Chapter 3

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

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

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.