Circles and Squares

I received this letter from the graduate students at the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures in April, 2001. The students asked the department head, Professor Jerry Packard, to consider keeping me on as a professor even after the department tenure committee had decided to dismiss me without talking to me even once,  and in spite of all of my publications and my service to the university.

I was deeply touched that my students made this effort. Not a single faculty member at University of Illinois, let alone any faculty at any other university, or anyone else anywhere has ever commented on my illegal dismissal from the University of Illinois, or any of the actions taken against me before then.

I applied for fifty or more jobs in the fall of 2004, academic NGO, government and other. But there was nothing to be found. After  two months of unemployment, I was offered a position working at the culture center of the Korean embassy in Washington D.C.