The short, terse version in the hopes this will make it easier to write the long one. New advisor Gandalf's wife, Eowyn, was denied tenure by the Provost after making it through Arts and Sciences. Third committee member Faramir, who was supposed to become new advisor once he was promoted, was denied tenure by Arts and Sciences, but thanks to massive student protest he advanced to the Provost, and was then denied tenure. (This got picked up by some of the media, at least, Huffington Post).

So I'm still in the program, but have no dissertation committee and new advisor is retiring faster so that his wife can get a job, we think, but they're both being pretty cagey. To graduate the plan is to have Saruman get guilted into being on the diss committee (which will also make life easier on the job market, since it will be weird to come out of my program with no letter from him). It all makes one need very stiff drinks, not least for Faramir and Eowyn, since the whole process was not settled until May and she has no job and he's in a one year visiting job to have health insurance for his kid, since he was sole breadwinner. It was really not easy to convince myself to do fellowship applications...