The Shakespeare requirement, by Julie Schumacher

A follow-up to the author’s highly successful Dear Committee Members.   We’re back again at Payne University somewhere in the great Midwest.  In the earlier volume, Willard Hall was shared by the Economics and the English Departments, but Econ was rapidly expanding its reach and territory after a series of generous grants from wealthy donors.  Jason Fitger, the writer of endless letters of recommendations in the first book, is now Chair of English.  He’s endured over a year of construction dust and noise as the Econ Department builds its palatial new digs on the second floor.  Now that Department is eying the remaining space on the first floor and the basement.  The University President is pursuing advancement in the ranks of university through a new initiative called QUAP, the quality assessment program, and Fitger has been dragging his feet in producing the English Department’s required SOV (Statement of Vision).  When he finally presents it to his faculty to vote on, he runs into a road-block in the form of Professor Cassovan, the elderly Shakespearean, who strongly objects to the absence of any reference to his subject.   As in the first book, most of academia and its associated pretensions are skewered.  As is frequently quoted, "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low."  Hilarious and somewhat bittersweet as well.  308 pp.