ABSTRACT
During the years of the college boom, 1950 to 1980, a doctoral student in just about any field who had done reasonably well in graduate school and had good recommendations could get a junior appointment in any one of several colleges or universities. The author chose the University of Pennsylvania—Penn—over other opportunities for a few reasons, some rational, some not rational. First, his wife had given birth on June I, 1962, to a beautiful baby boy, and he needed a job. He was offered an instructorship in sociology at Wisconsin, but at the last moment, in July, a chance for a job at Penn beginning in September came up. In some ways, the University of Pennsylvania has mirrored the city. In 1962 Penn was beginning to shake off decades of faculty inbreeding coupled to the practice of drawing a large proportion of students from the local community.
