Notes from the Academic Underground

The notes collected here include 27 essays, articles, fiction, and commentary published during and after 20 years of teaching in Oregon higher education as a nontenured literacy worker, aka writing instructor. These observations on the absurdities and inanities in higher education run the usual gamut: sleazy administrators, bogus tenure, shady financial deals, arrogance, nepotism, cronyism, labor exploitation, union busting, grading games, football. Stuff like that. Wherever you have money and power blended, corruption is brewed. And a few names are named, such as Graham Spanier, the disgraced former president of Penn State, and Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, Saddam Hussein, Oregon State University, the University of Oregon, Princeton University, University of Massachusetts, Bryn Mawr College, and many others.