The sharp eyes of Ben Cohen ’10 noticed that Professor and Chair of the American Studies Department, Claire Potter, was featured today in an article on the Inside Higher Ed blog. In “Tenure as a Tarnished Brass Ring,” Scott Jaschik refers to Potter’s recent blog posting on the troubles of the tenure system:
Claire B. Potter has a level of academic success many young Ph.D.’s these days can only dream about. A professor of history and chair of American studies at Wesleyan University, she has tenure at an elite college. Tenure provides her not only with job security, but with part of her identity as the blogger Tenured Radical, where she shares views on a range of topics, writing with the freedom that tenure is supposed to protect.
So why would Potter recently have approached her provost to inquire about the possibility of trading in tenure for a renewable contract?
Why, indeed? Read the article and find out some things about tenure that you’ve probably never thought about.
elite college…uhuh….
elite college…uhuh….