On the Pitfalls of Tenure. I was thinking about this. Of this, I am certain. If I were not a tenured professor now, and if I were on the job market (along with the Angry Arab affiliation), there is no way on earth that I would have obtained a job anywhere in the US--not even at a small community college in Alaska--not that there is anything wrong in small community colleges in Alaska. I have certainly noticed that untenured professors are today far more cautious and nervous about political advocacy (in comparison to 20 years ago or more). I often hear people say to me: I will become outspoken on Palestine AFTER I obtain tenure. I always tell them: no, you will not. If you condition yourself to be silent and passive during the tenure process, you will be changed once you obtain tenure. And some after tenure, aim higher: they harbor ambitions to move to a more "prestigious" college or university, and on and on. What people don't understand is that the tenure process is a conditioning process in which one learns how to dissimulate and how to stifle moral outrage. If you succumb to it, you reach tenure damaged. I remember early on in my career when a senior (well-intentioned and well-known) person in Middle East studies, took me aside and urged me to "suspend" or "tone down" my advocacy for Palestine. It is an advice that I never regretted ignoring. Of course, the ironies of freedom of speech (as far as the Middle East and Arab-Israeli conflict are concerned) are such that you will have more freedom of speech if you teach at a less "prestigious" college or university in a small town in the US. Thus, there is more scrutiny (and less freedom of speech) if you teach at Columbia or Harvard or Yale. So people need to decide what they want in graduate school: to decide that which is more important to them.