Whatever you do, don't tell my professor that I'm writing on this topic: I'm under strict orders not to worry about grad school and just enjoy reading stuff like Moby Dick this summer.

That said, I can't help but find the Ward Churchill snafu a bit worrying in terms of what it says about the climate of the field I'm going into.

So I do a sufficient enough job getting wound up about grad school on my own, thank you very much, without having the additional pressure of knowing about the success rates of grad students. InsideHigherEd recently reported that cumulatively only 48% of PhD students in the Humanities are done in 10 years, and that over 38% have at least $35,000 in student loans. For those who do complete and go on to look for faculty positions, English departments reportedly have the lowest number of tenure positions for teachers. Great. It more or less means I'm fighting like mad to get into grad school on the off-chance that I might one day get a faculty position. I usually only take chances like this when it's something minor, like whether or not I should buy a new brand of bread at the grocery store.

But since the real outlook isn't dim enough, the recent furor over Ward Churchill has provided plenty of people with an opportunity to try and make academics an even more difficult field. ACTA and others claim that Ward Churchill is just one of many dangerous academics, and a sign that academics are so out of line that the only thing to be done is to start imposing academic diversity in the classroom and limiting the number of tenured faculty positions created to let these overly-politicized professors run amok.

Now, believe what you want about the justice or injustice of the issue, like or dislike, agree or disagree with the guy, whatever - that's your thing. But contrary to popular belief, he's not the norm, and using him as a rallying point to make academia an even more difficult field to work and learn in than it already is won't help form the independent critical thinkers and good citizens they want to be made at the university.

The picture they paint of various "Ward Churchills" is bleak, but it's not the picture of academics I have had painted for me, and it's certainly not the picture that inspired me to go for grad school. I have sat under professors whose lectures are not only not tainted with left or right wing polemics, they actually force you to question the roots of political thinking itself, and your interactions with it. I have been, moreover, included and treated as a serious member of the academic field and encouraged to do independent research projects, in which I alone decided what to read and what to think. My professors have been key in these endeavors in helping me form my identity - academic or otherwise - but it's been mostly a process of them teaching me to figure out what I believe and think on my own - and, something I don't think Ward Churchill's more vocal critics quite have a grasp on yet, to be civil, courteous and gracious as a mark of being professional, even when dealing with people I don't agree with. Through this I have learned to value the teacher's role as mentor and guide as my own teachers have mentored and guided me - something they are able to do, incidentally, because they have the security of a tenure position. So if "indoctrination" by wrongly tenured professors is indeed as common as they claim, then I definitely missed the boat somewhere.

Anyway, all that to say, seeing as my own life-goals have been impacted significantly for the better by professors who did their jobs well, and who have inspired me to one day hopefully be the same, you'll have to forgive me for being a little over-protective of them. Things are too tough for them - and, one day, probably for me too - to have all this ballyhoo about Ward Churchill being an example of a significant enough problem to justify imposing all sort of new, even more difficult rules and strictures on tenure and academic diversity. There's enough drama in the academic world already without the need to create even more.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try to go and finish Moby Dick and maybe I can forget about the GRE's for a while.