Almost Wrong
Part II
By Rafia Zakaria
This essay is the second of a two-part essay. If you haven’t already, please do read “Almost Wrong” before you read this. Once again, this is my version of events, and I am certain that others involved would have their own interpretations.
Respite arrived in its own stunted form. Just like every other discipline within academia, political scientists have their own romp every Fall. Some portion of a moderately expensive hotel is procured, ideally one with its own coven of tiny rooms where graduate students and junior faculty can present their papers to the two or three people who they have managed to corral. There are other requirements; perhaps the most crucial one is that there should be a bar nearby, where the portly political scientists can assess each other’s successes against the inevitable passage of time.
It is here where the four or five stars of the field, their stardom predicated on how many graduate students have been forced to read their research, hold court. These kings of the hill, paunchy and puffed, all bad teeth and spectacles, periodically scan the outer rim of the bar. Once they have let all their colleagues know about their prestigious appointments, their million-dollar grants, there is the prospect of another kind of conquest. Hotel rooms are available and vigilant wives or girlfriends are absent. Also distant are the strictures against bedding one’s students and the fawning population of students from other institutions. Per the rules of nearly all disciplinary conferences, what happens in Tucson or Denver or wherever stays there.