In the car today, on a little trip to gather up needed supplies, Julie and I talked a bit about our academic experiences. When we discuss such things, I often land on a familiar point that has always bothered me about academia in general. It’s similar to my sentiment about why people who are downtrodden stay downtrodden. It’s a double-bind built by two things: Toxicity and a lack of loyalty.
Let me start with toxicity in this sense. Toxins are, of course, poisons, or anything you introduce to a system that encourages disease or ill feeling. In academia, I consider a certain sect of people to be toxic. They are the people who came to academia for the wrong reasons. Academia is not a place where you rake in profit (my eternal argument with people is that a college should strive to break even– not to generate revenue). Likewise, academia is not a place to come to attempt to be a power broker. Finally, academia– as I ranted earlier this month– is not a place to be if you don’t like working with students.
I think the level of toxicity in academia is inversely related to the problems we have as academics with loyalty. In my own humble opinion, a person who isn’t loyal is worthless. Now loyalty, of course, is a fickle thing. Some people try to use loyalty to manipulate, or abuse loyalty to institutions for personal gain. I’m not talking about that. I am talking about investing in people and following through.
Allow me to offer an example from my own experiences. I’ve had a number of mentors who have taken heat from other academics; that’s sort of a thing for those of you not in academic circles. One, in particular, took heat for a decision made in the scholar’s personal life. When people came at this scholar or spoke poorly of this scholar, I defended said person. Often I defended this person at my own risk, because I had loyalty and assumed were the situation reversed the person would extend me the same loyalty.
This scholars issues hung in the air for a while, and I actually made enemies defending this person. I don’t regret it; I was doing the right thing. I can rest easy knowing that when someone was being abused and kicked around I stuck up for the person and I did what I could. It was a detriment for me, though.
Years later, the roles reversed. This person who I looked up to and did everything I could to help and support was in a scenario where I was being attacked and trashed. It was a moment that harmed my career in spite of me actually having done a better-than-expected job and having been, if anything, too gullible and helpful. Because I value helping students and my coworkers and the community. I gave more than many would say I should have.
And I needed this person who I went to the mat over and over for to extend me the same courtesy. I needed this person to be loyal and to risk taking some heat for me.
This person… did not. Instead of defending me, this person put up the most comfortable amount of resistance and stopped short of actually suffering even mild trouble for me. The same person I suffered through a hideously uncomfortable stretch of years with a “superior” to stick up for wouldn’t even rise to the level of walking out of a meeting to defend me, wouldn’t call another person (or group of people on the carpet). Then this person essentially said to me that it was my fault I was subjected to the situation because I wouldn’t just “act white” (I’m paraphrasing here from a very lengthy critique of my culturally based behavior and scholarship– the person literally told me it wasn’t okay to be me if I wanted to get ahead).
I still talk to this person sometimes. Academia is a small world, and once you work with a person who has any status at all you are linked to them forever, even if it went really badly (I had a class with one professor who was visiting that I wish I could erase just because people ask me about him and I have to dodge responding because the class and the professor were both train wrecks). I haven’t ever confronted this scholar, nor will I ever speak ill of this scholar by name, but this person wounded me, professionally and personally, because this person couldn’t extend even a fraction of the loyalty I offered back to me in kind.
I mention this because it’s really all connected. The toxicity of not having loyalty is what makes academia a strange place. When you work with good people who care about each other and respect each other, the job I do is amazing. Other than the fact that I am sometimes crippled with self-doubt because my once-beloved home discipline discarded me like garbage only to decry their problem of not having people like me, my job is amazing. I work in a great program. This has been a troubling semester with some students (see yesterday’s post), but my top students excel, I love working with them, and I know that if I need support or help there are people who have my back.
When people get power hungry, or when people are in this for the wrong reason, it can be the most terrible experience, like allowing the core of your adult being to be subjected to the high school cafeteria prospect of not being able to find a place to sit. In my time as a graduate student I famously ended up being that guy (the person who finally came to sit with me ended up being my wife, so thanks for coming to the big empty table, Julie :*). But honestly, because I wouldn’t play a shark-tank style game of one-upsmanship, and I chose to remain loyal to those who were good to me and to not ignore those who transgressed against others, I had a very difficult chunk of time leading into my “career.”
Had people understood how academia is supposed to work– not just in my opinion but in all of the literature on which we base the art of teaching and the concept of having an academy in the first place– I could have felt much better for that long stretch. And I like to think, in my own way, I helped a number of others to not feel the same sense of disconnect and alienation that I did.
The thing about a toxin is that it will kill you if you don’t find an antidote.
The antidote is so simple, though. Just don’t be a bad person. I’ve told people over and over that I will go to bat for someone who is not executing their plan well at all– even someone I think is going to fail– if they’re doing it the right way for the right reasons. I’ll suffer, as I have before, damage to help.
But if you’re not loyal… you’re worthless to me. I won’t pour my time and energy into you. I’m 40 years old and I’ve learned the foolishness of such actions.