Princeton Celebrates Anne Carson, a Nobel Winner Whom It Denied Tenure
New York Times · LC · trust 48/100
Carson, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday, taught at the university in the 1980s. Social media users mocked a congratulatory message from the school.
Listen · 3:28 min Share full article The Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson in 2015. She left the faculty of Princeton University in the mid-1980s after she was denied tenure. Credit... Pontus Lundahl/TT News Agency, via Associated Press By Neil Vigdor
Not long after Carson, the Canadian poet and essayist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday, Princeton University praised her in a social media post that noted that she had once taught there as a classics professor. The university’s classics department also congratulated Carson on its website on Thursday.
And the university has also welcomed her back: Carson returned to campus a year ago to deliver a prestigious lecture to a standing-room audience of more than 400 people.
But the university’s praise of Carson also attracted criticism, as social media users highlighted that Princeton had denied her tenure — a highly coveted continuous teaching position — in the 1980s.
“Good job granting her tenure!” one person responded sarcastically on Facebook .
Ezra E. Fitz, an author who earned a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature from Princeton in 2000, lamented that his alma mater had not retained Carson.
“I wish she’d been granted a richly-deserved tenure so I could have taken a class of hers in the 90s,” he wrote on Facebook.
“She could teach ‘Translating the Phone Book’ and I’d have taken it,” Mr. Fitz added in an email.
University officials on Thursday declined to comment on the criticism online or Carson’s departure from the faculty. Princeton, as a policy, does not discuss its tenure process.
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