And what was it that I wrote at the end of your exam?" asked Barnes.

Cindy fished it out of her book bag and turned the pages in it until she found what Barnes had written. "`While you describe Hobbes's theory well, you really did not address the question--too much description and not enough analysis.'"

"I wasn't interested," said Barnes, "in whether or not you memorized how the textbook, or my lecture, described Hobbes's theory. What I wanted was to see was your analysis of the relevance of his theory for today."

Cindy considered this for a moment. "You mean, you wanted my opinion?"

"Backed up by persuasive argumentation, yes."

Cindy shook her head. "But that would be a value judgment. You can't make value judgments." What was wrong with Barnes? Didn't he know that?

"And why not?" he asked.

Jeez, this guy was really out of it! "You just can't!" she said impatiently. "Everyone knows that. No one should be able to say that his opinion is better than hers!"

Cindy had a flash of inspiration. "That's why most professors here give multiple choice exams! They want to find out what you know, not what you think! You should do the same!" Barnes should thank me, she thought, for teaching him how to do his job.

Barnes, however, did not thank her. Instead, he sat back in his chair, holding his right hand to his head, as if he were in pain. "There are several things here which you don't seem to understand," he said at last. "Let me start with multiple choice exams. They're often given in large, lower division classes, but they're not usually given in smaller, upper division classes--at least not in this department. We give essay exams instead.

"There are two main reasons for this," he continued. "Multiple choice exams pose a question and then ask you to pick the right answer out of four or five possibilities. Life, however, does not offer such neat choices. There can be more than one correct answer to some questions. There may be no correct answer to others.

"In addition," he continued, "multiple choice exams only measure passive knowledge. It is one thing to address a question when you are given five choices and you know one of them has to be right. It is quite another to address a question when nobody tells you what the range of possible answers is and you have to figure it out by yourself. It is another thing still to formulate questions that you think should be addressed and then try to do so. That's what scholars do.

"Now let's turn to writing," Barnes continued. "I presume you want to go on to grad school?"

"Law school," said Cindy.

"Well, a large part of your success in the law or any other professional career will depend on your ability to write persuasively. Even though they're true, just writing down facts by themselves isn't going to persuade anybody of anything. You have to be able to marshal facts into an argument to persuade others why your viewpoint is right and why your opponent's is wrong. And the true test is not whether you can convince yourself that you are right. We can all do that. The true test is whether you can convince others.

"And finally: values. I sincerely doubt," he continued, "that you really believe this nonsense about the impossibility of making value judgments. Value judgments underlie how we approach virtually all aspects of life."

"What do you mean?" asked Cindy.

"Let me give you an example," said Barnes. "Do you believe that women are equal or inferior to men?"

We're superior, she thought, but said, "Equal, of course."

"But what if I say that they are inferior?"

"You would simply be wrong!" she said confidently.

"But that's a value judgment on your part!" he shot back. "If you really don't believe that value judgments can be made, then you cannot maintain that the view that women are equal to men is any less valid than the view that women are inferior to them."

Was he trying to confuse her? "That's something different," responded Cindy. "You have to assert your values when they are right."

Again Barnes laughed. "Oh, so you do believe you can make value judgments? Well, if you can make a value judgment about whether or not women are equal to men, you can also make one about the validity of Hobbes's theory of international relations for the post-Cold War era!"

"This is beside the point..."

"Oh, no it isn't," Barnes again interrupted her. "Whenever anyone makes the argument that `you can't make value judgments,' they either mean one of two things: they don't like the values being expressed by someone else, or, as in your case on this exam, they don't want to make a value judgment and want to provide a justification for not doing so."

Now Cindy was really annoyed. If she wanted a fucking lecture from him, she'd go to his class. She had lost the initiative in this conversation, and she was determined to get it back. "Look! I think that if I described Hobbes's lousy theory of international relations without making any mistakes in it, then I should have at least gotten an A-."

"And I say that anyone who thinks Hobbes's theory is lousy but didn't tell me why probably didn't even deserve a B+."

"But how am I supposed to know what you think about Hobbes? If I said his theory sucks, you might grade me down because you happen to like it."

"I don't care what you think about his theory."

"But you said..."

"The point is this," he said, interrupting her once more. "I really don't care whether you think Hobbes's theory is either completely valid, invalid, or somewhere in between. What I want you to do is tell me what you think about his theory in an essay that persuades me that you have at least thought seriously about the question."

Cindy felt defeated. "I've never had to do anything like this before," she said weakly. "I don't know how to write the way you want me to. I just don't know what you want." She began to cry softly. She turned her head away from him, putting her hand up to her eyes so he wouldn't see her tears.

"Look," he said in a much softer tone of voice, "I know writing analytically is something that can be very difficult if you're not used to it. But it's a skill that you can develop through practice." He reached over and put his hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay?"

She shook her shoulder backward, away from him. Professor Barnes stood up. "I have to go to lunch now," he said. "If you would like to get some advice on how to construct an analytical essay, you can come back and talk to me some time during my office hours--though preferably not at the very end of them like today."

He opened the door to his office. She gathered her things and left quickly without saying anything or even looking at Barnes.

"Asshole!" she said under her breath as she marched down the hall. "Asshole! Asshole! Asshole!"

Chapter 2

2010-06-19T05:09:00.000-07:00

Ten minutes after the scheduled noon start of the press conference, George Michaelson strode into the NDU Board of Trustees room where the dozen journalists who had shown up were busily helping themselves to the buffet lunch that had been planned for thirty. He quickly made his way to the head of the table where a lectern with the NDU seal had been placed. "Welcome to NDU, ladies and gentlemen," he said affably. "I'm sorry for being late, but my previous meeting ran over."

Actually, there hadn't been any such meeting--nor would he have scheduled one before anything as important as a press conference. He had been waiting in the next room in the hope that more journalists would arrive. But when it didn't look like anyone else was coming, he and his media relations director thought he'd better get started before he lost what audience he had.

Michaelson knew most of the twelve journalists who had shown up. Some of them were actually NDU staff members and not "real" journalists. One was the director of the campus radio station, WNDU, while another was the editor of What's New at NDU, the information sheet which was distributed to faculty and staff. They would print or broadcast the press release exactly as it was worded, but were always invited to these things out of courtesy.

Also present, Michaelson noted unhappily, was Tricia Raditz--the overweight student who had just taken over as the new editor-in-chief of New Dominion, the student newspaper, at the beginning of the school year. She too was invited out of courtesy--though this was something that the paper itself had already displayed a distinct lack of under her leadership. He hoped she wouldn't say anything today.

However, in addition to these three (whose primary purpose at these press conferences, Michaelson thought, was to help make the room look full), there were also some real journalists. These included reporters from the Northern Virginia offices of both the Washington Post and the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Michaelson was a little irritated with the Post. It always sent Kate Morgan out to his press conferences, but the story usually appeared somewhere in the Metro section covering local news instead of the front section which covered national and international issues. The Post, though, had been generally friendly to NDU--unlike the Times-Dispatch which reflected downstate hostility toward the increasingly prosperous and populous Northern Virginia suburbs around Washington. Michaelson had to be especially careful with the Times-Dispatch since this was the paper read by most of the state legislators. Others present included reporters from some of the smaller papers which circulated in Northern Virginia and a couple of local radio stations. The entire event was being filmed by News Channel 108--a local cable TV company's 24 hour news service. Also present was NDU's provost, Jeannette Bobier.

"The press release which was passed out to you," he continued, "announces the new Public Policy Institute we're establishing here at NDU. But before talking about the details of that, let me just put this in context by reviewing the highlights of what we've accomplished here over the past decade." After several years of having to make a deliberate effort to do so, referring to himself in the plural had now become second nature for Michaelson.

"A decade ago, someone described NDU as being little better than a finishing school for academically challenged community college students. Now that was a bit unfair," he said jovially. Actually, he thought, it wasn't unfair at all.

"Over the past decade, though, we have grown the student body from less than ten thousand to over twenty thousand and the faculty from less than three hundred to over six hundred.

"Numbers alone, of course, don't tell the whole story. The quality of the students we attract has improved dramatically over this period." That, he knew, was something of an overstatement. About half the students were as low quality as when he first became president. But an increasing number of better students were coming here, he believed, as a result of his successful efforts to enhance NDU's reputation.

"Through our New Dominion scholars program, we attract some of the very top students from across the state."

This program was one of his first initiatives designed to ingratiate himself with the state legislature. Through it, an incoming freshman from each of the forty state senatorial districts was granted a full four year scholarship. The program generated positive publicity for NDU across the state each spring when the new New Dominion scholars were announced. What NDU did not publicize, though, was that each year an embarrassingly large percentage of these students transferred to other schools--sometimes even though they didn't receive any financial assistance from them.

"And as everyone knows, NDU is building one of the finest faculties in the nation. In recent years, we've attracted bright young Ph.D.s from virtually every major university in the country. Depending on the field, our announcements for tenure-track assistant professorships can result in a hundred, two hundred, or even more applicants. The fact that so many high quality young scholars want to teach here is a gratifying tribute to NDU's increasing stature in the academic world."

Michaelson knew, of course, that NDU's "stature" alone wasn't responsible for this trend. It was greatly aided by the fact that the major research universities as a group turned out far more Ph.D.s than there were assistant professorships available for, and by the Supreme Court ruling that had struck down a mandatory retirement age for professors, thus constricting the number of openings that mandatory retirement at age 65 used to create. NDU's highly desirable location just outside Washington, D.C.--but not actually in it--was also a draw.

"In addition, the university professorship program we initiated has drawn two dozen academic superstars to NDU."

It was this program, Michaelson knew, which had been most responsible for quickly boosting NDU's reputation. The main business of a university is to teach, but its reputation is made on the basis of faculty research. However, the faculty he inherited when he first arrived--especially the tenured ones--had done precious little of this. And what little they had done was not exactly on the cutting edge of anything. In what Michaelson regarded as a conspiracy of the mediocre, it appeared to him that they gave each other tenure after serving time for six years and publishing a few token articles in third rate journals which were rarely cited (except, of course, by their authors in self-citations).

Michaelson had shaken up the faculty's complacency when he first came to NDU as president by rejecting half the candidates for tenure three years in a row. There was nothing, though, that he could do about the mediocrities that already had tenure. In fact, many of the tenured professors on the faculty when he first started ten years ago were still here now. Not many had retired, and except for a few who had been unable to keep their hands off their students or the secretaries, he had not been able to fire any either.

But Michaelson had made the most of a bad situation. He had thought up the university professors program in order to bring senior professors who had outstanding publications records to NDU. More importantly, though, he had made this program happen. Michaelson had approached the chairmen and chief executive officers of various corporations based in Northern Virginia and persuaded many of them to endow professorships with salaries high enough to attract superstars. Just the announcements of the gifts for these chairs had generated a lot of publicity, as had the high profile appointments to them. Finally, Michaelson's insistence that these university professors take an active role in promotion and tenure decisions both in their departments and at the college level had shamed the "ordinary" tenured professors into raising the standards they applied to others, even though they had not met them themselves.

"And we hope to continue to bring more university professors to NDU in the future."

This, however, had become increasingly difficult. Michaelson feared that he had had just about as much success with the local CEOs as he was going to have. Those who had been willing to endow a chair had already done so; those who had not been willing before were unlikely to become so now. In this region, however, there were always new firms going public. And when they did, he would be there to point out to their newly enriched CEOs how they and their corporations would enhance their reputations as good corporate citizens in the region through endowing a university professorship at NDU.

But just as the university professorship program had worked for NDU, it had also worked for George Michaelson. He had befriended some of these CEOs, and half a dozen of them had appointed him a member of their corporate board of directors. Michaelson had heard that being a director of a corporation could be lucrative, but he had had no idea how much so until becoming one himself. The boards he was on paid between $12,000 and $30,000 per year, plus $500 to $1,000 per board meeting attended, plus stock options. And these were by no means Northern Virginia's biggest or best paying corporations. One of the corporations whose board he served on had been bought out by another firm. Although he had not been appointed to the acquiring board's corporation, he had reaped a handsome profit from the dramatically increased value of his stock options. He wouldn't mind if that happened again!

Michaelson loved the world of the corporate board room with its smartly dressed men and women who spoke softly but acted decisively. It was so different from the down-at-heels world of a public university where everyone whined, took seemingly forever to make the simplest decisions, and then resisted implementing them. There was no tenure in the corporate world. If you didn't produce, you were history! And that's the way it should be at universities too, he thought.

"Excuse me, Dr. Robertson, may I just ask a question?" It was the woman from What's New at NDU. He could never remember her name. "It's been noted that all of the university professors who have been appointed so far have come from outside NDU. Has there been any thought given to the possibility of elevating any of the outstanding professors already here to this rank?"

What the hell was this? Wasn't this bitch under orders to keep her stupid mouth shut at press conferences? Had she somehow convinced herself that she was a real journalist? The non-academic staff was even worse than the professors. At least professors could be gotten rid of during the six years they normally worked before receiving tenure. The non-academic staff, by contrast, was protected by state civil service regulations. After only one year's probation, it was virtually impossible to get rid of them. Unlike professors, though, non-academic staff could be transferred from one division of the university to another relatively easily. He would see to it that this idiot was transferred to one of NDU's many little Siberias by next week.

Considering the intensity of these thoughts, Michaelson exercised admirable self control. Not only was this a press conference, but it was being recorded on film. "Thanks for that question," he beamed. "We always conduct a national search whenever a new university professorship is endowed. Professors with a national reputation from any university are encouraged to apply, including those right here at NDU. And while no one already here at NDU has yet been appointed a university professor, we are hopeful that one of our own--perhaps one of our up and coming younger scholars--will be able to win the competition for this coveted academic honor."

Michaelson knew that this was a source of discontent among the regular professors--especially the older ones--at NDU, but that didn't bother him. It wasn't his fault that they couldn't qualify for a university professorship. If they didn't like it, they could always leave. In fact, he wished they would. But of course, they would not since no university would give tenure to a tenured professor from another university with a poor publications record. For if they didn't produce much at their old university, why would they produce more at a new one?

Michaelson had hoped that the younger faculty appointed during his watch would emerge as academic superstars. But despite having Ph.D.s from leading universities, not as many as he had hoped showed signs of doing this. He realized that teaching three and three was a heavy load and didn't leave much time for research. He also knew that the old guard in the departments who would vote on their tenure cases placed a heavy service burden on them. But if these young people really were up-and-comers, they'd be out there winning the fellowships and grants which would buy them the time off to crank out those books and articles--like that young Rob Barnes was doing over in the poli sci department.

But what really annoyed Michaelson was the fact that all too many of the superstars who came to NDU as university professors basically stopped producing once they got here. Instead of raising NDU's low research productivity, many of them sunk to its level. And this occurred despite the fact that they only taught two and two, received much higher salaries, and had much fewer service responsibilities. NDU, though, still benefited from the reputations they earned from their previous productivity, and from the fact that most of them were publicly visible, often making TV appearances or writing op-ed pieces.

Still, there were some problems even when they did this. There was that one bastard whom Michaelson had lured away from Stanford with a salary of $130,000. He appeared on the news often enough, all right--but he was usually described as still being affiliated with Stanford. For $130,000 a year, you'd think he could remember who the hell was paying his salary! If it happened again, Michaelson would have to have a little talk with him.

Here again, that young Rob Barnes was much too savvy to do anything like that. In that Wall Street Journal piece he'd published recently, Barnes's bio at the end listed him as being affiliated both with Harvard and NDU. His media relations director had expressed annoyance that Barnes didn't list himself as being affiliated just with NDU, but Michaelson was pleased to have him identified with both institutions. He liked the idea of the Journal's readership, which numbered in the millions, seeing Harvard and NDU in the same sentence. In fact, he'd be happy to see NDU linked with Stanford too. He'd have someone suggest this to that overpaid prima donna--or better yet, to his secretary.

"With this background of progress in mind, it's time now to turn to today's news," said Michaelson. "We are very pleased to announce the creation of a Public Policy Institute here at NDU, which will serve as a research center on public policy issues--whether regional, national, or international--of special concern to Northern Virginia.

"The institute, of course, is not up and running yet. It will take a year before it is. In the meantime, we are announcing a national search for the directorship of the institute. In addition, we are announcing a million dollar capital appeal for it which we are confident that many of the region's corporations--as well as businesses and foundations outside of it--will want to contribute to."

Actually, Michaelson wasn't as confident as he sounded. He had spent the summer trying to solicit a large corporate donation for the institute. No one had turned him down outright, but no one had made a firm commitment either. The problem was that each corporation wanted the institute to be named after it, but was unwilling to provide anywhere near the million dollars needed to fund it. Yet if he allowed anyone's name to be attached to it for a lesser amount, no one else would want to give anything. He hoped--he prayed--that announcing the creation of the institute would trigger a series of donations in the 100K range. It was a risk, but as was often said in corporate board rooms: no risk, no reward.

Todd Rawlings from the Times-Dispatch wiggled his index finger, signaling that he wanted to ask a question. "How much funding from the state legislature are you seeking for this institute? I don't recall any discussion of this down in Richmond. And will there be any personnel associated with this institute besides the director your searching for?"

These were just the sort of niggling questions he would ask. But Michaelson was ready for him. "We're not looking for any state funding at all." Michaelson knew they wouldn't get it anyway, so there was no point in asking. "Assuming the capital appeal reaches its target, we're assuming that this will cover the initial cost of setting up a state-of-the-art office complex plus salaries for the director and two support staff for five years.

"And there will, of course, be other personnel: the scholars who will be carrying out the institute's research. Their salaries and other costs will be paid for by the grants received by the institute for specific research projects. Aside from the director, then, the institute will not have a permanent staff. Only those working on research grants--either from the existing faculty or elsewhere--will have appointments there. We anticipate, though, that the institute will be highly successful in obtaining research grants, and that ten or more fellows will be working there at any given time."

"If I can just follow up," Rawlings continued. "Where will these grants come from? Have any been awarded yet?"

"In that we've just announced the Public Policy Institute today, I think it would be a bit much to expect it to have won any research grants yet, Todd," Michaelson replied, trying to hide his annoyance. "Obtaining grants for the institute will clearly be the number one priority for the new director. A strong record of grantsmanship will be one of the criteria for selecting him--or her." Actually, it would be the most important criterion.

Michaelson tensed up as Tricia Raditz raised her plump hand. "President Michaelson, could you please tell us how the new institute director will be selected? Will there be any student input into the decision?"

Michaelson was relieved: these were actually good questions. "As a matter of fact, Tricia, two students will be appointed to the selection committee, which will have eleven members altogether: two students, five faculty members, and three business or community leaders. The eleventh member--and its chair--will be the provost, Jeannette Bobier."

This will keep her pre-occupied, thought Michaelson. He had appointed Jeannette Bobier as provost--the university's chief academic officer--eight years ago. She had served him well, especially through her willingness to issue negative recommendations in promotion and tenure cases, all of which had to go through the provost's office before being turned over to Michaelson for a final decision (positive decisions on his part then had to be ratified by the Board of Trustees, but this was a formality since it always did). Unlike the provost he inherited when he first arrived who had prided himself on protecting faculty interests, Bobier had taken over the role of heavy that Michaelson had played by himself during those early years and had even replaced him as the focus of faculty discontent.

Recently, though, Michaelson had come to suspect that Bobier herself was showing signs of discontent. He had heard rumors that she had begun talking to various people around campus about preparing for the "post-Michaelson era" at NDU. Furthermore, there were disturbing signs that others took her seriously. Michaelson had very much hoped that he would be appointed to the board of Northern Virginia software giant ZARD Industries when a vacancy opened up on it. He had been furious when he found out that she had gotten the appointment instead of him. He had, of course, congratulated her effusively. But he had begun to suspect that she was angling for his job.

Putting her in charge of the selection committee would allow Michaelson to blame her if the new director or even the Public Policy Institute itself turned out to be a flop. Looking on the bright side, though, her joining the ZARD Industries board of directors might enable her to obtain a big donation for the it--something Michaelson had never succeeded in doing.

"How will the Public Policy Institute fit into NDU administratively?" asked Kate Morgan from the Post without having raised her hand. "Will it be in the College of Arts and Sciences, or what?"

"It will not belong to any college," Michaelson answered. "The institute director will be considered the equivalent of the dean of a college, and will report directly to the provost, just like a dean."

"Doesn't the political science department offer a master's program in public administration?" she continued. "Political science, public administration, public policy--aren't these all related? What will the relationship be between the Political Science Department and the new Public Policy Institute?"

None, as far as Michaelson was concerned. The senior faculty in that department in particular was especially incompetent. There would have been no need to create the Public Policy Institute if they had done what they were supposed to and gotten grants for the university.

"The Political Science Department already has its hands full managing its large undergraduate program as well as the MPA program that you mentioned," Michaelson replied. "It would be unfair to burden its new acting chair with running the institute as well."

"We, of course, would welcome--indeed, we expect--that several of the faculty from political science--as well as economics and other departments--will be actively involved in the work of the institute."

Sensing that the group was running out of questions, Michaelson glanced down at his watch. "Uh oh! There's another meeting I must attend. If you have any further questions, please direct them to our provost, Jeannette," he said, pointing toward her. After nodding toward the camera, he then strode out of the room.

Chapter 1

2010-06-12T05:18:00.000-07:00

Robert Barnes was sitting in his office looking at the latest issue of the journal Foreign Policy. It was the end of September, and more importantly, of the fifth week of classes (only ten more weeks to go). The seemingly endless line of students waiting outside his door during his office hours during the first week of the semester had disappeared. But now that he had handed back the first midterm to his upper division International Relations Theory class, traffic had picked up again as students from that class came by trying to convince him to raise their grade--something he never did.

International Relations Theory was a difficult class to teach because none of the students wanted to take it. At some point in the past--well before he had come to NDU--the political science faculty decided that all international relations majors must take the class. This, of course, meant that two sections of it had to be offered each semester to accommodate the number of students who needed to take it. Much to his annoyance, Rob had been assigned to teach one of those sections each semester, in addition to his international political economy class and his seminar on Latin American politics.

Well, at least he had managed to avoid teaching the lower division Introduction to International Relations or Introduction to Comparative Politics classes. Trying to explain international relations to clueless freshmen and sophomores was not his idea of fun. Still, the students he got in International Relations Theory knew little enough about the subject even though they had to take both those lower division classes as prerequisites for it. Rob often wondered what was being taught in these two lower division classes.

There were no students in his office at present, but his reading was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. "Hello?" he said somewhat distantly into the mouthpiece. He considered it demeaning to answer the phone by announcing his name like so many other professors did.

"Hey Rob! This is Johnny Chang!"

Rob's feelings of depression instantly lifted. He and Johnny had been graduate students together back at M.I.T. More importantly, they had been friends.

"Johnny!" Rob almost shouted. "How's life as an investment banker?"

Rob remembered how Johnny did not have as successful a graduate student career as he had in the M.I.T. Political Science Department. Johnny had not been as adept at mastering quantitative social science methodology as Rob had. Worse, Johnny had openly questioned its usefulness in classes and seminars taught by the professors who most passionately believed in its utility. This was very different from the other graduate students (including himself, Rob sheepishly recalled) who vied with each other to demonstrate to the professors how conversant they were with the sophisticated quantitative methods being presented by not asking questions that might reveal a greater degree of confusion than was prudent to admit. He had been grateful to Johnny for always asking the questions that the rest of them were afraid to ask.

Johnny had gotten through the program, but it had been a real slog for him. Johnny had not been awarded any pre- or post-doctoral fellowship like he or Scott Halpern had. And while he had applied for several of them, Johnny had not even been called to interview for, much less been offered, a coveted tenure-track assistant professorship in a political science department.

Johnny, though, had been clever. He took advantage of the fluency in Chinese he had acquired from his parents--who had fled the chaos of China's Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and eventually made their way to the United States--to write a dissertation based on interviews with Chinese officials in Beijing. Rob recalled that it had something to do with comparing their responsiveness toward U.S. Government negotiating positions with respect to different business sectors. The dissertation was not theoretically sophisticated. Indeed, Rob had helped Johnny give it what little sophistication it did possess. While researching it, though, Johnny had gotten to know quite a few American bankers and businessmen operating in China. These contacts, as well as the wealth of practical information Johnny gained through his field research, resulted in his being offered analyst positions by several prestigious investment houses. He had eventually accepted an offer from Mack & Monk--a growing firm in Baltimore that had recently scored several financial coups.

"It's never dull," Johnny responded. "Asia's going through a lot of financial turmoil right now, as you well know. I think, though, that it's bottoming out and that there are some great buys out there. Don't quote me, but I think some of the names I'm acquiring now could go up as much as fifty or even a hundred percent in the next twelve months. And how's life there at NDU? I keep hearing about what an up and coming place it is with that dynamic president of yours. It's certainly getting a lot of good publicity."

NDU stood for New Dominion University. It was a relatively new state university located in the Northern Virginia suburbs outside Washington, D.C. It had been established forty years ago as a branch of the venerable University of Virginia--founded by Thomas Jefferson--and became independent a few years later. It had been a pretty sleepy place until about ten years ago when George Michaelson became president. He succeeded in organizing the business community of Northern Virginia--a region which had become far more populous as well as far richer than neighboring Washington, D.C.--to lobby the state legislature in Richmond for increased funding. Despite strong opposition from the University of Virginia and other long-established state universities, he succeeded dramatically at this as well as at private fund-raising, and so a building and hiring boom ensued at NDU. In addition to recruiting some fifty bright young assistant professors like Rob, Michaelson had also lured a dozen "star" professors away from Ivy League and other prestigious universities. Some of these people were so famous that stories appeared in The Washington Post when they were hired by NDU--as well as the exorbitant salaries they were being paid. In the past couple of years, though, Michaelson's efforts appeared to have lost momentum. Rumor had it that he had become fairly unpopular with the state legislature down in Richmond.

"It's never dull here either," said Rob enthusiastically. This was not, however, quite how he felt. At major research universities, the standard teaching load was two classes per semester (two and two). At NDU, however, just as at many other "teaching" colleges, the standard load was three classes per semester (three and three). And unlike other departments at NDU which offered graduate programs and hence could hire graduate students as teaching assistants, his department did not offer an M.A. or Ph.D. program in political science. There being no graduate students for him to draw upon as T.A.'s, then, Rob found that he had to do all the time-consuming and tedious work of grading himself. This would not have been so bad if the classes were small, but here they were very, very large.

This didn't seem to bother the older professors in the department who were hired before George Michaelson became president. Most of them had published relatively little before getting tenure and almost nothing afterward. They seemed content with remaining associate professors until they retired, thus avoiding the arduous but completely optional task of acquiring the "national reputation" necessary for promotion to full professor.

The younger assistant professors like Rob, though, did have ambitions to publish. Indeed, they had to have such ambitions: as NDU's prestige rose, so had the standards for granting tenure. Yet while tenure-track professors were now expected to publish more, they were also expected to teach no less than their more senior colleagues. The irony of the situation, however, was that these senior professors who had obtained tenure when NDU's standards were lower were now the principal judges of whether or not the junior professors were meeting the higher standards of the present. Many of them, Rob and most other assistant professors were certain, would not qualify for tenure if they had to apply for it now.

Still, Rob was one of the lucky ones with regard to publications, and he knew it. He had been awarded a pre-doctoral fellowship by the prestigious Brookings Institution in Washington to write his dissertation on the politics of free trade between the U.S. and Latin America. That year had been a very fruitful one: not only had the dissertation been completed and successfully defended back at M.I.T., but also accepted for publication by the highly respectable Johns Hopkins University Press. All this had helped him land the job at NDU.

But that wasn't all. During the summer before his first year teaching, he prepared a proposal for a post-doctoral fellowship which a few months later was accepted by Harvard University's Center for International Affairs. After his first year at NDU, then, he had gone back up to the academic paradise of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Just as at Brookings, he worked non-stop on the book--this time one on how Latin American governments sought to negotiate with the World Bank and the IMF over the terms these two institutions imposed as conditions for their lending and other aid activities.

"Did you finish that book you were working on up at Harvard?" Johnny asked.

"Yeah. It will be out in a few months," Rob tried to reply casually, but without being able to suppress a note of pride in his voice. This would also be published by Johns Hopkins. The outside reviews that the Press had sought for the manuscript were glowing, and miraculously little revision had been required.

"God! You are hot! When are they going to give you tenure?" inquired Johnny.

"As a matter of fact, I'm going up this year," Rob answered. It was customary at NDU and virtually all other American universities to apply for tenure in the sixth year of being a tenure-track assistant professor, when a decision had to be made either to grant promotion and tenure or terminate the assistant professor's employment. Rob, though, had decided not to wait until his sixth year but to "go up" now during his third year.

"That's really early to be going up, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but look: one book with a respectable university press is all that is necessary for tenure here. Having a second book accepted by one is more than enough," Rob bragged without trying to sound like he was doing so. This was not just true in his department at NDU, but almost all other political science departments as well.

"As our friend Scott would say, you have really `over fulfilled your quota,'" said Johnny. "Speaking of Scott: have you heard from him recently?"

Scott Halpern was a sore subject for Rob. And Rob suspected that Johnny knew it. Rob, Scott, and Johnny had all concentrated in the hot field of international political economy at M.I.T. But just as their professors had regarded Rob more highly than Johnny, they had regarded Scott more highly than Rob or just about any other graduate student. Scott had done his dissertation on the role of business elites in post-Soviet Russian politics--a very hot topic. He was always coming out with old communist phrases like "over fulfilling quotas." During the year that Rob was a fellow at Brookings, Scott had a fellowship from the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Although "the Kennan," as Scott called it, did not usually provide fellowships to doctoral candidates, it had done so for him as a result of his dissertation adviser having convinced the institute's director of how vitally important Scott's work was.

Rob and Scott had had friendly enough relations back at M.I.T. and even during their fellowship year in Washington--until, that is, they realized that they were both being considered for the same tenure track assistant professorship at Princeton. Both had applied, as had literally hundreds of others, for the international political economy (regional specialization open) position that had been advertized in the American Political Science Association's Personnel Service Newsletter that fall. Incredibly, both Rob and Scott had been selected for the short list of five candidates invited to Princeton to make a presentation on their research and undergo a grueling day and a half of interviews.

Rob had thought he had made a good presentation, but as several of the Princeton professors asked him more about Scott than about himself, he sensed that things weren't going his way. He had been a little nervous going there to begin with, and them doing this only made him more so. Further, Rob was the first of the five candidates to come through for interviews--and to be long forgotten by the time the last one had done so and the decision was to be made. As it happened, Scott had gone through last and had obviously made a strong impression.

"I really haven't been in touch with him," said Rob. "Since we follow different areas of the world, we don't have much reason to contact each other. How about you?"

"I did speak to him a little while ago," Johnny replied imprecisely. "He's still working on his first book."

"I sure hope he gets it done soon," Rob commented, trying to sound concerned. "Schools like Princeton are famous for chewing up assistant professors and spitting them out after six years. Then they have to go somewhere else and start the tenure process all over again." Rob had no doubt, though, that Scott would finish his book. The main reason he hadn't done it yet, Rob thought, was because he was too busy making trips to Russia, writing a stream of articles for high profile journals (including one in the current issue of Foreign Policy, Rob noted with envy), and being interviewed by the media.

"Getting tenure at a place like NDU is a lot easier," Rob continued. "Once I get it, I figure that I'll be in a good position to move on to somewhere else with tenure."

That, at least, was Rob's hope. He sure as hell didn't want to spend the rest of his career at NDU with its high teaching loads, low salaries, minimal support for faculty research, chaotic library, two generation old computers, pathetic senior faculty, ignorant administrators, and unending stream of low quality students. He had worked hard to get the second book finished not so much to get tenure from NDU, but in the hopes of moving to a tenured position at what he considered to be a "real" university.

"So you're thinking of moving on from NDU?" Johnny asked. "I hope everything's okay there."

Rob knew he had to be careful about how he responded to this. Rob didn't want the talkative Johnny to let Scott or any of their other former fellow graduate students know how desperate he was to leave NDU. Soon after he had begun teaching there he realized that the reality of NDU did not match the glowing reputation that George Michaelson had successfully built up for it. He had also been smart enough to know that he had nothing to gain by saying anything negative about NDU to anyone on the outside. Michaelson's successful PR campaign made the entire NDU faculty look good--even if it didn't feel good. Dwelling on the university's shortcomings would only make him look bad for having accepted a position and stayed on there.

"It's a terrific place, Johnny! Don't get me wrong. But you know how it is--greener pastures and all that," Rob said, trying to sound jovial. "Seriously, though, there is one thing lacking in my department: the opportunity to work with graduate students. And it looks like I will have to go elsewhere in order to get that opportunity."

"How are your undergraduates?"

"Their writing leaves much to be desired, but we've got some good ones," said Rob. Technically speaking, this was not a lie: there were some good ones. But they were a tiny minority. The overwhelming majority of students Rob had encountered were mediocrities. Few of them could write a coherent paragraph, much less an essay. He had also found that most students were completely unwilling to participate in class discussion. And at least half of those who did went too far the other direction, displaying an utter infatuation with the sound of their own voices expounding vapid ideas that weren't even theirs anyway.

Thinking about the generally poor quality of the students reminded Rob about the source of his depression. It had been a surprise and shock to discover how unprepared they were during his first semester teaching at NDU. He had become used to it by the second semester, but after being away for a year back in Cambridge where the overwhelming majority of Harvard and M.I.T. undergraduates he encountered were very bright (or at least were clever enough to appear so), he had increasingly come to dread facing NDU undergraduates again.

As far as Rob was concerned, most of them should never have been admitted. But admitted they were, and in great quantity. In fact, it was well known at the university that NDU admitted over eighty percent of those who applied. As the administration constantly reminded them, more students at NDU meant not only more tuition payments but also more funding from the state. Rob wondered why NDU bothered to reject anyone at all: he didn't see how they could be much worse than the ones admitted.

"And are you able to place your good ones in top notch graduate programs elsewhere?"

This was another sore subject for Rob. The one thing that made teaching at NDU that first year bearable was that he had a handful of bright, interested students in each of his classes. Some wanted to go on to graduate programs at more prestigious universities, and Rob had helped guide the brightest ones (the 3.7's and above) through the complicated graduate school application process, and spent hours filling out recommendation forms for them and others. Very few of them, however, succeeded in getting admitted into competitive programs elsewhere. Most had to settle for the disappointment of being admitted to relatively non-competitive graduate programs at NDU or schools like it.

"I've had some success," Rob replied. "I got one of my undergrads into Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs." This, however, was not the whole story. His very best student that first year had been admitted into this prestigious program and had even gotten a scholarship. What Rob didn't say was that he only just learned from one of the secretaries in the department office that the sonofabitch had dropped out of the program after just one semester. He had been unprepared, the student had told her, for the intense nature both of the program as well as life in New York City.

Rob had been furious when he found out. He had recommended that student very strongly to Columbia. What was Columbia going to think the next time he recommended one of his students for that program?

"Well, it sounds like things are basically going pretty well for you there at NDU," said Johnny. "Look, the reason I called is this: Mack & Monk is expanding its investment activity in Latin America. I hoped I might be able to lure you away from academia to the world of investment banking. I know you would fit in here, and I would enjoy working with you. Besides, after all the advice you gave me on my dissertation, I want to do something for you in return."

Rob sat up in his chair. He had not expected to hear this little speech. "Why, thank you, Johnny. This comes as quite a surprise."

"Of course," Johnny continued, I realize that this is the beginning of the school year and you couldn't just pick up and leave."

If Rob had really been interested in becoming an investment banker, that certainly wouldn't have held him back. But he wasn't interested in that. He wanted instead to be a professor--a very great professor who was not only respected by other professors, but who was called upon for advice and comment from the State Department, Capitol Hill, the media, and the business world. What attracted Rob--and so many others like him--to academia as opposed to most other professions was the freedom to write and publish according to his own agenda and not someone else's, the freedom of not having to work in his office from nine to five (or later) five days a week but to show up only on the two days a week he taught, and the flexibility that the long summer break (plus the five-week one between semesters at Christmas and the week in the spring) gave him to travel or concentrate on his own research.

"Mr. Monk himself was very impressed with that op-ed piece you had in The Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago," Johnny added. "When I told him you were a buddy of mine, he asked me if I would talk to you about the possibility of your joining us on the research team here. Although everyone knows that NDU pays high salaries, I think you'd find that our firm would offer you a much, much more generous package."

Rob was certain it would too. While the high salaries of the "star" professors George Michaelson had attracted to NDU had been well advertized, the low salaries of the "regular" faculty were not. Once again, though, Rob had nothing to gain by letting Johnny or anybody else in on the truth.

"So you saw that?" Rob asked. "Yeah, it came out at a fortuitous time." That was an understatement. Rob had sent it in to the Journal over six months ago. The op-ed editor had called him to say that they hoped to run it, but that she would hold it until there was a news story to run it with. In the meantime, she told him, do not send it anywhere else. He had almost given up hope of seeing it in print when the European economic crisis caused a big enough downturn in Latin American stock markets to warrant the appropriate news coverage. He had then had to spend much of the Monday and Tuesday of his last week at Harvard on the phone with a sub-editor updating and massaging the piece. Its publication on the Wednesday led to some welcome attention just before leaving Cambridge and the disillusioning reality of NDU.

Yes, Rob had no doubt that Johnny's firm would pay a far higher salary than NDU. On the other hand, he strongly doubted that an investment firm would allow him the freedom to publish op-ed pieces or anything else without thoroughly vetting them in advance, if even then. But being a professor--even a low paid junior one at NDU--did give him that freedom. And as far as Rob was concerned, there was nothing, nothing, as thrilling as seeing something he had written come out in print--especially in a publication like the Wall Street Journal with a readership in the millions.

"Listen, Johnny, I appreciate the offer. But when it comes down to it, NDU is too good a place to leave right now, even without graduate students. Besides, I've already started the tenure process rolling and I want to see it through."

Actually, there had been a little unexpected friction with regard to this. Rob had had an oral agreement with Trond Knutsen, chair of the department when Rob was hired and during his first two years, that Rob would go up for tenure in his third year. But Ruth Silverstein, who had become acting chair this summer (after an external search for a new chair had failed to find a candidate whom both the department and the administration could agree on) had actually tried to dissuade him from doing so, saying she thought he would be in a stronger position next year after his second book was out and he had had a chance to perform more service to the university. He had quickly set her straight.

"I can appreciate that, Rob. But listen: maybe you can do some consulting for us. If possible, I'd like you to come up and talk to some of our fund managers and research analysts one day next week. I can offer you a thousand dollar consulting fee plus your expenses, of course. We'll go for a night on the town afterward."

This was an offer Rob was happy to accept. While his NDU salary was meager, the fact that he only had to show up two days a week left him free to do consulting on other days. In fact, the university encouraged it. Rob had been surprised his first semester upon reading his copy of a memo from the Provost to the faculty stating that the university allowed them to devote one day per week to paid consulting when class was in session (they were free to consult as much as they liked at other times). Most of the professors in his department would be lucky if they could get one day of consulting per year, Rob thought to himself. "It's a deal, Johnny!"

"Great! And if you hit it off with the gang up here as I think you will, maybe we can bring you back on a regular basis--if you're willing. But look: I've got to go now. Something's happening in the market. Let's talk again early next week."

"Okay, Johnny. Thanks for calling," said Rob before hanging up. Not a bad return from one op-ed piece, he thought. It suddenly looked like this year was going to be a lot more pleasant than he had thought it would be.