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plaid three-piece suit and a brown bowtie; there was still one law professor in America wearing bowties. Book ignored him (and his bowtie) and found a seat in the back corner next to his best friend among the faculty, which is to say, his only friend among the faculty.
    ‘Henry.’
    ‘Book.’
    HenryLawson (UT, 1997, Oil and Gas Law) was an associate professor of law. His face held the expression of a middle-aged man with no job security. Which was what he was. He occupied a rung on the academic career ladder one below that of a tenured professor of law. And his tenure was on the agenda that day.
    His chances were not good. First, forty-three of the seventy-two professors in the room held law degrees from Harvard and Yale while Henry held a law degree from this very law school. Only four other professors on the full-time faculty were UT law graduates; no other Texas law school, or Southern law school for that matter, was represented on the faculty. When Harvard-and Yale-educated professors did the hiring, they hired Harvard and Yale graduates, not Texas and Alabama graduates. They demanded diversity in all things academic, except professors’ law schools and political ideology.
    Second, Henry had spent five years working in the legal department of an international oil company. That experience served him well as a professor teaching oil and gas law, but as far as the Harvard and Yale professors were concerned, he might as well have been in-house counsel to the Grand Order of the Ku Klux Klan. Which at one time would not have disqualified one from teaching at UT. William Stewart Simkins, a Klansman turned law professor, taught at the UT law school from 1899 to 1929; the university even named a dormitory in his honor in 1954, coincidentally the same year the Supreme Court handed down its landmark ruling in
Brown v. Board of Education
overturning
Plessy
and declaring that ‘separate but equal’ violated the Constitution. The Board of Regents had renamed the dorm just the past year.
    And third, the slim chance Henry did have would become no chance at all if the Harvard–Yale cartel discovered that he had votedfor George W. Bush. Twice. Henry’s expression revealed his despair.
    ‘I’m forty-one, Book,’ he said in a low voice. ‘There’s no other law school out there for me. With this economy and law jobs plummeting, schools are freezing new hires. I’ve been denied tenure twice. Three strikes, and I’m out.’
    He put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. After a long moment, he turned to Book.
    ‘Ann’s pregnant again.’
    Book chucked him on the shoulder.
    ‘Congratulations.’
    Henry did not seem thrilled at the prospect of becoming a father for the third time. So Book did the only thing he knew to perk up his friend’s spirits: he popped the top on the plastic container and offered Henry a quesadilla.
    ‘Chicken.’
    ‘With Myrna’s guacamole?’
    ‘Of course.’
    They ate the quesadillas while the other professors renewed their debate in earnest.
    ‘What are they fighting about today?’ Book asked.
    ‘What else? Money and tenure. And the vacant assistant deanship.’
    The assistant dean had been fired when it came to light that the UT Law School Foundation, a nonprofit run by alumni, had handed out—on the dean’s sole recommendation—$4.65 million in ‘forgivable loans’ to twenty-two professors in amounts ranging from $75,000 to $500,000. Purportedly to attract and retain key faculty by allowing them to purchase homes in the high-dollar Austin residential market, the loans were forgiven if the professor remained on the faculty for a negotiated term of three to ten years. The assistant dean himself had received a $500,000 loan, apparently to ensure his loyalty to UT. The secret faculty compensation numbers had become public when several professorsmade an open records request; the information ignited a firestorm among the faculty, not because the other professors thought the loans