Tales of Tenure Terror
This column continues to manifest its own content! Yes, I sure will be talking about Jessica Krug. Here’s the info:
Krug is (was) a professor of Africana Studies.
Seemingly out of nowhere, she posted a Medium post (the modern way of addressing the town square) in dramatic fashion.
GW has revoked her tenure. Rightful ire spreads.
This is so baffling. Seriously hurtful and disregard. Also, she, as a white woman, could have studied Black studies and still be successful. In fact, likely more, because white people who study underprivileged groups usually get lauded more for being an ally.
I don’t want to pathologize Krug, because that would take away the harm she has done, but this is the work of a stone-cold narcissist. She wanted the attention and credibility that the identity gave her.
This is reminiscent of something that is rampant in academia: People study minority and other groups because they are INTERESTING to them but they don’t actually have invested feelings for the humans they study. So, then, what if a byproduct of this is more research? Then how can it be bad?
Somewhat related: check out this scam involving a woman who created a persona of an indigenous scholar and then killed her off for the attention.
More reading:
The Many Blacknesses of a Confused White Academic
“Jess La Bombalera” and the Pathologies of Racial Authenticity
I am so grateful to have a fantastic advisor for my dissertation. Graduate school experience can be made unbearable by a bad advisor. I feel for anyone that has this trouble, and here are some read tragedies. From a Facebook group:
My supervisor lied to the graduate director about my progress, and did numerous things to try to prolong my degree, including suggesting content errors as corrections. In addition to telling me that he could only revise 10-12 pages of my 148-page dissertation per week (previously 5 days for a chapter) – a timeline that I later realized would coincide with him becoming the graduate director –, he refused to answer short questions two days before I was to submit my thesis, telling me to “check things up online.” I revised my thesis on my own, and defended with minor revisions. Throughout my degree he also strongly discouraged me from attending and participating in conferences.
Although I graduated in 2019, he has continued to do numerous unethical things to try to contact me (one which has caused the department’s undergraduate secretary to leave and another was attempting to synchronize my university email with his). Other professors in the department are aware of his behaviour; however, they are reluctant to discuss it (this is why I would like your raw perspective as an advisor on the inside in academia).
This is bullying.
What is this? A semi-regular newsletter about culture and academia and academic culture.