The new president of Thomas Jefferson’s university

Contemporary literary theory, particularly of the postmodern or deconstructionist variety, has long had something of a reputation for being overburdened with inane, incomprehensible, and vacuous jargon. This reputation is not entirely undeserved; however, in my view, business school jargon outdoes literary theory with ease on all three fronts. The content-free buzzwords explaining the firing of Teresa Sullivan at UVA provided an example.

On a completely unrelated note, meet the new president of UVA:

Dean Zeithaml specializes in the field of strategic management, with an emphasis on global and competitive strategy. He conducts research on international expansion strategies, knowledge-based sources of competitive advantage, corporate political activity, strategic decision making, the strategic role of the board of directors, the implementation of acquisition and diversification strategies, and organizational transformation.

I’m no expert at reading this strange language, but I believe a rough translation would be “the German and Classics departments are screwed”.

UPDATE [SL]: UVA alum Jamelle Bouie has more.