almost caught up

Most of yesterday was split between catching up on administrative work and a fine dinner party pitched mostly at our wonderful crop of first-year faculty, who have reinvigorated the faculty social life in Zamalek.

If you’re curious as to what an Associate Vice Provost for Research does, at some state universities in the U.S. it is an extremely intense, full-time oversight job devoted to massive laboratory funding efforts. In my own case, since this is a new position at AUC, it is for now mostly a consulting position as we try to figure out where all the needs are on campus. So I’ve been interviewing everyone who knows anything about campus research, and trying to condense all of their remarks into a series of reports for the Provost and Vice Provost. On top of that, I’m in charge of approving or disapproving all faculty grant requests. The Latourian in me enjoys this contact with different sorts of “actors” than I’m used to.

The bridge too far was staying in the Senate. I should have resigned from that post when I took the other position, but many people urged me to stay, and (worse yet) they even urged me to take on the Chair of the Senate Faculty Affairs Committee position, which is one of the most time-intensive Senate posts. One year with that, and I’m done: it’s too much.

With the administrative materials now mostly in order, I’m turning today to writing the lecture for Paris. That will take place at the American University of Paris (and hence in English) on September 26, which happens to be the 120th birthday of Martin Heidegger. I’m also supposed to meet Latour and hear his most recent critique of my position (now that he’s read the whole of Prince of Networks, including the final chapter which did not exist at the time of the LSE discussion in February 2008).

But I feel like a bit of Gibbon before getting started on that lecture. I’m pretty close to reaching Belisarius and his reconquest of much of the former Western Empire’s territory for the Byzantines.

I’m now on page 1,266 of Gibbon, which is slightly past the halfway point of that colossal historical work.