Intellectual Claustrophobia and Academic Hell for Young Professors
Blog posts like this one make me wonder sometimes why I'm in my chosen profession. The post is about young, new professors and how they seem to be at the mercy of everyone else on campus:
Think about what life is like as an assistant professor in the humanities. For those graduate students who earn a decent job and retain a grain of idealism, joining a department is the beginning of a great career. The servility of graduate school is over, and the chance to pursue research, build a student following, and challenge colleagues may commence. Soon enough, though, the young professor learns that he has joined something like an extended family. They’ve been together for years, watching each other grow and decline. They gather in cliques after meetings, office neighbors remember betrayals from the previous decade, older figures recount their professional history (often entertainingly), and other assistant professors mark you as confrère or foe. The disputes sometimes disgust and sometimes fascinate, but you keep mum. Senior colleagues control your fate. They sit in on classes and file reports on your teaching, assign you to different committees, and review your publications. Most important, in five years’ time they will vote on your promotion. Junior professors walk a tightrope. They impress the tenured with their discernment, but don’t apply their scrutiny to them. They plunge into departmental duties, but not so much as to constitute a power grab. They attend conferences and follow professional trends, but not to the point of open careerism. They must appear dedicated but innocuous.
. . . The swirling politics and pressures affect the mind of the untenured professor. You are what students, colleagues, and administrators think you are. The tenure review comes in a few years, and success depends on what they say about you. And so you worry about the student evaluations, overinterpret a remark at a faculty meeting, and try to focus on converting the dissertation into a book manuscript. The habitat weighs heavy on your concentration, and many end up making a melodrama of their uncertainty. The ideas that fire your scholarship are reduced to an hour a day at the computer. The rest of the time you commiserate with other junior professors, fend off students, and scan the journals for conferences that will look good on the résumé. The bureaucracy becomes your mindset, and dealing with it your focal point. The mental horizon shrinks to the politics of the department. A few new profs become outspoken, but conformity and parochialism infect the rest. |
Doesn't that sound just terrible?
Well, academia is not easy. But I have to say, there are still some professors, researchers, etc. who are real, decent people believing in real education. One of them cheerfully told me that we are an underground movement and should communicate in samizdata style. Really. (And I point out that some of these good people are not conservatives or libertarians. Some are Democrats or leftists or whatever -- but they are all old-fashioned liberals who believe in free thought and not brainwashing students. By now it should be clear to everyone that some campus powers oppose anybody who does not think exactly as they do. Poor old Larry Summers! The campus culture wars are not ultimately about Left-versus-Right. It's more about the self-righteous, close-minded elite versus everybody else.)
Anyway, when I decided to go into academics, I did it because I wanted to teach university students and I thought I could do a good job. I didn't realize I was also signing up for constant intellectual conflict of the most grinding and depressing kind. I've been luckier than most, since most of my colleagues are great people who understand that you should have a life outside academia or you will lose your sanity.
But I've said before that part of the key to surviving is to work hard, make no unnecessary enemies, and appear absolutely harmless and innocent. "Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves," in Biblical words. And for goodness sake, be true to yourself and don't let other people change you.
Maybe someday I will write a Mad Minerva's Manifesto: How to Survive in Academia Without Losing Your Mind or Soul. The manifesto will NOT say "How to Survive Without Losing Your Temper or Patience," because I lose my temper and patience all the time. Just to be sure to do so privately. Never let other academics see you upset, angry, or frustrated. Never let them see you bleed or sweat or panic. Of course we all have weaknesses. Other people know you have weaknesses. But you have to make sure they never figure out exactly what those weaknesses actually are!