All the world's a stage.

My department is quite large, and encompasses several different specializations within my social science. Hence, for governance and training purposes, we are broken up into areas, each area with its own chair and its own administrator. Each area has its own graduate program requirements and admissions criteria. Each area has its own colloquium series. Most importantly for this story, each area has its own search committees, although the department chair determines the composition of the search committees and makes sure that there are representatives on them from other potentially relevant (concerned) areas.

I recently received an incomprehensible email from someone in the department whom I did not know. The email contained only a proposed schedule for a visitor whom I had never heard of, and demanded, without preamble, that I indicate when I would be available to meet with this unknown person. I did what any rational person would do under the circumstances: I ignored it.

Several days go by, and then I receive a strangely-worded email from one of my colleagues.

To: Angry Professor
From: Concerned Colleague
Re: Is there a problem?

Hi Angry. Melissa told me that you have refused to meet with Mysterious Guest. As chair of the search committee, is there any problem with Mysterious Guest that I should be aware of?

Best,
Concerned

To which I responded:

To: Concerned Colleague
From: Angry Professor
Re: Re: Is there a problem?

Hi Concerned. I didn't refuse, I simply didn't respond to an email from someone I didn't know demanding my time to meet with someone I didn't know for reasons I didn't know. I assumed the message had been sent to me by mistake. No problems.

Best,
Angry

Today I learn that the search committee met to finalize the Mysterious Guest's schedule. The search committee was deeply concerned (a mole reports) by my "refusal" to meet with Dr. Guest. One of my colleagues explained to the committee that I had been on an NIH study section with Dr. Guest, wherein we had many bitter disagreements, and from this enmity arose my obvious reluctance to recruit him for our department.

Let me repeat once more: I have never heard of Dr. Guest, nor his research, which is far removed from my own area.

There is something lacking in the upper echelons of academia (in most departments, anyway), and that is drama. Graduate students have lots of drama: they fuck each other like bunnies in spring, they get drunk together and say things to each other they wish they could take back, they compete among themselves for grades and faculty recognition; it's junior high all over again for the graduate students. By the time those same students all get tenure, they have spouses and children, big, soul-sucking mortgages, and countless pressing deadlines for the completion of countless tedious tasks. Most of us have neither the time nor the inclination to waste precious psychic energy on interpersonal drama, even if it does involve hot sex with junior faculty.

Hence I am not concerned or angry that a fairly large number of people in my department are now worrying about my imbroglios with Dr. Guest and how they will influence the job search this year. I am amused, and interested to follow this patently absurd story to see how far it will go. Here's what I'm hoping for:

Dr. Guest and Dr. Professor served on an NIH study section together. They had an affair, which lasted quite a while, over several study section meetings. Dr. Guest's wife found out about the affair and became hysterical, showing up at the hotel during the last meeting. She made a scene in the lobby, which was witnessed by almost everyone on the panel, and which ended when Dr. Professor slapped her across the mouth. She then revealed that she was pregnant, whereupon Dr. Guest broke off his affair with Dr. Professor. Both Dr. Guest and Dr. Professor were asked to leave the study section, and neither have since been invited back. Dr. Professor is still furious with Dr. Guest and slanders him at every opportunity. If Dr. Guest is hired by the LSU Social Science department, Dr. Professor will make his life a living hell. And there's no way his wife will get tenure here, not if Dr. Professor has anything to say about it.