I have now been a professor for 30 years. Hard to believe. I am often asked about my path through the profession and I finally got around to writing some of it down. I think I might have forgotten a job interview or two (likely the ones I got rejected from) but I managed to remember a great deal.
Over the next year, I will go through what I was thinking as well as what noteworthy events happened along the way. I started at the beginning when I was at the University of Houston and then moved to my next institution: The University of Colorado (where I was from 1996-1999). Today I continue to the next institution: The University of Maryland. I was prompted to think about this period and this blog by the recent football game between Maryland and the University of Michigan (which the latter squeezed by to win - in my opinion [Go Blue]). Regardless, I thought that I would get back to it. Enjoy.
Over the next year, I will go through what I was thinking as well as what noteworthy events happened along the way. I started at the beginning when I was at the University of Houston and then moved to my next institution: The University of Colorado (where I was from 1996-1999). Today I continue to the next institution: The University of Maryland. I was prompted to think about this period and this blog by the recent football game between Maryland and the University of Michigan (which the latter squeezed by to win - in my opinion [Go Blue]). Regardless, I thought that I would get back to it. Enjoy.
The University of Maryland - College Park, 1999-2009
Soooooooooo, I had been at Colorado for three years but things changed from the period of my initial hire (as they often do). You might recall I went to Colorado to be around other people who studied political conflict and violence (most notably, Mark Lichbach and Mike Ward). While there I discovered some other people who I did not really know about ahead of time (e.g., James Scarrit, William Safran, Jeff Kopstein, Dan Drezner and Padraic Kenney in history). There was really no one at Houston who explicitly considered themselves a conflict and violence person. James Gibson was close with his work on political repression but this was not his primary interest at the time and he was incredibly busy (a good thing).
The Colorado move was good in other ways in addition to putting me in closer conversation to "my people". Similar to my time at Houston where I met and interacted with David Klinger in Sociology as well as Amilcar Shabazz in History and African American studies, I also started to interact with people from other departments (e.g., Joy James, Elisa Facio and Evelyn Hu Dehart in Ethnic Studies). This further opened my eyes to the benefits of being at a university. Not everything was the same. Unlike Houston where I taught, lectured and generally hung out with people at Shape Cultural Center or Project Row Houses (with Guggenheim genius Rick Lowe), however, I did not really establish any connections with the local community in Colorado. My affiliation with Shape and occasional interactions with Texas Southern University even facilitated my initial interactions with members of the Republic of New Africa who would often attend different events. In Colorado though, I could never find a spot that felt comfortable.
One day it all changed though (as it occasionally does). I got contacted by the famous Professor Ted Gurr. Now, folks might not be able to understand how important this was at the time but Ted was HUGE in my mind. He wrote some of the most interesting pieces of scholarship on conflict and violence (most notably Why Men Rebel which no one seemed to read completely). He ran an incredibly important project on ethnic persecution and mobilization (i.e., Minorities at Risk). And, he was trying to have an impact on the real world by consulting as well as outright working with distinct government agencies (more on this later). After some awkward beginning, Ted said that he contacted me about coming to Maryland. He had heard that I might be willing to move after Mark and Mike's departures (former colleagues of his). Not only was he telling me that he was interested in my coming to join them at Maryland but he told me straight out that he wanted me to come to Maryland to run Minorities at Risk and what at the time was the premier measure for political democracy - Polity. I was floored. I still needed to interview of course abut this sounded exactly like what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be.
This was noteworthy for me because, for the first time, I allowed myself to consider personal matters. One of the my favorite relatives was in the area and this generally put me back on the East Coast where I felt most comfortable (I was going to live in DC). Now, as anyone who has spent time in DC will tell you, it aint the East Coast but it was closer than Texas or Colorado and frankly I was willing to take anything that got be closer to the city (New York). I had not quite realized that the New York that existed was not the one that I knew and loved (which was dead) but I will get to that later. At the time I was happy to be going homeish.
After an interview, I was off to DC. In many respects, the job and living there was everything that I thought it would be. In other respects, Maryland and DC was an eye-opening train wreck that compelled me to move on. I'll get to this on the next one.
The Colorado move was good in other ways in addition to putting me in closer conversation to "my people". Similar to my time at Houston where I met and interacted with David Klinger in Sociology as well as Amilcar Shabazz in History and African American studies, I also started to interact with people from other departments (e.g., Joy James, Elisa Facio and Evelyn Hu Dehart in Ethnic Studies). This further opened my eyes to the benefits of being at a university. Not everything was the same. Unlike Houston where I taught, lectured and generally hung out with people at Shape Cultural Center or Project Row Houses (with Guggenheim genius Rick Lowe), however, I did not really establish any connections with the local community in Colorado. My affiliation with Shape and occasional interactions with Texas Southern University even facilitated my initial interactions with members of the Republic of New Africa who would often attend different events. In Colorado though, I could never find a spot that felt comfortable.
One day it all changed though (as it occasionally does). I got contacted by the famous Professor Ted Gurr. Now, folks might not be able to understand how important this was at the time but Ted was HUGE in my mind. He wrote some of the most interesting pieces of scholarship on conflict and violence (most notably Why Men Rebel which no one seemed to read completely). He ran an incredibly important project on ethnic persecution and mobilization (i.e., Minorities at Risk). And, he was trying to have an impact on the real world by consulting as well as outright working with distinct government agencies (more on this later). After some awkward beginning, Ted said that he contacted me about coming to Maryland. He had heard that I might be willing to move after Mark and Mike's departures (former colleagues of his). Not only was he telling me that he was interested in my coming to join them at Maryland but he told me straight out that he wanted me to come to Maryland to run Minorities at Risk and what at the time was the premier measure for political democracy - Polity. I was floored. I still needed to interview of course abut this sounded exactly like what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be.
This was noteworthy for me because, for the first time, I allowed myself to consider personal matters. One of the my favorite relatives was in the area and this generally put me back on the East Coast where I felt most comfortable (I was going to live in DC). Now, as anyone who has spent time in DC will tell you, it aint the East Coast but it was closer than Texas or Colorado and frankly I was willing to take anything that got be closer to the city (New York). I had not quite realized that the New York that existed was not the one that I knew and loved (which was dead) but I will get to that later. At the time I was happy to be going homeish.
After an interview, I was off to DC. In many respects, the job and living there was everything that I thought it would be. In other respects, Maryland and DC was an eye-opening train wreck that compelled me to move on. I'll get to this on the next one.
RSS Feed
