Academia: A Love Story

Photo of paved roadway leading from lower left to center, with brick university building in background, and red LOVE sculpture in the foreground.
Image by Flickr user Scarlet Sappho, used under Creative Commons license.

It’s time for me to share why I left my tenured professor job. It’s been several months as I get started in my new role, but the onboarding mania has settled a little and I have more bandwidth to think and write about this.

I’m not sure who needs to read this, but if you do, I’m glad you’re here.

I love academia. No, I adore it, revere it, am in awe of it, and I figuratively married it for over 20 years. I made sacrifices in my life to be part of it. I left relationships for it. Left behind friends and communities for it. Went into debt for it. And, my actual wife made sacrifices for my academic career.

Academia loved me back until it didn’t. It nurtured me, challenged me, helped me do things I didn’t think I could do, gave me lifelong friendships, let me be myself, gave me skills, and made me want to be a better person.

The thing is, when you’re in love, you sometimes don’t see what is right in front of you. You see what’s happening to you as a natural part of the experience. What you might see as cruel, demeaning, exploitative, thoughtless, and extractive in any other context, you see as reasonable, ordinary, or the happy sacrifices we make for the object of our love.

One day, you might be talking to a friend, and they tentatively and furtively ask “Um, are you doing okay?” It’s a question you didn’t ask yourself, didn’t even think to ask yourself, and almost seems ridiculous. Of course I’m okay – I’m in love! (But what you actually are is asleep in your relationship, dreaming instead of seeing.)

I fell in love with an idealized version of academia that I experienced – A place of exploring ideas and ideals, a place to learn and grow and connect people and thoughts and places to create new and occasionally revolutionary ways of thinking and acting and being. In the beginning it was like that – as an undergrad and then grad student, and even as a new tenure-track professor.

Wake Up

But I slowly started to wake up. I think the first awakening was realizing that academia created and thrived as a system of exploitation.

It was being in a faculty meeting, and realizing there were no adjunct instructors there. I assumed contingent faculty weren’t there because they didn’t want to be — until I found out they had not even been invited!

It was learning that contingent faculty were paid less than minimum wage after all the hours necessary to prepare, teach, and evaluate that 3-hour class for $2500. It was seeing the quality work post-docs were doing, but being compensated with pennies on the dollar.

It was seeing administrators cutting quality in programs while at the same time focused on filling seats with students, who were then receiving a lower-quality education, and those same administrators were getting raises and accolades.

It was seeing legislators cutting funding for universities, while telling administrators they can’t raise tuition, just so they could get reelected on tax-cutting and saving students money.

It was administrators witholding faculty pay raises for multiple years, despite those faculty serving the institution, their students, and the world with excellence. When we finally did get a raise, it was paltry enough to be an insult. And those same administrators found a way to raise their own salaries year over year.

The second awakening was (belatedly) seeing the racial disparities in academia. I saw my students, who were 24% Black and 17% Latinx, and then looked at the faculty that was 98.5% White. I saw the disparity in retention and graduation rates. I saw administrators willfully ignoring these disparities.

And, I (finally) saw what was plainly in front of me: the curriculum I was teaching that largely ignored anything other than the White, patriarchal, colonialist basis of science and psychology. Paraphrasing Guthrie (1976), even the rats in our experiments were white. These things are bad enough, but especially galling in an institution like academia that prides itself in egalitarian and meritocratic ideals.

But, these egalitarian and meritocratic ideals are enclosed within a colonialist worldview that is so hard for us to escape, given that our curriculum normalizes coloniality. This worldview is one of discovery not just for discovery’s sake, but for reaping and exploiting what you find, whether that’s natural or human resources. That worldview says that we are bringing “civilization” to the “uncivilized.”

In academia this often plays out as espousing Euro-centric notions of science, education, culture, epistemology, ontology, and knowledge as if they are the only true notions. Admittedly, we were espousing these notions because they are the only ones we were taught, without bothering to question them.

The third awakening (and the last straw) was when I saw administrators willfully disregard faculty welfare. These administrators had been faculty themselves, and so one would think they would advocate for our welfare. But instead, when we make plain and document our declining welfare and increasing burnout, we are met with silence, gaslighting, or worse yet, derogating our colleagues.

I saw legislators promise to their constituents to eliminate tenure and to fire anyone teaching ideas the legislators found disagreeable. But where was the administration? Did they stand up for tenure and academic freedom because, after all, one would assume they support those ideals? No, instead they were silent, complicit with the forces that would erode the foundation of liberal inquiry and debate.

Time To Go

When you realize one day that the object of your love is not what you thought, and that your goals and ideals are very different, it’s time to take stock and decide whether you want to keep going. When I realized that academia was not loving me back, fulfilling me, and the idealized version I fell in love with was not the reality I was living, it was time to pivot and head in a different direction.

That will be the topic of another missive. Where did I pivot to, and why? Until then…

Why we stress evidence and logic in the liberal arts

Students are sometimes skeptical about why they have to learn careful logic, writing skills, and careful citations of evidence in their writing. Well, I saw a very good example of what happens when you do not make these skills part of your intellectual toolbox.

Donald Trump was interviewed by Lester Holt. Here is a transcript, with my added emphasis (from politicsusa.com) [note how I cited my source!]:

Lester Holt: You also made the claim that her email, personal email server had been hacked by foreign governments….

Donald Trump: But you don’t know that it hasn’t been.

Holt: Suggesting that she would be compromised as president. What evidence do you have that?

Trump: Well, first of all, she shouldn’t have had a personal server. She shouldn’t have had it. What she did was illegal. It’s illegal. Now, she might not be judged that way because you know we have a rigged system. But what she did was illegal. She shouldn’t have had a personal server.

Holt: But is there any evidence that she was hacked other than routine phishing attempts?

Trump: I think I read that, and I heard that, and somebody also gave…..

Holt: Where?

Trump: also gave me that information. I will report back to you. I’ll give it to you.

First, the specious argument “If you don’t know something didn’t happen means that it did.” Yikes. Second, “My evidence is that I think I read it or heard it from someone…” Wow.

Lets try something out: “Barack Obama is secretly plotting with terrorists to overthrow America. How do I know? Well, you don’t know he isn’t – he may very well be. What evidence do I have? I think I heard it or read it.” Oh wait, Donald Trump already used that one.

If this was an argument made in a paper by an undergraduate student in my class, it would not be acceptable. Is this acceptable for someone who wants to be our president? I think not.

But, I’m just one of those liberal elites fixated on logic, accuracy, and reason (yes, that was a sarcastic ad-hominem attack on myself).

About the new Arkansas law potentiating discrimination based on religious beliefs

I don’t usually blog about political issues, but this one is related to my research on prejudice, discrimination, and moral exclusion from the scope of justice.

It has been an interesting week here in Arkansas. The state legislature, not known to be a bastion of acceptance toward difference from a Christian, Western, heterosexist, capitalist worldview, has now passed the law HB 1288, deceptively titled “the religious freedom restoration act,” also known as “Mary’s law.” You can read the (alarmingly brief) bill here.

Here’s what the law says: Any governmental entity in the state (e.g., state, county, city) can’t enforce laws that, even if “neutral” toward religion, “burdens” the exercise of an individual’s religious beliefs (even if those beliefs are not compulsory or central to the religion). Interestingly, prisons are exempted from the law. By “burden” the law means “to prevent, inhibit, or curtail religiously motivated practice consistent with a sincerely held religious belief.” There is an exemption for laws that are “essential” for a “compelling governmental interest” AND are the “least restrictive” to achieve that interest.

So what does this mean to most of us? Likely not much. But, what does it mean to some of us, who are among minority populations? Maybe a lot.

The major issue raised has been that of religions that denegrate and demonize the behavior of alternative sexualities: gay, lesbian, transgender. So, for example, if I was a Christian who owned the only event hall in town, I might be able to refuse to rent the space for a wedding between same-sex people. Similarly, if I was a radical fundamentalist Muslim who owned that event hall, I may prohibit rental to Christians as “infidels.” Either way, that would mean no reception unless I was willing to travel to another town.

A more insidious outcome might be the establishment of separate facilities and businesses that only catered to people who didn’t violate the owners’ “sincerely held religious beliefs” as the law calls them.

On a more practical level, the law moves Arkansas away from the growth economies that we need to supplement agriculture and mining. Companies who need to attract the best and brightest talent from around the country can’t move to a state that codifies laws that are regressive toward civil rights. A good argument about this is made by the former head of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission. Here is a link to a powerful open letter from him about these effects:

Former AEDC Director Grant Tennille: “We are watching a re-run.” | Arkansas Blog | Arkansas news, politics, opinion, restaurants, music, movies and art.

His letter is bolstered by the fact that many of the largest corporations in the country, including Apple, have called on Arkansas not to pass the bill. It is telling that even the CEO of Walmart, based here in Arkansas, and the nation’s largest employer, has denounced the bill as it “sends the wrong message about Arkansas.”

Well, we will know in a few hours if the governor will endorse a potentially economically damaging piece of legislation. Not to mention one that further tells people in Arkansas with alternative sexualities that their right to the pursuit of happiness is not worth protecting.

EDIT: The governor just announced that he wants the legistalive branch to recall the legislation and make changes to bring it in line with the widely-accepted federal legislation. That is a good step. He wants us to make clear to the world that Arkansas is a good place to do business. Sadly, I think much of the damage has been done. But, he did not explicitly veto it, perhaps to avoid an override vote. If the legislature thumbs their noses at him, there is not much he can do save for vetoing and risking an override, or not sign it in which case it becomes law 20 days after the legislature adjourns.

He’s Baaack

After quitting my teaching job to seek a PhD in social psychology, and moving 2,600 miles to Fayetteville, Arkansas, I am now starting to post here again.

I am not sure what the blog will be since I am not producing it for my students (I am not teaching this year), but it will likely include a bit more about research in my subject area, and less general postings. But we’ll see. Stay tuned.

Resurging interest in brewed coffee

The New York Times has an article about the resurgence of interest in brewed coffee (as opposed to espresso), particularly through the new excellent extraction methods offered by the Clover brewer and siphon brewers. Siphon brewers have been used for over a hundred years, and they come and go in fads. This article highlights the “siphon bar” Blue Bottle Coffee is importing from Japan. I like the quote by the head of the importing company. Very Zen, almost like he would be talking about a samurai sword:

At Last, a $20,000 Cup of Coffee – New York Times:

“If you just want equipment you’re not ready,” Mr. Egami said in an interview. But, he added, James Freeman, the owner of the cafe, is different: “He’s invested time. He’s invested interest. He is ready.”

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Summertime

I am officially on leave from teaching for the summer — first time in years I have had any extended time to do anything else but teach or research (or have major gut-rending surgery, but that’s another story).

I will take leave from posting on this blog at the same time, because it is primarily for the benefit of my students. I’ll be back in September. In the meantime, I will catch up on reading, learning how to relax, and a bit of vacationing.

In the meantime, check out the postings over at Mind Hacks, Cognitive Daily, and Developing Intelligence. Click on the links over to the right —->

Guess the 10,000th edublogs.org blog creation time

Counting down (or up) – guess the 10,000th edublogs.org blog creation time and get a free domain and hosting 🙂 at incorporated subversion:

Here’s a mini technorati competition, heh, if you can predict the closest time and date – GMT +11 – that the 10,000th edublogs.org blog is created then I’ll buy you a free domain, and chuck in some hosting too… all you have to do is to post to your blog the time you guess at, link to this post, and I’ll furnish you with the domain of your choice and hosting for a year.

Hmmm… I’ll go with — June 15th — 7:34am.