Yale Professor Gets the All-Too-Human Academic Screw

Professor David Graeber was not offered a renewed contract by Yale University for reasons unknown.  Current rumor and speculation suggests that the Yale Anthropology Department refused to extend Graeber's contract due to his anarchist political views and associations.  Whether or not this is actually the case cannot be conclusively ascertained, as Yale University policy requires confidentiality w.r.t. (at least) the sort of departmental meeting Graeber was voted out in.   I'll say something more about these rumors later.

It is, of course, very displeasing to see a scholar of Graeber's merit denied a commonplace right of passage on the road to tenure, and there can be no doubt that he has massive support from his graduate and undergraduate students.  It appears that forty (out of around eighty) Yale anthropology graduate students have openly demonstrated support for Graeber's retainment (there is a petition here), and where admiration amongst the graduate students runs this high, I'm inclined to suspect the motives of the faculty may not have been the purest.  In addition, Graber's C.V. is rock solid, and his teaching record appears impeccable.  You may read Professor Graeber's personal letter to the department here, where he suggests, perhaps somewhat indecorousloy, that certain intradepartmental accusations regarding his teaching habits were wildly false.  The graduate and undergraduate students of Yale Anthropology have set up an interesting website in his defense which bears reading.

Suspicion of the department's motives is fostered by the faculty's levelling of several seemingly unsubstantiated accusations which appear to be false, and I find it bizarre that, while the goings-on of the secret meetings cannot, in accordance with university policy, be discussed, the faculty do not have the collective ability or will to speak candidly about there own personal views of Graeber and his work.  Whatever the case, if it was going to improve impossible for Graeber to receive tenure at Yale, something which usually requires a unanimous vote, it may have been better for his stay at Yale to be terminated before more of his time and publications went to waste and harder feelings developed.

I have not here accused the faculty for firing Graeber for his political views and affiliations.  In the ivory tower, that would be the worst sort of abomination, and surely such behavior cannot be attributed to highly distinguished and well-educated members of academia without a solid evidence.  Perhaps I'm too naive, but that a professor at Yale would not be retained for religious or political views strikes me as one of the most liberal flights of fancy imaginable.  I will, however, go so far as to opine that it's a shame Dr. Graeber was not retained and will not be receiving tenure at Yale, something it appears his teaching and work - all else aside - clearly merit.  These sorts of quarrels and petty squabbles are not new to academia, and I'm personally think it's a shame that so much politicing, flattery, and massaging of the vanities of fellow academics is essential to achieving promotion.  Yet we are, unfortunately, all too human.