It’s funny how the US “meritocracy” never seems to work out for white Christians, no matter how objectively excellent their performance happens to be:
I got the news—I kid you not—on Friday the 13th.
In April.
Seven months ago.
Since when, I have been living a lie. Or a half truth. Or…oh, fuck it, it sucks.
Because it is nonsense, of course. I deserve to be promoted to full professor.
I have published a second major monograph with a prestigious academic publisher (our standard in the department, barring an outside offer from another university) that has been described in the flagship journal for my field as a “magnum opus” likely to be a “game-changer” in the long-overdue reassessment of Vatican II’s deficient Mariology.
I have held fellowships from the Mellon Foundation (twice), the American Council of Learned Societies (twice), and the Guggenheim (you only get one of those per lifetime).
I have won the oldest award in the country for excellence in undergraduate teaching (the Quantrell Award) as well as a Provost’s award for my teaching.
I have designed and taught now thirty different courses for undergraduates and graduates in the twenty-five years since I was hired at the University of Chicago as a newly-minted Ph.D. (Syllabi here.)
I have written over thirty reviews of books in my academic field and published sixteen substantive peer-reviewed articles, with additional pieces under contract and in press.
My first monograph won the prize from the Medieval Academy of America for a first book published on a medieval subject “judged to be…of outstanding quality,” as well as a prize for the best book in intellectual history published in 2002.
I have done all the appropriate service to my profession and my university as a reviewer, committee member, conference participant, and colleague.
And on Friday, April 13th, of this year, I was told that my scholarship was not good enough for the University of Chicago to promote me to full professor.
Either you learn to play identity politics or identity politics plays you. Of course, the more these institutions are converged away from their original purpose, the less capable they are of even performing their most basic functions.
Yes, Jordan, there is a conspiracy…. The Darkstream on the myth of meritocracy in America.