Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Cast your mind back to 8/15, when I posted “CV time at Stanford” on this blog. Where I noted that

To maintain my adjunct status [at Stanford], I must periodically demonstrate that I am worthy, by submitting my CV for scrutiny by the relevant dean.

My previous appointment, for 2022-25, was to expire on 8/31; the CV was to be for a 2025-28 appointment. I prepared a statement (included in that posting) that was not a conventional CV, but a summary showing who I am, what I do, and what I have done. An experiment, on my part.

The summary did make it clear that I am, among many other things, a very visible and noisy LGBT+ figure. Someone who’s liable to get in trouble with the current American government, and to get Stanford in trouble too, and might be a barrier to Stanford’s raking in contributions. So the dean might well choose to terminate me.

August, and my appointment, came to an end. My department came to the rescue by paying for a month of the university services I need to do my work.

And then, yesterday, the offer of a new appointment came through, and today the resourceful Opal Armstrong Zwicky, armed with technical advice from her mother, stepped me through signing my name electronically to a .pdf document (accepting the offer) that could then just be e-mailed to my department’s administrator. Who will relay it to the dean’s office. Which will then issue a letter of appointment. In the house that Jack built.

Of course they could take it back. All sorts if things can happen. But I press on.

The new appointment greatly simplifies the task of getting me to Stanford Linguistics’ 50th anniversary celebration on October 10th. And that is a Good Thing.

(The rest of my life is in utter shambles, but you really don’t want to hear about it. Though I will mention that most of the furniture in the house will be carted away Friday afternoon. Sleek and spare, spare and sleek is the land where the mammoth grazes.)

This entry was posted on September 17, 2025 at 5:49 pm and is filed under Academic life, My life, Stanford. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.