[Marxism] David Graeber

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://insidehighered.com/news/2005/05/18/yale
May 18
Early Exit

Yale University is getting rid of a popular anthropology professor, setting 
off protests from supporters who believe he is losing his job for being an 
anarchist and for visibly backing graduate student unionization. As the 
professor considers filing a formal grievance with the university, 
anthropologists and labor officials nationwide have already organized an 
online petition signed by 3,000 people.

The decision not to renew David Graeber?s contract after the end of the 
2005-6 academic year was made in a private meeting of 12 senior faculty 
members who are required to keep the proceedings confidential. (Inside 
Higher Ed contacted several who said they could not comment.) In the 
absence of an explanation from the panel, Graeber and his supporters insist 
that the decision could not have been made based on his work.

?His scholarship was at the level he would have had tenure at any normal 
university,? said Marshall Sahlins, an anthropology professor at the 
University of Chicago. ?As he has become a more visible anarchist,? added 
Andrej Grubacic, a researcher at the State University of New York at 
Binghamton, who has worked with Graeber, ?he has encountered more 
opposition, fallen out of favor.?

The closed-door review was for promotion from assistant professor to ?term 
associate,? an untenured position that Graeber said is usually just a 
?rubber stamp,? barring significant problems with teaching, scholarship or 
ethics. Graeber passed his first review at Yale, which came at the 
three-year mark. The review for term associate comes at the end of his 
sixth year, and normally renews the faculty member for four more years, 
after which he or she is considered for tenure.

Graeber, a self-avowed anarchist who has supported physical intervention at 
corporate globalization conferences, knew his politics were controversial.

Still, he said he passed the third-year review easily, having ?kept my 
activism in New York, and scholarship in New Haven.? The opposition began 
in the sixth year review, in 2004.

At that time, with a deadlocked vote, the panel gave Graeber a warning. It 
did so, admonishing Graeber for ?being unreliable,? he said, ?showing up 
late to class, and not doing enough service work.? Graeber denies the 
charges, and none of the students interviewed who took his classes said 
they recall him having a punctuality problem. The board extended Graeber?s 
contract for two, rather than four years, and scheduled a review after the 
first year. In the meantime, Graeber organized a colloquium series and got 
involved in student projects in response to the criticism about his lack of 
service work.

Given his response to the criticism, and his prolific publishing ? two 
books and dozens of papers, articles and essays ? Graeber expected to pass 
the one-year review, which occurred May 3. Instead, based on a majority 
vote by senior anthropology faculty members, he was given a short letter 
saying that while the department recognized ?a number of positive qualities 
of [Graeber?s] scholarship,? it did not choose to renew his contract.

?It?s normal that these meetings are confidential, but not that no reason 
is given at all,? Graeber said. ?I responded to their criticisms, so there 
was nothing to say this time, so they just didn?t say anything.? Helaine 
Klasky, a Yale spokeswoman, wrote in an e-mail reply to a request for 
comment on the situation: ?Personnel matters involving the Yale faculty are 
confidential and therefore cannot be discussed.?

Given the information vacuum, Graeber and his supporters assume that his 
politics forged his exit, though Klasky suggested otherwise in her e-mail. 
?It is the university?s policy that political views of faculty members are 
not a factor in decisions about reappointment and/or promotion,? she wrote.

But Graeber said that he first started getting the cold shoulder from some 
colleagues after his third year when he became more visible in movements 
against the International Monetary Fund and Group of Eight. ?The final 
straw,? Graeber suggested, came when he defended a graduate student who he 
had mentored earlier this year.

Graeber believed that the student was being treated unfairly because of her 
involvement with the Graduate Employees and Students Organization, a 
graduate student union that is not recognized by the university and has 
been locked in a longstanding battle with Yale administrators. Faculty 
members said that the unionization issue is a controversial topic in the 
anthropology department, and that some professors have openly expressed 
their distaste for the union. There is no evidence that Graeber?s backing 
of the student directly led to the decision on his contract. Still, he 
thinks it was ?the excuse they needed.?

Anthropologists who find it hard to believe that Graeber was denied 
promotion would like some light shed on his review. ?He has published as 
much in 10 years as many people do in a lifetime,? said Hylton White, an 
anthropology professor at the University of Chicago who knows Graeber from 
grad school. ?And given how many students take his classes? ? one course, 
Myth and Ritual, drew 137 students ? ?it?s hard to understand. What does 
one have to do? I think it?s that secrecy of the process, that?s why so 
many people are supporting him.?

Support for him is strong. Thirty-nine Yale graduate students of 
anthropology, about two-thirds of the total, have signed a petition 
encouraging Yale to keep Graeber. Another 3,000 supporters signed a similar 
petition. Signers include a few high profile professors, some anarchists 
and union members, and some more unusual self-designations, like signature 
number 2,234: ?Tom Welsh ? Human Being.?

Many of Graeber?s staunchest supporters are students, both undergraduate 
and graduate, who describe him fondly. Thomas Frampton, an undergraduate 
who organized a  conference on globalization with Graeber?s help, said that 
undergraduate students generally believe Graeber was not renewed because of 
his involvement in the anarchy movement. ?I know him as a teacher and as a 
mentor who gives himself to the students, and Yale needs that,? he added.

So what is the trouble with David Graeber? ?That?s the problem,? said 
White, the Chicago anthropologist. ?You just don?t know, and nobody has to 
tell.?

? David Epstein

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