LETTER: Grave Mistake

As a graduate student in the Department of English, I view as a grave, even morally reprehensible mistake the decision to not grant tenure to Professor Arkady Plotnitsky. Not only is the entire department -- faculty, graduate students and undergraduates alike -- outraged by the decision, what is more, Professor Plotnitsky's intellectual rigor and breadth, brilliant record of publications and unflagging devotion to his students and colleagues prompt serious questions as to the reliability, and even pertinence, of Penn's methods of tenure review. Admittedly, I might dredge up a sort of bitter irony from the fact that the single most brillant person that I have ever known, at Penn or anywhere else, was just now judged to be inadequate by the committee that reviewed his application for tenure. But by the same token, I can only condemn an administrative apparatus that visited this horrible irony upon us, no laughing matter for anyone concerned about the status of liberal arts in higher education today. Indeed, apart from the pain and uncertainty the decision has no doubt caused Professor Plotnitsky himself, the whole debacle has had an especially pernicious effect on graduate students -- not just graduate students in English, but also students in all the departments between which Professor Plotnitsky's seminal course on literary theory is cross-listed, including Comparative Literature, Romance Languages, Slavic Languages and Literature and English. As a first-year graduate student I myself took Professor Plotnitsky's literary theory class and there began to acquire what are arguably the basic tools of the trade in the field of literary studies today. In my own particular case, Professor Plotnitsky's literary theory course turned out to be the most influential and important class that I was to take during my entire career at Penn. That independence of mind, originality or research and the highest standards in teaching are not sufficient credentials for a career in the academy? What else is required? Whom must we court and whom must we bow down to when our own time comes? What propitiative rites must we ourselves one day perform in order to win over those higher powers of the administration, which now seem to meet the classical definition of deity, in that their mysterious actions do not conform to the dictates of our merely earthbound intelligence? As can very well be seen, the University's decision to grant Arkady Plotnitsky tenure has left me only with bitter questions, not informed answers, as I myself try to begin a life devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and instruction. In my younger, more naive days, I had thought that the University was the proper place to lead such a life. DAVID HERMAN Graduate Student School of Arts and Sciences

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.