American universities might seem to be going overboard with violent cops, student arrests, and criminalizing protest but academia has always been a place where carceral logic is front and centre.
A beautifully brave and eye opening account. So too have I encountered educated people parading as free thinking and liberal, yet were clothed with the same prejudice they were meant to rise up against
This is an absolutely beautiful account and as an academic myself I completely align.
Perhaps this comments section is a good place to pose a question that surfaces here: as a junior academic I am often asked to do little favors like guest lectures, in places that would beam up my career, but the reactions of some of the faculty to students has shown me their policing and dark sides. Instead of their greatest value being the protection of their students; it has become the protection of their ideology and defending of an unequal and violent status quo. How would you deal with such conundrums me do activism for student freedom of protest in relative position of weakness as a junior?
Thanks for reading, dear Kamile. I understand your conundrum and perhaps you may not agree but we have to do away with hierarchies like junior academic and so on. Academia is the only world where you enter a university job after a dozen years of study, can be middle-aged or more, and still be deemed a "junior" :-) Yet, paradoxically, even as graduate students, we insist that these are not students but members of a workforce and must have agency. So the question is, at what stage of the academic career can a person be seen as having power/agency/rights? If you stop accepting the label of "junior" you can see how much power you already have to help students and to help your own dept if they are at all receptive to it. Tenure lines are always precarious and even after tenures and promotions, the precarity does not go way and you never know what/who will or will not work against you at your workplace. You can start by resisting these problems right away and see yourself through a lens of strength rather than weakness.
As for guest lectures and stuff like that, I am the wrong person to advise. I endlessly did such things and still do such but only always for colleagues or spaces I trust. It was never for career climbing but only if I felt it helped push a certain topic forward in a new space.
A beautifully brave and eye opening account. So too have I encountered educated people parading as free thinking and liberal, yet were clothed with the same prejudice they were meant to rise up against
Thank you, dear Shakti, for reading and for your kind words ✊🏾❤️
This is an absolutely beautiful account and as an academic myself I completely align.
Perhaps this comments section is a good place to pose a question that surfaces here: as a junior academic I am often asked to do little favors like guest lectures, in places that would beam up my career, but the reactions of some of the faculty to students has shown me their policing and dark sides. Instead of their greatest value being the protection of their students; it has become the protection of their ideology and defending of an unequal and violent status quo. How would you deal with such conundrums me do activism for student freedom of protest in relative position of weakness as a junior?
Thanks for reading, dear Kamile. I understand your conundrum and perhaps you may not agree but we have to do away with hierarchies like junior academic and so on. Academia is the only world where you enter a university job after a dozen years of study, can be middle-aged or more, and still be deemed a "junior" :-) Yet, paradoxically, even as graduate students, we insist that these are not students but members of a workforce and must have agency. So the question is, at what stage of the academic career can a person be seen as having power/agency/rights? If you stop accepting the label of "junior" you can see how much power you already have to help students and to help your own dept if they are at all receptive to it. Tenure lines are always precarious and even after tenures and promotions, the precarity does not go way and you never know what/who will or will not work against you at your workplace. You can start by resisting these problems right away and see yourself through a lens of strength rather than weakness.
As for guest lectures and stuff like that, I am the wrong person to advise. I endlessly did such things and still do such but only always for colleagues or spaces I trust. It was never for career climbing but only if I felt it helped push a certain topic forward in a new space.
Hope some of this helps -- Bhakti
So much to think about; thank you for sharing. Best wishes to you, Bhakti.
thank you so much.