Honig says that juggling an academic career with a family has proven to be "really, really busy."

She met her husband, Professor of Economics Michael D. Whinston, during her first term at Harvard.

"I guess you could call it a Littauer romance," Whinston says. "I went to a political economy seminar, and the seminar shared a wine-and-cheese hour with the political philosophy seminar in the government department."

Honig and Whinston have a two-and-a-half-year-old son, Noah Whinston.

"I carve out a lot of time for him during the day, and work during the evening," she says. "He has a working mother, but he has a working mother."

Honig's denial of tenure has forced the couple to reassess their priorities for career and family.

Honig and Whinston have both received full tenure offers at North-western University. Honig says they have not made a decision about whether to accept the offer.

"I think it's always disruptive if you have to move," Whinston says. "I think it's harder in a circumstance like this, when you feel you're moving because of such a poor and unjust decision."

Honig says, however, she is grateful for the flexibility of an academic career.

"The nice thing about academic work is that it's portable--you can take it with you," Honig says. "That's the stable part of my life."

Honig says that in the short-term, she will continue "tinkering" with the final version of her third book, which is about notions of foreignness.

"In political theory and cultural studies right now, all of the contemporary books that deal with diversity treat foreignness as a problem that needs to be solved," she says.

"This book flips the question around," she adds. "[It asks], what problems might foreignness solve for us?"

The book, titled No Place Like Home: Democracy and the Politics of Foreignness, will be published by Princeton University Press