Caption young Professor Newt......

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

39. Folks, you gotta read this article! Newt's academic career, such as it was,

accurately foreshadows everything he's done since.

Much as I generally dislike the Wall Street Urinal, there's some juicy stuff here about Newt's academic career - including the fact that he applied for the job of college president only a year after being hired as a brand new assistant professor. When that didn't work he applied (unsuccessfully, of course) to be the history department chair. Eventually they transferred him the the geography department. In the meantime he was involving himself in politics and not doing much teaching: "Mr. Gingrich was often absent as he pursued political goals. He embarked on an effort to moonlight as a paid consultant. And, it turns out, he spent little time teaching history."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203735304577167041714568630.html

And there's this:

A December 1973 news story by Howell Raines, then of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, noted Mr. Gingrich was making "four or more speeches a week," while "carefully retaining the unofficial status of his candidacy." It was against the rules of the university system for serving professors to campaign for office.

And this:

After his unsuccessful bid for the president's job, college officials asked him and a colleague to draw up ideas for modernizing the institution. That led to the 1973 creation of "The Institute for Directed Change and Renewal," a platform the two men used to try to sell the institute's services to public schools.

Mr. Gingrich wrote to a college vice president asking if it was "appropriate and legal" to profit from their work. College President Pafford responded swiftly: "You are not entitled to financial compensation by any other State of Georgia agency or institution," he wrote in a memo. The institute soon went defunct.

Read the whole thing. It's juicy.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203735304577167041714568630.html