Lance, you can still read TR’s book, although it will appear in the slightly less convenient form of separately published articles! (I’m just glad she’s not ditching the work entirely. And, we can all think of cases in which a scholar has published a really big article, and that article’s importance overshadows the book that scholar publishes out of the same project.

Blech. Not so different from DePaul – a better result here, perhaps, but it’ll leave a nasty taste in your mouth.

But a deeper (and no less real) real tragedy here is the bibliocide committed by TR, and the potential for the same by Prof. Goswami. No good book should be chucked just because it gets smeared. What of the good books and essays and talks and lectures that might come from it? Awfulness. I can only imagine how seriously bad it must be at Zenith.

On a very bad news day – with UCSC closing its American Studies major, Texas losing Jose Limon because of early retirement plans that are gutting the Humanities, and Rutgers on the verge of eating UMDNJ to satisfy Christie – the loss of TR’s book was the lowest, most hurtful blow. I wanted to read that book. We needed that book. When the ashes are cold, I will remember the loss of that book as an example of what happens to the very best and boldest.

As someone who has survived tenure denial, I wouldn’t assume that Prof. Goswami will, like TR, commit bibliocide. But I’ll bet she’ll have a few rough years as she regains her self-confidence.

In my case, the Dean had given my former department money for a line in American women’s history, but because the department never bought into the notion that they *needed* someone in that line, I was the fifth person hired for the job in 13 years. I wonder if that’s what might have happened in some of the cases above at DePaul–the individual who had the power to create the position and make the hire was not the person or persons who were voting on tenure.

I agree with what I hear both of you saying–”fit” is a question to be answered at the job interview stage, not the fifth year review.

I also agree with this. However, my experience is that there are consistent scenarios in which this kind of pathology occurs. In most cases they involve shifts in power structure within a department between hiring and tenure, such as where a faction (or single powerful individual like a chair) that was strong enough to get the person hired later loses power through attrition or other means and becomes unable to secure tenure.