Should Texas Tech Employ Alberto Gonzales?

By Randy Cohen
NYT

It’s back to school for former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Texas Tech University is paying him $100,000 to teach a single undergraduate political-science course, Contemporary Issues in the Executive Branch, with an enrollment of 15, and to help recruit minority students. Supporters say he offers students a rare chance to learn from a participant in important national events. Opponents say he is overpaid and underqualified and left his last job in disgrace. Is the school providing honorable employment or a sinecure for a sinner?
The Argument

Texas Tech should not have hired Gonzales, as many of his new colleagues proclaim. Passionately. “I think it’s preposterous for him to come here,” an unnamed professor told The Daily Toreador, the student paper (as reported by Main Justice, an online magazine that follows the Justice Department). “They’re trumping up some fake position to bring him in, and I don’t know what his responsibility will be, but I’m certain it won’t be commensurate with his pay. If you look at his teaching load, it’s incredibly reduced.”

That masked scholar has at least part of a point. Nationwide, the average pay for an adjunct professor is about $1,800 per course. Gonzales makes more than 55 times that. Sweet. But not necessarily wicked.

I, too, am susceptible to resentment of those I think egregiously overpaid. (Damn you, Eddy Curry!) Surely their ludicrously inflated salaries could better be spent on … oh, say, me. But a defense can be mustered for a school’s celebrity hire: even if it is dubious pedagogy, it can be cunning marketing — publicizing the university, attracting students, gratifying alumni and boosting their donations to their alma mater. (Professor Brangelina, have you met Professor Talking Gecko from the Geico Commercials?)

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