Jim Lutzweiler's old professor, denied tenure, has hit the big time in archaeology
Academia can be bloody brutal.
Jim Lutzweiler, who teaches a history course at Guilford Technical Community College and is archivist at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, cites the example of Otto Schaden. Lutzweiler took a course in Egyptology under Schaden during the 1970s at the University of Minnesota.
The perservering Schaden refused to let various deans and tenure committees stop him. He has now made history by digging it up.
Schaden recently discovered the first tomb since 1922 in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. The tomb is near the 1922 discovery, King Tut's tomb, first entered by the legendary archaeologist Howard Carter.
Lutzweiler wonders if the University of Minnesota remembers Schaden?
He says the university refused Schaden tenure, in effect, firing him.
"Schaden was denied tenue ... for reasons I do not know," Lutzweiler says in an e-mail to the News & Record.
He says Schaden "was never able to hold down a permanent teaching job (though I felt he was one fine teacher.) He moved to Chicago, where he played polka music for some local ethnic band.
"He would save up his money and head for Egypt every time, ..." Lutzweiler says. "When he ran out, he would return to Chicago and play more polkas until he had enough to return to Egypt to keep chasing his dream. Now he'll probably never have to play another polka in his life!"
Lutzweiler says he recently chatted with another of Schaden's former students, still in Minnesota, and the man said, "The locals (or is it 'yokels?)... haven't even featured his Minnesota connection ... yet, probably having totally forgotten him."
Schaden's place is now apparently secure in academia, at the University of Memphis. The university is now reaping the rewards from the publicity generated by Schaden's discovery.
