Meet Melissa Harris-Perry, the soon to be only tenured professor with her own major cable network show dubbed "Melissa Harris-Perry". After filling in on more than one occasion for MSNBC's super progressive host Rachel Maddow, MSNBC executives took notice and decided that Ms. Harris-Perry would be a good fit for their "Lean Forward" progressive tone. Starting this saturday, MSNBC gets smarter when her show debuts.
Although she had attained tenure at Princeton, the Center for African American Studies there declined to promote her to full professor — a vote of no confidence that led her to leave for Tulane in 2010. Her second husband, James Perry, who ran for mayor of New Orleans in 2010, already lived there. She plans to spend Monday to Thursday in New Orleans and fly to New York for her show on the weekends. Ms. Harris-Perry never used a teleprompter until she was asked to fill in for Ms. Maddow for a week in July. (She practiced with an iPad teleprompter application during a trip beforehand, “which led to hilarity on the part of my then 9-year-old,” she said.)
