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MY COLLEAGUE STACEY1 sidled up to me in the noisy Manhattan bar,“So do you get to choose how big your penis will be?,” she asked in a titillated tone. We were at the departmental holiday party—the once-a-year get together at the close of the fall semester, just before winter break. It was December, cold outside, and toward the end of the night. Faculty with small children or early classes the next morning had gone home; the rest of us were staying for another drink. Two historians were standing in the corner, arguing about Foucault, while others were making unwise late-night disclosures about their personal relationships and private troubles.

I was halfway through my second academic year working as a sociology professor in an unusually large social sciences department at Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) in New York City. The department employs more than seventy full-time faculty in the …