Wit, grace, *and* compassion. Maybe others are right: you're a bad fit in the academy.

Well said, and well done.

And I rather enjoyed working Adam Smith into a quite decent comment as well.

Your work is interesting.

Your family is important.

There is a huge difference from interesting to important.

Never forget that difference.

I learned the same lesson from my barber years ago. After a funeral for a friend that drowned, he was anything but sympathetic: Life goes on he told me. As far as your lack of tenure, get over it, man. I doubt you care THAT much that you were not given tenure. What probably is bothering you is the fact that you were deemed unworthy of tenure. That hurts. Okay now forget it and get on with your life. Your right, I don't want to hear any more about it. I've got my own serious health problems and past disappointments to deal with. Life is too short to dwell on what might have been. And besides, my little finger hurts. Smith was right.

Better luck next time, man.

Maybe patella protection might help, or some scholarly shrieking like Hayek or one of yr crypto-fascist predecessors.

Good for you for putting it in perspective. How could you help it though, as compared to hurricanes, earthquakes and ongoing genocides it is really a non- issue.

trumpit, you are being an utter ass. Dan; my heartiest condolences over your non-tenuring. We here at the Holbo/Waring household look upon these developments with a keen sense of alarm about the top joint of our pinky fingers...I hope that some "the blog giveth. the blog taketh away" dynamic results in a top-notch job elsewhere.

Iago was being an utter ass, too.

What b.w. said.

The blog world is too big to read everything by everybody, but no one who reads blogs is unaware of your name and reputation in this milieu. You have every reason to be prouder of your achievements here than whatever losses you may have had elsewhere. After this I guess I have to add your site to my already over-burdened aggregator.

Today's post is as much evidence of good character as anyone could demonstrate. The University of Chicago has suffered a greater loss than you, but institutions by definition lack at least one redeeming human quality: grace.

Dan: Like Hootsbuddy said, this decision is ultimately Chicago's loss--as usual one is left scratching one's head and wondering what they were thinking. I know this doesn't make it any easier for you, but I hope you don't give up the faith--you're needed.

This post reminds me of what Keynes said: 'In the long run, we are all dead,' something that oddly comforts me at times of extreme disappointment. I don't know why.

What a wonderful passage you've posted. Thanks for this reminder to keep the larger tragedies in mind.

Still, however, I think that it is a shame that you didn't get tenure.

Politics is ultimately ephemeral, but good writing lasts.

Excellent post.

The reason why I've had this done is that you are destined to write an important piece of analysis in 2008 when the Islamist regime in Iran falls. If you stayed at the U of Chicago, you would have been mugged in Nov 2007.

If this is the worst thing that has happened to you, you have been very fortunate. Viktor Frankl (a man who knew a thing or two about hardship) said:
"The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved."

Did anyone note what Dan's chair told the Sun:
"I can assure you it's not specifically about the blog."

He did not say: "I can assure you it's not about the blog."

http://www.nysun.com/article/21296

Thanks for the perspective.

I wonder if we are losing this as a public concept, though I do feel people are as decent before.

It seems to me that a powerful conservative thing stresses self interest, though Smith did argue public interest, it's just that he and other Anglo/American enlightment figures sought to use economic and political mechanisms to direct the usually more powerful private interests.

But there did exist an ideal of public duty and citizenship. Now the right argues the tragedy of the commons without believing in the responsibility of the common or even bigger the opportunity of the commons. To be consistent conservatives should not use the Internet because it is a government program built and mantained by volunteers using Shareware, conservatives should have stuck to the private services offered by AOL or compuserve. But they didn't because a public sphere can be most effective as can rules. Thus we queue providing a "fair" system of first come first serve while in other places it's push as you can meaning the strong and ruthless get scarce goods.

Similarly liberals aregue for a public good, but frequently expect it to come from institutions not individuals. Thus secular liberals donate a half percent of their income to private organizations while religious conservatives donate three percent. Perhaps even more tragically the liberal approach encourages a dependance rather than a sense of being a citizen. I do not resent the resources provided for those in need, but do resent that the focus and affort is spent making them navigate difficult bureaucracies. If their same time was devoted to somehow being part of the process, of giving back then the situation would be more healthy.

I do think that the general development along these lines is being poneered by individuals who are vaguely leftists. For example ebay and craigslist are designed to open markets and other channels of cimmunicatons to everybody. The net was very much influenced by leftist conceptions of anarchial organization and freedom.

Then of course there is Grameen bank, widely successful in Bangladesh whose American branch may prove to be a good long term charity.

http://www.grameen-info.org/

I noticed that hedged 'specifically' too. Real 'assure'-ing.

They're up to no good.

Re Lord Keynes and perspective, it's hard to beat Joseph Addison's 1711 essay, "Westminster Abbey," published in the blog-equivalent Spectator. You can find it at www.bartleby.com/27/6.html.

I heard Jacob Levy was denied tenured too. Unbelieveable.

I always thought UofC was a remarkable place. I haven been scratching my head since the tenure decision. But the death of Wayne Booth brings me back to thinking of Chicago as a remarkable place. Prof. Booth rate a lengthy obit in the NY Times. You can read it at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/11/books/11booth.html

A class with Booth was a remarkable experience. He is representative of what makes Chicago remarkable. In reading his obit, you may notice that after getting his Ph.D. from UofC, he left for twelve years before returning and becoming a Hyde Park institution. So maybe Chicago has not seen the last of Dan. He would not be the first to return to the Grey City.

Paraphrasing Richard III: "The academic world has grown so bad that wrens may prey where eagles dare not perch"

Remember that its better to be a real professor albeit untenured than a mere prattler without practice.

Adam Smith was a wise man, and you, Dan, are one as well. Your words have extended your teaching far beyond the confines of Hyde Park, making me a grateful debtor. Thank you.

Michael Berube (michaelberube.com) cites your nontenuring in an interesting post on public intellectuals today, with a great comment string.

I got to watch lots of nontenurings during my PhD days, and have only admiration for those who labored on up the tenure track toward this grim and ridiculous precipice.

Dan, being a public intellectual may produce an unstable income stream for a while, but its long-term prospects have to be excellent. We are approaching the point in the pendulum-swing where education and thought simply have to come back into vogue. And if your nontenuring helps to corrode the binary machinism of tenure, you'll have done us all a favor.

Life begins at moments like this.

I can't help but wonder, Dan, if this isn't a means of making sure only lockstep liberals make it to Tenured status.

Personally, I'm rather disgusted.

I'm bothered by the talk that blogging wastes time that could be used for "real" scholarly activity.

Using that line of thought should we only tenure profs without families, because families certainly distract from scholarly time. And how about jogging?

Tenure is one of the most currupt system I've ever seen, in the sense that the written rules mean almost nothing compared with tenure politics.

"Using that line of thought should we only tenure profs without families, because families certainly distract from scholarly time."

You think that's a joke? One professor told me when getting a Phd that being a happily married man is a liability as an assitant professor. Another said he waited till he was a full professor before buying a house. A friend who received his PhD from Chicago econ told me that when he had to leave a Friday get-together because his wife was waiting in the car, a well-known Nobel laureate said quite seriously, Do you really have the temperament for this place?

I assume that Drezner's case was handled appropriately (which is not the same as decided correctly), but there's no doubt that there are many perverse incentives in the current system.

Yes. And in the way we partner lawyers. And advance in corporations. and and and ..

did you somehow thing the upper reaches of academia (where chicago surely lies) is somehow immune from such career pressures?

At one time I ran for D.A. I tried to tell people of the situation the way I saw it. I didn't promise to take every case to trial. I lost. Big. It hurt. The fact that I survived and prosper on my much smaller stage than the one you are on does not lessen my pain nor increase yours. Thanks for you blog. I will continue to read it and learn from it as long as you post it.

Congratulations on your healthy sense of perspective, and I hope you knock the tenure committee's socks off next time around.