No Virginia, Tenure is NOT Everything

Tenure- that university-exclusive privilege of being exempt from actually having to produce quality work- has proven not sufficient to prevent a few professors of late from actually losing their jobs. I hope we all remember the racist rants of former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, who was fired last year for falsifying his references and for plagiarism.

Now we see another 'professor' get the sack for the same reason as Churchill- plagiarism. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Constantine has been fired from Columbia after an eighteen-month long probe fro plagiarism. This is the same professor who had a noose hung outside her office in October of 2007. As our esteemed colleague JammieWearingFool says today,

It would also be nice if the NYPD could ever tell us who hung the noose. My hunch has always been it was Constantine herself or someone close to her.

I agree. And I find it delicious that some of these professors from disciplines that lack the legitimacy of some others are finding themselves actually called to account for their misconduct. I hope that Constantine's appeal process is short, but since she is a confirmed agitator, i fully expect that she will hire a lawyer, sue everyone in sight and try to extort a settlement by crying racism everywhere possible- aided and abetted by the mainstream media. Let us not forget that the noose incident was front-page news. Will her firing enjoy the same publicity? I won't hold my breath.