"In academia, there's a significant difference: professors have tenure while lecturers do not."

That's certainly not true. Generally (but not universally), associate and full professors have tenure while assistant professors do not.

If the Clinton campaign is this incompetent, why should anyone believe a Clinton presidency would be any better? So far they're running neck and neck with the original Clinton admininstration of 1993. Maybe they need to hire David Gergen again.

Least.  Important.  Controversy.  Ever.

Ratner - there'll be an even stupider controversy soon enough. Should we start a pool?

Hillary really is starting to resemble Wiley E. Coyote.

She's tone deaf to the point of crazy. She's nitpicking on truly unimportant nits when she flat out lied about the tuzla thing, several times. That wasn't even about details, or an exaggeration [mobbed by 8 yr old girls would have been an exaggeration], and she wants to point the finger from where she sits. It baffles me how everyone around her has this same trait. Like with George Bush and the war [especially after watching the movie No End in Sight] - I have always been stumped by the fact that yes, he's an arrogant moron, but is this also true of everyone around him? Are they all just morphing into their boss? How does this work?

If she's throwing the kitchen sink, this was a spatula, and it missed.

psantillana, this isn't even picking unimportant nits. It's yet another flat-out lie to suggest that a person who teaches college courses is "exaggerating" or "misstating" when he calls himself a "professor." In plain English, the word to describe a person who teaches a college course is "professor."

So even when Hillary's campaign tries to distract us from the "scandal" where she told a lie, lied about the lie, and then lied about lying about the lie, they lie to us. By comparison, President Bush is starting to sound like a reasonably straightforward guy.

I teach in a University, everyone here tenured or not is called Professor by the students. (unless they are Doctors). Could you imagine how awkward and ridiculous it would be if students called them Senior Lecturer? This ranks up there in stupidity with the Obama kindergarten flap, only this is even worse. If Barack Obama teaching in the University of Chicago Law school can't be considered a Professor but should be viewed as some kind of glorified temp, then she is essentially pissing on the majority of the teachers in community colleges, state colleges, etc. throughout America telling them that they are only pretend Professors. She has no concept of blowback. Luckily for Hillary, they come up with a bonehead statement every week so this will probably be soon forgotten.

Desperation.  Desperation.  This one is really going to play big time...

Ok, maybe a baby food spoon.

God... she just made my day again...it's just wonderful.  Just how dumb can you get... we are back to kindergarten stuff (remember that one?)

Would that some bright thing would make a spoofing video on this one.

Oh I don't want this primary to be over after all.  I don/'t think I've had such good laughs as watching Hillary in a long time.

Can you just see it... 4 years of this or 8... maybe she smoked too much dope in her youth and did inhale and it has permanently affected her mental processes.

Go watch the Tulza videos of her whopper again, the tone of voice, the smile, the whole bit...she knows she's lying, what makes me wonder is how come she thinks she is going to get away with it... or maybe she didn't.

But you know on some level it is sad that we get swept up in this more than the economic proposals of all three... I guess it is because this is so much more of a peak into personality and it is gossip and it is reflective of character and maybe we humans are better at that than the rational stuff (i.e. policy positions) after all.

Maybe Clinton gave up months ago and this is all an ingenious plot to make Obama look better.  

1. Get the Wright controversy out there early while giving Obama a platform for dealing with the race issue AND underscore that he's not a Muslim and incidentally belongs to the Christian Christ Church of United Christ-loving Christians.

2. Underscore his past as a professor by making an easily refuted claim that he wasn't one.

3. Crown him the Hillary-slayer who saved conservative America from the a weepy menopausal crypto-liberal-communist CLINTON presidency.

See, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid are brilliant masterminds!  Mark Penn and Howard Wolfson have secretly been working for Obama and the DNC all along.

In non-academic circles, "You're a professor at the university, right?" is usually a reasonable way of saying that you know what someone does (he's not a student or an administrative person) and where he does it (at a third-level educational institution rather than a high school) even if you can't distinguish between various levels in the academic hierarchy.  The interlocutor might then say, to clarify things, something like "Well, yeah, but I'm not really a professor, I'm a senior lecturer," but most people don't want nitpicking qualifications when they have the main point down.

Back in the era of B.T. (before tenure), when I did my requisite stint of adjuncting, students would call me professor.  I would usually correct them and ask them to say "Mister," but it was hopeless.

In any case, you are a "professor" when whatever institution you work for decides to call you one.  Period.  Obama qualifies.

Next stupid controversy, please.

yes yes - professor IS the right term, just as "sex" is the right term for what Bill and Monica did, but she is correct - under the most arcane of technicalites ever - and she's thinking that's going to impress people! Completely consistent with her pesky/obnoxious nerd persona. What baffles me is how she has managed to get anyone else to type that into a press release.

Now I'm going to say something nice! There was one moment during this campaign when she seemed to me like a real person, in her element and all - when she was telling someone about hot pepper, and how it keeps her stamina up. There was a genuine enthusiasm, and a light in her eyes. She wasn't lying, and she was being useful. It was refreshing and also convincing - I thought I should maybe have some red pepper.

The title of the Clinton campaign press release says it all: We will throw everything we can CONTRIVE through the most devious workings of our little brains at Sen. Obama. We'll throw kitchen sinks, slime, mud, innuendo, garbage: Whatever it takes to bring this man down.

Sure, the Obama campaign is imperfect as well. But the pettiness, conscious use of racially, economically, religiously, and gender divisive  tactics, and constant spinning of Hillary's campaign disgusts me.

A 30-year Dem voter at every opportunity(they are the party that understands that the richest nation in world history can act with compassion, generosity, and concern for the natural world)  and who has voted for, supported and donated to both Hillary's and Bill's campaigns.

I am disgusted with the Clintons. Sorry. And yes, I would vote, even holding my nose, for Hillary if she were the nominee. But I can no longer look up to her as I very honestly had for some 15 years.

Richard Posner is also a Senior Lecturer: www.law.uchicago.edu/.../posner-r.

@ abergman:

The passage is very badly written, but what they meant to say, I think, is that the word "professor" in a job title implies the expectation or possibility of tenure, whereas "lecturer" implies that the teacher is not on a tenure track. That's universal, as far as I know. At my school, my title of "lecturer" means that I don't have to produce research, and am not on a tenure track. In any case, it seems we all agree that this is one of the pettiest "oppo" claims Clinton has made yet. (Actually, she's inadvertently insulting a lot of overworked, exhausted, highly accomplished "lecturers." The giving of insult -- inadvertent or intended -- seems to be one of the few areas of competences for her campaign.)

(An aside: my escape from university teaching is imminent. I just can't stand these "millennial" college students; they're turning me into a curmudgeon. And I'm only 30!)

I've been both a Senior Lecturer and a professor. There is NO difference. Even tenure is not a difference (because there are non-tenure-line professors, and there are Senior Lecturers with "security of employment," which is effectively tenure). I'd call what the Clinton campaign said about this grasping at straws, except this doesn't even qualify as a straw. I'm increasingly convinced that the people in that campaign are just total idiots.

Arguing about this TNR Stump post is so academic.

...on the great "law professor" controversy , of course. The Clinton campaign sent out this

All of  this shows how ignorant people are about academic rank and tenure.

Can somebody be a full professor and not have tenure? Absolutely. Increasingly, that's the way universities would prefer it. And there are all kinds of professors: visiting professors, assistant professors, associate professors, professors holding endowed chairs, honorary professors, teaching vs. research, partially tenured, clinical vs. academic, professors emeritus, you name it.

This is the most trivial issue of the campaign yet. Certainly a far cry from claiming you landed in Bosnia under sniper fire when instead you were getting the Balkan equivalent of a lei.