Hi there! It seems I'm not exactly your target audience, but I saw this article on a LinkedIn post and was super intrigued by the title. I think it's difficult for me to connect with your main argument here. You're saying the bar is so low that even someone like Allen Guezlo could become a senior research scholar at Princeton. So the reader is meant to understand that Guezlo is undeserving of his professional accomplishments. And he just happened to land a position at Princeton, a university famous for... hiring underachievers? I had never heard of Guezlo before but you're right to point out his lengthy and accomplished career in academia. So then I wanted to know more about you, and I see that you have a master's degree in history, worked for some time as an adjunct, but now do consulting, presumably because more permanent gigs in academia are really difficult to get these days. So the author with a master's in history is telling me that the Princeton professor is a loser who has only achieved such levels of success because he can fall back on being a white male. This article reminds me of a conversation with an undergraduate who was heavily criticizing the contributions of a particular medieval history scholar, completely unaware of his own place in the academic food chain. "[Eminent historian] has no idea what he's talking about!" says the sophomore history major.
You realize you wrote a rant almost as long as my entire article right? Like...wow.
Anyway, A.) you missed the point - the point is that he's a bad historian and still has a job at Princeton. Because the old-guard still likes his version of idiotic great man theory of history that disregards any true deconstruction of the historical issues on topics like race and gender. B.) oooh, I only have an MA so I must just be whiny because I'm clearly jealous. Absolutely, of course, it couldn't be that I actually value quality historical education and realize that this dude is desperate to maintain the boy band status of his faves. *eye roll* Seriously, everyone I know in the field of history, PhDs and MAs included, share this same opinion on this guy. He's an idiot and only has the job he has because he's part of the old white man historian contingent.
Hi there! It seems I'm not exactly your target audience, but I saw this article on a LinkedIn post and was super intrigued by the title. I think it's difficult for me to connect with your main argument here. You're saying the bar is so low that even someone like Allen Guezlo could become a senior research scholar at Princeton. So the reader is meant to understand that Guezlo is undeserving of his professional accomplishments. And he just happened to land a position at Princeton, a university famous for... hiring underachievers? I had never heard of Guezlo before but you're right to point out his lengthy and accomplished career in academia. So then I wanted to know more about you, and I see that you have a master's degree in history, worked for some time as an adjunct, but now do consulting, presumably because more permanent gigs in academia are really difficult to get these days. So the author with a master's in history is telling me that the Princeton professor is a loser who has only achieved such levels of success because he can fall back on being a white male. This article reminds me of a conversation with an undergraduate who was heavily criticizing the contributions of a particular medieval history scholar, completely unaware of his own place in the academic food chain. "[Eminent historian] has no idea what he's talking about!" says the sophomore history major.
You realize you wrote a rant almost as long as my entire article right? Like...wow.
Anyway, A.) you missed the point - the point is that he's a bad historian and still has a job at Princeton. Because the old-guard still likes his version of idiotic great man theory of history that disregards any true deconstruction of the historical issues on topics like race and gender. B.) oooh, I only have an MA so I must just be whiny because I'm clearly jealous. Absolutely, of course, it couldn't be that I actually value quality historical education and realize that this dude is desperate to maintain the boy band status of his faves. *eye roll* Seriously, everyone I know in the field of history, PhDs and MAs included, share this same opinion on this guy. He's an idiot and only has the job he has because he's part of the old white man historian contingent.