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 Critical Storytelling

Series Editors

Nicholas D. Hartlep (Berea College, Kentucky, USA)

Brandon O. Hensley (Wayne State University, Michigan,
USA)

Editorial Board

René Antrop-González (State University of New York at New PALTZ,

New York, USA)
Noelle W. Arnold (Ohio State University, Ohio,
USA) Daisy Ball (Roanoke College, Virginia,
USA)
T. Jameson Brewer (University of North Georgia, Georgia,
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USA)
Mohamed Nur-Awaleh (Illinois State University, Illinois, USA)
Valerie Pang (San Diego State University, California, USA)
Ligia Pelosi (Victoria University, Australia)
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Peggy Shannon-Baker (Georgia Southern University, Georgia, USA)
Christine Sleeter (California State University, California, USA)
Suzanne SooHoo (Chapman University, California, USA)
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volUME 7

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 Critical Storytelling
Experiences of Power Abuse in Academia

Edited by

Julie Hansen and Ingela Nilsson

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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 This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license,
which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited.
Further information and the complete license text can be found at
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The open access publication of this book, as well as the production of the Epilogue by Ingela Nilsson,
have been supported by the research program Retracing Connections
(https://retracingconnections. org/), funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (M19-0430:1), with kind
support from the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul.

All chapters in this book have undergone peer review.

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ISSN 2590-0099
ISBN 978-90-04-52095-0 (paperback)
ISBN 978-90-04-52094-3 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-52102-5 (e-book)

Copyright 2022 by Julie Hansen and Ingela Nilsson. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV,
Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill
Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau and V&R unipress.
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Contents

1 The Same Old Story? An Introduction 1

Julie Hansen and Ingela Nilsson

2 The Polyphony of Academia 6

Ingela Nilsson

3 What My CV Doesn’t Tell You 10

Julie Hansen

4 Notes from the Margins of Academic Life 15

Anonymous 1

5 A Decisive Meeting in Department X 18

Dinah Wouters, Tim Noens, Thomas Velle and Anonymous 2

6 Phantom Libraries: Unspoken Words, Untold Stories and

Unwritten Texts 31
Moa Ekbom

7 On the Occasion of My Retirement 35

Cecilia Mörner

8 How to Be a Professor in the Twenty-First Century 41

Wim Verbaal

9 Bad Days 49
Anonymous 3

10 On Diversity Workshops: Challenges and Opportunities 51

Hanna McGinnis, Ana C. NÚÑEZ and Anonymous 4

11 Still a World to Win 66

Anonymous 5

12 Fragments of Missed Opportunities: Or Unrealized Dialectical

Exchanges with a Mentor 68
Anonymous 6

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VI C ONTENTS

13 Flexing Muscles 74
Ingela Nilsson

14 Lessons I Learned at University 78

Ricarda Schier

15 Benevolence or Bitterness 81
Antony T. Smith

16 Observations from a Non-Academic on Academic Life 87

Ken Robertson

17 Harassment and Abuse of Power from a Global Perspective: Or

the Importance of a Conversation 92
Anonymous 7

18 What My Younger Self Would Have Said, Had She Spoken up, and
How My Present Self Would Have Replied 103
Ingela Nilsson

19 The Ghosts of Academia 105

Veronika Muchitsch

20 The Unbearable Shame of Crying at Work 107

Anonymous 8

21 Panic Button 111

Ingela Nilsson

22 Quit 117
Thomas Oles

23 Diving Deeper: The Redemptive Power of Metaphor 125

Helen Sword

Epilogue: The Privilege of Writing One’s Story and Reading Those

of Others 130
Ingela Nilsson

Epilogue: Gathering Voices for a Better Academic Workplace 137

Julie Hansen
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 CHAPTER 1

The Same Old Story?

An Introduction

Julie Hansen and Ingela Nilsson

Storytelling is seen by many as a universal human impulse, a way for individ-

uals and groups to communicate experiences and make sense of life. It is also
a social and cultural activity in which not everyone has an equal voice. As the
Czech dissident and later president Václav Havel argued, “an examination of
the potential of the ‘powerless’ […] can only begin with an examination of the
nature of power in the circumstances in which these powerless people oper-
ate” (Havel, 1985, p. 23). For those with a chance to make themselves heard,
storytelling can be an empowering act that exposes injustice. Storytelling can
forge a path toward better endings. By daring to tell our stories, we enter into a
process that is larger than ourselves.
This volume of essays arose out of the courage of scholars and students
to share stories of the academic workplace that are often only spoken of in
hushed tones, if at all. The essays explore individual experiences as well as
underlying institutional structures, providing original perspectives on bul-
lying, sexual harassment, discrimination and other forms of power abuse in
academic workplaces. Topics include the risks of unequal power relations for
graduate students and junior faculty, the roles of gender and ethnicity, the neg-
ative effects of the tenure system and limited mobility, and the implications of
new public management for academia.
This is not a reckoning with any particular institution, department or indi-
vidual, but an examination of collective problems. Narratives like these com-
prise a necessary first step toward change. The culture of silence surrounding
harassment and power abuse in the academic world needs to be broken, so
that it will not always be the same old story, but a better narrative that we can
call our own.
The academic world presents many obstacles to sharing such experiences.
As some of the contributors observe, it can be difficult to overcome the mis-
placed sense of shame that victims of power abuse and harassment often feel,
despite the fact that they have done nothing wrong.1 The nefarious phenom-
enon of victim-blaming can be effectively mobilized to protect perpetrators
by discrediting their victims. Shame and victim-blaming in connection with

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2 H ANSEN AND N ILSSON

harassment are not specific to academia, yet some of the peculiarities of aca-
demic workplaces arguably present further obstacles to speaking out. As Sarah
Viren (2021) notes, “academia is a hierarchical industry, one in which a small
minority of those with secure jobs or tenure have huge sway over decisions
about job security for the remaining majority” (para. 56). A tight and competi-
tive job market can lead to a higher frequency of harassment (Blomberg, 2016,
p. 51). Studies indicate that bullying in a workplace often does not stop until the
harassed individual has left it for good (Blomberg, 2016, p. 35), but this option
is not always available, or even desirable, for academic workers. Another risk
factor appears to be emotional investment in one’s work (Blomberg, 2016, p.
51). The fact that successful scholars tend to be devoted to their work may ren-
der them more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.
Often there is a lack of institutional support, knowledge and transparent
practices for dealing with work environment issues, even among some Human
Resources departments. For those in academic leadership positions, incen-
tives to acknowledge problems may be low (Twale & De Luca, 2008, p. 22).
Researchers note that “heads of departments today hesitate to admit that
harassment takes place at their workplace, as they see it as a disqualification
of their own leadership abilities” (Björkqvist et al., 1994, p. 174). Some
employ- ees who file complaints face retaliation or unethical behavior on the
part of the administrators and consultants entrusted with conducting
investigations (Friedenberg, 2004).2
Yet there are compelling reasons for everyone with a stake in the academic
world to speak out against power abuse. Research has documented the various
consequences of workplace harassment for victims, and they include depres-
sion, anxiety, insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide
(Björkqvist et al., 1994; Blomberg, 2016). These unacceptable costs are not
limited to indi- viduals, however. Although more difficult to measure, the
institutional losses for universities are undeniable, and these can spill over onto
students and the qual- ity of the education they receive, as well as overall
research quality and output. Despite solid data and the existence (in some
places) of legislation and pol- icies intended to prevent problems, many
academics are sorely unequipped to recognize and deal with power abuse in
their chosen profession.3 Many believe it will never happen to them, yet
research shows that “[a]nybody may become a victim, provided that the
individual has less power than the tormentor” (Björkqvist et al., 1994, p.
175). The Swedish organizational psychologist Stefan
Blomberg (2016) debunks a common myth about workplace bullying:

There is a widely held idea that it is primarily people who behave in an

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eccentric or strange way who become targets of bullying. Our clinical

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T HE S AME O LD S TOR y? 3

experience on this is clear, however. The majority of those targeted are

strong, highly functional and successful individuals, whom others—
colleagues, coworkers or supervisors—perceive as a threat. Many of
those we encounter in clinical contexts describe feeling shocked when
the bullying process begins, because they could have never imagined that
they would fall victim to it. The idea that targets of bullying are eccentric
or divergent makes an exception appear as the rule. This idea can also
be fueled by our own fear. If only eccentric or divergent individuals can
become targets, it may be easier to situate the risk beyond ourselves. (p.
50, authors’ translation)

Of course, perpetrators and victims are only part of the story. More numer-
ous are the bystanders who witness wrongful actions in their work environ-
ment and face a choice between turning a blind eye (complicity), joining in
the destructive behavior (collaboration) or taking action to challenge it. All
too often, bystanders choose complicity or collaboration.4 Standing up for col-
leagues in such a situation entails risks and requires courage, but a collective
effort to do so could be a catalyst for change.5
Collective is the key word here: the problems explored in this volume are
collective in nature and call for collective solutions, requiring us to put aside
competition in favor of collegial solidarity. Parker J. Palmer (2017) posits the
following:

The external structures of education would not have the power to divide
us as deeply as they do if they were not rooted in one of the most compel-
ling features of our inner landscape—fear.
If we withdrew our assent from these structures, they would collapse,
an academic version of the Velvet Revolution. But we collaborate with
them, fretting from time to time about their “reform,” because they so
successfully exploit our fear. Fear is what distances us from our col-
leagues, our students, our subjects, ourselves. (p. 36)

At their worst, academic hierarchies can feel unsurmountable and paralyzing,

particularly if one is fighting these problems alone. Yet as the voices in this
volume attest, we are not alone. There is strength in numbers, and together we
in the academic profession can do better than the status quo.
We are grateful to the authors who took on the challenge of putting their
experiences into words. They come from a variety of geographical places and
backgrounds. Some have already left academia, while others are just embark-
ing on promising careers. Circumstances allow some to publish under their
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4 H ANSEN AND N ILSSON

own names, while others have chosen anonymity to protect themselves or

others. For every story that appears on the pages of this book, there are many
more waiting to be told. We are especially grateful to those of you who con-
tributed by sharing with us your unwritten stories, reading drafts, and offering
invaluable advice and encouragement along the way. Your voices resound in
this volume, too.
And now we invite you, our readers, to turn the page and begin to heed these
stories. Their narrators speak to you through different forms, styles and genres.
The plots and themes may already be familiar, or perhaps they will surprise
you. Regardless, we hope you will contemplate alternative endings, because we
believe it doesn’t have to be the same old story.

Notes

1 Stefan Blomberg (2016) observes that it can be difficult to measure the frequency of work-
place bullying precisely because most people do not want to categorize themselves as vic-
tims of it out of shame (p. 52).
2 For discussions of the phenomena of bullying and mobbing specifically in academic work-
places, see Keashly and Neuman (2010), Lewis (2004), Twale and De Luca (2008),
Westhues (2004), Zabrodska (2013) and Zabrodska et al. (2011).
3 In recent decades, numerous academic career guides have been published, some of which
have the word “survival” in their titles. They dispense advice on how to write productively,
how to get published, how to get tenure, how to balance teaching and research, but most
remain silent on how to cope with abuses of power.
4 For a taxonomy of the different kinds of reactions observed in connection with destructive
work environments, see Thoroughgood et al. (2012).
5 A recent study found that witnesses of bullying at work who did not intervene ran a height-
ened risk of becoming a victim themselves (Rosander & Nielsen, 2021). For more on the role
of bystanders, see Niven, Ng and Hoel (2020).

References

Björkqvist, K., Österman, K., & Hjelt-Bäck, M. (1994). Aggression among

university employees. Aggressive Behavior, 20, 173–184.
Blomberg, S. (2016). Mobbning på jobbet: Uttryck och åtgärder. Studentlitteratur.
Friedenberg, J. E. (2004.) Political psychology at Southern Illinois University: The use
of an outside consultant for mobbing a professor. In K. Westhues (Ed.), Workplace
mobbing in academe: Reports from twenty universities (pp. 259–289). Edwin Mellen
Press.
Havel, V. (1985). P. Wilson (Trans.). In V. Havel et al. (Eds.), The power of the power-
less: CITIZens against the state in central-eastern Europe (pp. 23–96, J. Kean, Ed.).
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Routledge. (Original work published 1978)

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T HE S AME O LD S TOR y? 5

Keashly, L., & Neuman, J. H. (2010). Faculty experiences with bullying in higher edu-
cation: Causes, consequences, and management. Administrative Theory & Praxis,
32(1), 48–70.
Lewis, D. (2004). Bullying at work: The impact of shame among university and college
lecturers. British Journal of Guidance & Counseling, 32(3), 281–299.
Niven, K., Ng, K., & Hoel, H. (2020). The bystanders of workplace bullying. In S.
V. Einarsen, H. Hoel, D. Zapf, & C. L. Cooper (Eds.), Bullying and harassment in
the workplace: Theory, research and practice (3rd ed., pp. 385–408). CRC Press.
Palmer, P. J. (2017). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life
(20th anniversary ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Rosander, M., & M. B. Nielsen. (2021). Witnessing bullying at work: Inactivity and
the risk of becoming the next target. Psychology of Violence. Advance online
publica- tion. https://doi.org/10.1037/vio0000406
Thoroughgood, C. N., Padilla, A., Hunter, S. T., & Tate, B. W. (2012). The susceptible
cir- cle: A taxonomy of followers associated with destructive leadership. The
Leadership Quarterly, 23, 897–917.
Twale, D. J., & De Luca, B. M. (2008). Faculty incivility: The rise of academic bully culture
and what to do about it. Jossey-Bass.
Viren, S. (2021, May 25). The native scholar who wasn’t. The New York Times
MagAZINE. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/MAGazine/cherokee-native-
american- andrea-smith.html
Westhues, K. (Ed.). (2004). Workplace mobbing in academe: Reports from twenty
univer- sities. Edwin Mellen Press.
Zabrodska, K. (2013). Prevalence and forms of workplace bullying among
university employees. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 25, 89–108.
Zabrodska, K., Linnell, S., Laws, C., & Davies, B. (2011). Bullying as intra-active
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 CHAPTER 2

The Polyphony of Academia

Ingela Nilsson

An important part of my job as a university professor is listening to people’s

stories. Since academia is such a multicultural, inclusive and diverse environ-
ment, I hear an amazing range of voices and stories. It’s an ever growing
collec- tion for which I’m running out of space. Where to put them? Will they
go bad if I don’t store them correctly? Should I sort them under specific
categories? I need a solution, they are taking over my office, my spare time,
my life. All these voices, spinning round and round in my head, urging me to
listen to them:

I read the article over and over, hoping I was mistaken, that I wasn’t
read- ing my own words under someone else’s name. But to my great
horror I could only conclude that I had been right from the start: this was
a chap- ter from my dissertation, published under the name of one of
my super- visors. I didn’t know what to do, so I contacted my other
supervisor to ask for advice. She said it was not the first time and asked
me to produce evidence that the material was really mine. I spent a
week digging up dated files, putting together a time line, but in the
end it didn’t lead to anything—the article is still out there and I had to
refer to it in my thesis instead of the other way around. And now you’re
telling me how import- ant it is to be open and share our work with
others, how the hell am I supposed to feel about that?

I mean, it’s really sad to see how she keeps treating her PhD students,
and not the least the women, but what am I supposed to do? I’m just one
of them, with no power, and anyhow I have to think about my own
situ- ation, because if I defend them I will get into trouble myself. It’s
not so easy, you know, if I don’t put myself first, no one else does.

We sat in the office of the head of department, and she told her version
and then I was supposed to tell my version, but even as I spoke I felt the
doubt growing in the room, even in myself—is this really how it happened,
or had I misunderstood everything? Was this in fact just a “version,” as the
chair put it, or was it the real thing? In the end, I didn’t file a complaint

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T HE Pol YPHONY of A CADEMIA 7

because the whole situation made me feel so insecure and I had no wit-
ness to either the “incident” or the meeting. There are so many guidelines,
rules and even laws, but somehow they rarely seem to work in practice.

It’s not as if he did anything, I mean nothing sexual, he didn’t touch me

or anything, never. It was just the way in which he talked about women,
always bringing up sexual situations from novels or films or the real world.
The framed poster he had in his office, depicting half-naked women in
some sort of ancient setting. The way in which he would always stand
too close to you, forcing you to raise you head in order to look him in the
eyes. The handwritten notes he would leave in your pigeon hole, instead
of sending an email. Or even emails that were somehow too private, but
never crossing the line. But he never did anything, of course, it’s not as
if it was harassment, it was just super uncomfortable. But that’s life, you
know, all these men acting more or less correctly in the open but secretly
waving their dicks. What can you do?
So I said, “This is not OK, you were so mean to him, this is no way
to behave, you should apologize.” But even though they had all heard
what had been said and had seen the student fighting back his tears
at the comments of the senior professor and then leave the room crying,
no one wanted to support my complaint. The student was
inexperienced and spoke broken English, the professor was a large man
with a red face and a loud voice, knowing how to exert his power. They
all knew that if they objected to his behavior, they might be next. My
written complaint was countered by a letter from the dean, explaining
that this is “simply the way he is,” nothing to be upset about.

Everyone knew about his right-wing ideas, of course, they were no secret
and when he invited people over for drinks he was rather outspoken. But,
I mean, it was his house and it’s a free country, right? Of course, that last
event was unpleasant and people obviously got very upset, the Nazi thing
might have been too much. But still, telling the whole story to the dean
and then forcing him to apologize in public like that, it was pretty harsh,
considering what a beloved teacher he had been for so long. What was
the point, really, what did she gain by turning him in? Anyhow, it was all
forgotten after that and things went back to normal, he kept teaching for
at least ten more years and was awarded a pedagogical prize. We all make
mistakes you know, we’re just people.

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8 N ILSSON

I agree he’s a bit creepy, that’s no secret, but it’s your responsibility to han-
dle him. Make sure you dress decently, button up your shirt properly—
not like today—and don’t wear short skirts. Don’t provoke him and he
probably won’t do anything to you. This is the way it is, so you might as
well get used to it, that’s what I did, it’s what we all do.

Then she went on and on about all the important places she’d been to and
the important people she’d met and knew, and how much they appreci-
ated her, and I really tried to look interested because after all she is my
senior and my supervisor, but in the end I felt that I had to say something,
so I waited for her to take a breath and then I cut in, telling her that my
article had been accepted by that journal. I expected her to be pleased,
since she had read it and actually been quite helpful, but she looked at
me as if I had offended her, then forced a smile and said “congratula-
tions.” She then turned to her desk, shuffled around some papers and told
me that our meeting was over, she had important things to do.
I was at the point of crying and then someone at the back of the room
stood up and said, “Enough now, let’s move on. But first a five-minute
break.” It was a professor I had never met before, from a different univer-
sity, and as I was smoking a cigarette during the break, still fighting back
my tears, he came up to me. At first he said nothing, just lit his cigarette
and stood there, smoking. Then he said, “Sometimes people still do that to
me, try to make me feel small, intimidating me in front of others. But then
I imagine them as tiny people with tiny voices, of little or no importance.
Let them whimper.” He put out his cigarette, nodded to me and left.

I have tried putting the voices in the freezer, but they come back and haunt me,
sitting on the kitchen shelves, whispering from behind the bathroom mirror,
sometimes sitting at the breakfast table while my partner and I have our eggs.
I make up a Linnaean system in my head: Helplessness, Power abuse, Bound-
aries … Why so few stories in the categories of Respect, Integrity, Solidarity?
There must be more such stories, I’m sure there are more, but right now I just
need to find space to store them. Not in my head, but perhaps in a book. Yes,
a book might be a good idea. Taking us from despair to hope. Yes, a book, they
all have to go into a book.

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 CHAPTER 3

What My CV Doesn’t Tell You

Julie Hansen

A good CV showcases your skills and your academic and profes-

sional achievements concisely and effectively. It’s well-organized
and easy to read while accurately representing your highest accom-
plishments.
“W RI TING AN EFFECTIVE ACADEM IC CV” (2019)

∵
The academic curriculum vitae is a special genre, designed to be both terse
and exhaustive, plodding a straight and narrow path of education, employment,
publications … At the same time, it is selective, trumpeting high points only,
never lows. Unexplained gaps would hint vaguely of failure.
A recent application for something or other prompted me to undertake the
tedious task of updating my CV. As I added new entries, I began to reflect
on the kinds of professional experience, often unsought and painfully gained,
that a CV will never acknowledge. To fill in those blanks requires a less self-
assured genre, one that allows for the winding implied by the literal
meaning of cur- riculum vitae—“course of life.” What follows is my attempt at
an alternative CV. In her memoir Educated (2018), Tara Westover relates
what it was like to study at Cambridge University in the new millennium.
In the popular imagi- nation, an arrival at Cambridge signals success, and so
it is in the narrative arc
of Westover’s story:

After the porter left I stood, bookended by my suitcases, and stared out my
little window at the mythic stone gate and its otherworldly battlements.
Cambridge was just as I remembered: ancient, beautiful. I was different.
I was not a visitor, not a guest. I was a member of the university. (p. 255)

She tells of an unusual upbringing in rural Idaho, with survivalist parents who
were prepping for Armageddon and kept their children out of school. Against
these odds, the self-taught Westover manages to get a higher education, earning
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W HAT M Y CV D OESN ’ T T ELL Y OU 11

a PhD in history. To Westover, education represents freedom and self-inven-

tion, yet when she arrives at Cambridge, she feels out of place.
The circumstances of my own entry into academia fall somewhere between
Westover’s and those of the other students she describes as blending in seam-
lessly at Cambridge. After graduating from high school, I enrolled at the state
university on the other side of the lake. The oldest things on campus were trees,
but I entered its halls (Collegiate Gothic style, anno 1950) with a sense of awe
not unlike Westover’s at Cambridge. True to its etymology, the place served up
the universe from an infinitude of perspectives. I was drawn to study literature
for its capacity to explore the full range of human experience through words
alone.
As an undergrad, I had only the vaguest awareness that there could be a
backside to this world that so entranced me. Not until later did I realize there is
no direct correlation between intellectual refinement and treating others well.
There were occasional rumors of misconduct, but I didn’t want to hear these
stories, much less believe them. I told myself they were anomalies in an other-
wise benign world. Decades later, my former undergraduate advisor and long-
time mentor would relate over dinner some scandals from the era of my student
days. I didn’t want to hear them then either, and my conflicted reaction sparked
our first disagreement in years (but I’m getting ahead of myself here …).
Looking back, I imagine that my aunt, the black sheep of the family and the
only other one to earn a PhD, must have faced obstacles as a professor in the
1970s. When I was a teenager, she made me promise never to learn to speed
type, on the logic that people can’t treat you like a secretary if you don’t have
secretarial skills. I broke this promise, naively secure in the belief that, after
the battles fought by her generation, I would never encounter sexism in my
chosen career.
My undergraduate degree was made possible by a combination of schol-
arships, student loans and the modest help my parents could provide. High
tuition made graduate school a long shot, but thanks to a fellowship from a
prestigious university, I could afford to spend a few more years studying lit-
erature. It was in grad school that the contours of the downside of academic
life began to sharpen. The graduate students tiptoed around a temperamental
departmental secretary, lest she wield her informal power to our disadvantage.
Every Tuesday and Thursday at 3 pm, my small cohort would breathe a collec-
tive sigh of relief at having made it through another seminar on medieval lit-
erature without freezing up or starting to cry. Misery loves company, but even
this kind of camaraderie can crack and fissure. In the beginning we were four,
then three—too few to withstand the atmospheric pressure. In an unforgiving
environment, it becomes harder to forgive one another.
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12 H ANSEN

Some professors exchanged harsh words in the corridors, others didn’t

speak at all. The majority were nice to students, but one seemed to take out
aggression obliquely, on the graduate students supervised by a colleague he
disliked. It was this that reduced me to tears at my oral exams. Afterwards I
was mortified not so much by the belittling words, as by my own show of
weakness in response. Many times since in my academic career, I’ve told
myself I need to toughen up.
Another graduate student consoled me with the fact that no one in recent
departmental history had passed their orals without breaking down. To the
credit of the compassionate department chair, I received her apology the
next day. She was not present at my exams, but had heard. Somehow, every-
one had. She called the incident unforgivable and attributed it to a feud that
had nothing to do with me. It helped to hear this, and I had, after all,
passed with distinction. You’ve been vindicated, said my consoler. Yet that
moment of undeserved humiliation influences how I approach exam
situations to this day. Some colleagues might think I’m too quick to intervene
on behalf of students, but I can’t tell students to toughen up, seeing as that’s
never worked for me.
At the same time, the intense experience of graduate school was addictive.
Never have I learned so much in so little time (even from the one professor
who was not so kind). I basked in the aura of brilliant minds. The faculty were
generous with their time and knowledge, my dissertation advisor ever-patient
and encouraging. A slow reader, I lived by necessity with my nose in a book,
spending entire contented days in an overstuffed armchair in the graduate
reading room (Art Deco, anno 1938). I made my way through long reading
lists, transformed by what I consumed. I traveled to my first conferences and
took summer research sojourns in Europe. Two Nobel laureates gave poetry
read- ings at my department. I was acquiring a taste for the intellectual
pleasures of this profession, and there was no question that the good
outweighed the bad.
Not long after defending my dissertation, I got lucky on the job market and
accepted a position in a department distinguished by a collaborative spirit. As
a product of the American educational system transplanted to Europe, I had a
steep learning curve to climb, but my colleagues gave me a leg up. It was from
them that I really began to learn how to teach.
I was fortunate to come to such a welcoming department straight out of
grad school, but I’ve since witnessed disasters in the academic workplace. I’ve
seen a thriving department, overflowing with students, decimated by inter-
nal strife that no one could get a handle on. The solution in the end was to
downsize, rendering half the faculty redundant. Before we reached that sorry
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state, however, there was a five-day group therapy retreat, led by a consultant
in Birkenstocks with a mandate to diagnose and treat our deficiencies. We sat

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W HAT M Y CV D OESN ’ T T ELL Y OU 13

in a circle eight hours each day, urged to reveal our innermost thoughts and
feelings. “There will be yin and yang, crying and screaming,” the therapist had
(rather alarmingly) explained to me over the phone when I tried (unsuccess-
fully) to get myself excused on the grounds that I was eight months pregnant.
He assigned us divisive little tasks, like listing the five best and worst traits
of each colleague. Reluctance to participate was viewed as an act of insub-
ordination, of which there were plenty over the course of the retreat. If any
good came of that experience, it was that it united us in collective distaste
and resistance. On the fourth day, the therapist lost patience and accused us
of undermining his work. “Never in twenty years,” he complained, “have I met
such a hopeless group of people.”
Once an organizational psychologist, who had been hired by a university
to investigate a harassment complaint, explained what he thought I needed
to know: that being undermined by colleagues is a normal part of any work-
place—the implication being that I should just toughen up. Needless to say,
I haven’t followed this advice, and it turns out that part of my education has
entailed learning what I am no longer willing to accept.
Yet my worklife has been far from bad—consult my CV and you will
see the high points. I have been the beneficiary of generous resources,
monetary as well as less quantifiable kinds, such as encouragement,
kindness and con- structive feedback. I have experienced the deep
satisfaction that comes from collaboration with colleagues on equal terms,
unmarred by envy and competi- tion. And the classroom always provides a
welcome refuge from collegial strife. The truth of the matter is that the
course of my academic life has wound through both good and bad, and as
time goes on, it’s getting harder to reconcile the two. Once, when
intradepartmental intrigues got so bad as to make me ill, the physician who
examined me asked where I worked. On hearing the answer, she shook her
head knowingly, making it clear I was not the first from my pro- fession to
turn up in her clinic. Yet I continue along the well-trodden path, still
hoping the good can be made to outweigh the bad.
The above-mentioned dinner with my mentor took place at a critical junc-
ture in my professional life. By outward measures, things could hardly have
been going better, but I had been suffering at an unhappy department for
months and inwardly knew the situation was untenable. Between the main
course and dessert, my mentor inquired if things had improved. They had not,
I explained. My mentor raised an eyebrow, expressed sympathy and offered
some well-intentioned but disappointing advice. Don’t fight back, it will only
make things worse. And it was then that the revelations poured forth about
professors I had admired as a student. In a childlike reflex, I wanted to cover
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my ears to keep from hearing things I would rather not know. At the same time,

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14 H ANSEN

an angry question formed on my lips. Why are you telling me this only now? My
appetite for dessert was gone, replaced by a sense of betrayal. He said he hadn’t
wanted to discourage me from pursuing an academic career, that he had hoped
things would get better over time.
A few days later, my mentor sent an apologetic note and I forgave, knowing
that the problem is a joint inheritance. He had just retired after a long and
significant career, and now I was the one in a position to dispense advice. His
choice back then was now mine to make—of what to be silent, and of what to
speak. This book is part of my choice.

References

Westover, T. (2018). Educated: A memoir. Random House.

Writing an effective academic CV. (2019). Elsevier.
https://www.elsevier.com/connect/ writing-an-effective-academic-cv

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 CHAPTER 4

Notes from the Margins of Academic Life

Anonymous 1

1 Academic Harassment

They say, we’ve never seen him behave like that, so you must be
lying. (Chanel Miller, Know My Name)

Dear Madam Chair,

Thank you for agreeing to see me and for agreeing with yourself throughout
our protracted and unpleasant interview. It was indeed consoling to learn that
I have imagined the whole unhappy affair; now I can make an appointment
with my doctor and ask for a referral to the psychiatric services. Your confirma-
tion that Dr. X. has never bullied you was particularly reassuring; had he raped
me, the fact that he has not once raped you would certainly serve as a very
useful witness statement in his defense.
Permit me to congratulate you on your tactics. Pretending total ignorance
of the circumstances was a masterstroke (although, for future reference, it
might have been more effective to have maintained the pretense consistently
throughout). I shall always be indebted to you for your invaluable advice,
appli- cable to so many difficult professional situations. Above all, I will
remember the golden maxim that when two people have a conversation
behind closed doors, either one of them is free to deny anything that was
said afterwards. In this context, I am assuming that your belittling and
patronizing comments would, if repeated by me, be added to the list of
things I have imagined.
Finally, I would like to thank you for pointing out to me how grateful
I should be for the privilege of being associated, albeit in the remotest
possible sense, with the Faculty, and for clarifying my position in the
University as an official non person. I shall take care to refer to myself in future
as “non persona non grata,” a title that does honor not just to me but to the
wider academic community.

Yours etc., etc.

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16 A NONYMOUS 1

2 Academic Collaboration

One of my greatest research pleasures has always been collaborative projects.

My first was with two other women. We investigated the presentation of men
and women, from literary and social perspectives, in a medieval poem. After-
wards, I heard myself referred to at a conference as “one of those three weird les-
bians.” (Why else would women want to work together?) I have to admit that in
persisting, and going on to publish with one of my fellow-“lesbians” a paper on
Renaissance love poetry, I was asking for trouble. (Isn’t that what women do?)
My next two collaborative research ventures happened to be with a man.
This did not improve matters. First of all, the editor assumed we were a cou-
ple and sent a single set of proofs to my home address. I had to photocopy
them and mail them, as my supposed “partner,” far from living in my marital
home (which might have come as some surprise to my husband, especially
after the “lesbian” revelation) was in another country. After our second joint
publication, my head of department at the university (a woman) called me in
for some career advice. I was to cease and desist from research collaboration
with a man, because everybody would assume that the results were all his own
work; none of mine. (Really?)
Over the years, I have gone from bad to worse, collaborating with people who
self-identify in various ways. One thing they have in common, though, is that
they do not use gender or sexual identity as insults or even grounds for suspicion.

Note to the Reader: Please don’t imagine that you have to sleep with your
research collaborators. You can, if you like, of course. As it happens, I didn’t.

3 Academic Milestones

When I was just eighteen,

You interviewed me for a place at university.
You said, “The boys will all run after you;
How will you cope?”

When I was twenty-eight,

You offered me advice before an academic interview.
You said, “Just smile your charming smile.”

When I was thirty-eight and just-

divorced, You crept up on me and kissed
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my neck. Your wife was in the next
room.

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N OTES FR om THE M ARGINS of A CADEMIC L IFE 17

When I was forty-eight,

You started telling colleagues I was “difficult.”

When I was fifty-

eight, You went too
far.
I called you out,
and now, Sir, out you are.

So when I tell my students about teachers who inspired

me, Oddly enough, I never mention you.

Publisher’s Note

The author’s identity is anonymized for this chapter. Brill is aware of the real
identity of the author. The inclusion of anonymized chapters has been permit-
ted by Brill in view of risks to the general security of the author.

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 CHAPTER 5

A Decisive Meeting in Department X

Dinah Wouters, Tim Noens, Thomas Velle and Anonymous 2

1 Email Invitation

From: Frank Jacobs

<frank.jacobs@university.edu> Date: Friday, April
20, 2020 at 11:51 AM
Subject: Convening an extra meeting of the departmental committee
To: Department list

To all members of the Department of X

To all members of the Department Council

Dear Colleagues,

Today, the Faculty Board has forwarded the request by the Chancellor and the
co-directors, addressed to all departments, to draw up a report in view of the
general well-being of their members, teaching staff, research fellows, adminis-
trators and students. Our particular attention is asked for the situation of the
doctoral students and the postdoctoral fellows, due to some recent commotion
in the press. You all know the background and it would be useless to come back
to the case itself, but, nonetheless, we will have to take a position on what was
transmitted to the press and mainly on how to avoid similar things from hap-
pening in our department. This report will constitute one of the preparatory
documents to be handed over to those responsible for the risk analysis that
our department will be subjected to as a result of the recent events. As this risk
analysis ought to start before the end of this month, we are obliged to convene
a department meeting at the beginning of next week. Our meeting is planned
for Monday, and we start early, at 10 am, because we need a true discussion in
order to have a first draft of the report.
Both by email and during a quick and improvised discussion, a number of
colleagues have tried to single out some of the more urgent points and prob-
lems in view of the risk analysis. They particularly paid attention to the dif-
ficulties PhD students encounter in their relationship with their supervisors.
They could take as a basis the recent PhD survey as it was conducted among

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A D ECISIVE M EETING IN D EPARTMENT X 19

PhD students of the entire university and of our faculty. I am very grateful
for this work done by Prof. Susan Haas, Prof. Paul Renard and Prof. Olivia
Monti.
In the end, they came up with following points that we must take
into consideration:
– How do we welcome junior members in the department?
– How do we inform junior members about what is expected from them?
– How do we stimulate junior members to talk about problems if they
ever encounter them?
– How can we help junior members find the resources that are designed
to help them?

Although we think it superfluous to stress, we still want to emphasize that the

meeting is not meant to address the concrete event in which our near colleague
is involved nor the commotion it caused in the press. We can assure all mem-
bers of the department that the university authorities are taking care of this.
Our only task is to ask how our department fulfills its responsibilities in the
future as to the guidance of PhD students and postdoctoral research fellows.
We hope to draft the most essential elements of the report as we must transmit
it to the committee that was entrusted with screening our department.

With kind regards,

Frank Jacobs

2 Meeting

F. Jacobs: Thank you all for coming today, I know you are all very busy. Unfortu-
nately, it came to my attention only after the invitation was sent that there is an
overlap between this department meeting and the Career Day for early-career
researchers organized by the university. I regret that, but I thought it would be
better not to bother you all with additional emails and new dates. And we are in a
hurry, as we mentioned. I can see there aren’t that many PhD students and post-
docs present today, but I’m sure the other participants will be able to empathize
with their position and voice their concerns. We’ve all been there, haven’t we?

O. Monti: It’s not illogical that we as academic staff have a somewhat stronger
representation in meetings. Anyway, there is a nice balance between men and
women today, that’s good at least.

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F. Jacobs: Given the subject of the meeting, I would have preferred to see
more PhD students. But I can assure everyone that we will take this matter
with us to

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20 W OUTERS ET AL.

the preparation of the next meeting. Before we start, we just have to deal with
a small problem. Our secretary has been ill since yesterday, so I’m looking for
a volunteer to take notes. Any candidates? Perhaps one of the PhD students?

S. Nielsen: Ehm, yes, I could do that.

F. Jacobs: That’s wonderful. Thank you so much, Sander. You can start off
by noting the names of the people present. Full professors, let’s see … Susan
Haas, Olivia Monti, Paul Renard … and Ian Lang. Do I forget anyone? Emma
Davies, then, is assistant professor, as well as Lucia Flores. And the doctoral
students present are …

S. Eder: Sara. Sara Eder.

F. Jacobs: Sara, right. So, Sara Eder and yourself, Sander. I don’t see Nicolas
here. And Emily is also absent, you might have to note that as well.

S. Nielsen: So, there are no postdoctoral researchers present?

F. Jacobs: I’m afraid not, Sander. I’ll first give the word to Emma, our
ombud- sperson, who will talk you through the results of the PhD survey. She
won’t say anything about the unfortunate case that has recently occurred
between the colleague from our department and one of his PhD students. As
I wrote in my email, we all regret what happened but we have to get past this
specific case. The aim of this meeting is to look towards the future. Emma, the
floor is yours.

E. Davies: Thank you, Frank! I’ll keep it short. In the survey, PhD students
were asked for their opinion about various aspects of the department’s
doctoral guidance policy. Two results are relevant within the context of this
meeting. The first concerns the guidance PhD students receive from their
supervisor. The second is about the conflicts PhD students have already
experienced with their supervisor. We’re talking here about serious and long-
running conflicts about matters like intellectual property, abuse of power,
sexual or other kinds of intimidation, racism and discrimination, and so on.
You can see both results projected on the screen.

S. Haas: Thank you, Emma. I must say that I am very happy with these
results. Seventy percent of the PhD students are satisfied with the guidance
by their supervisor: a clear majority!
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A D ECISIVE M EETING IN D EPARTMENT X 21

P. Renard: And only fifteen percent claim to have already had a more serious con-
flict with their supervisor. It is such a relief to read that. The newspapers from
the past few days, reporting on the unfortunate recent case, gave the impression
that this department is full of predators who routinely mistreat their PhD stu-
dents. This result clearly shows that these kinds of conflicts are just exceptions.

F. Jacobs: The press communication has been very difficult. It has been
impos- sible for me as the department’s chair to gain control over the story.
Before you have a chance to speak up, journalists have twisted your words
and written all sorts of things about our department that are simply not
true.

I. Lang: You did a good job, Frank. And as Paul and Susan said: the results of
the survey prove that our efforts are widely appreciated by our PhD students.
Let’s focus on these numbers and not on what the press has been saying
about us.

S. Eder: With all respect, but I find it difficult to follow your interpretations
of the survey’s results. These numbers also mean that more than 1 in 4
indicate that they receive insufficient guidance. And I don’t think that fifteen
percent reporting on serious conflicts is insignificant. On the contrary!

I. Lang: You are right, Sara. But we should also look at the response rate,
of course, which is 37 percent. I suspect an overrepresentation of people who
are unsatisfied or have some personal grievance with their supervisor. In that
case, 30 and 15 percent is really not that much. You cannot make everyone
happy. Some people just fill out these surveys to get back at someone.

S. Eder: Can I say something to that? I don’t want to deny that

resentment might play a minor role, but if we assume that the survey is not
representative, why do we take it as the basis for this discussion?

S. Nielsen: I do think it gives a good picture of the fact that the majority
of people have no complaints and have developed a good relationship with
their supervisor. Of course I agree with you, Sara, that we should reach out to
these few exceptions that are experiencing problems.

S. Haas: But how can we reach out to them? The survey is anonymous. If they
do not come to the ombudspersons of their own accord, what can we do?

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O. Monti: It’s such a shame that people use these surveys to complain but do
not come to us with their problems. We cannot do anything if they don’t take
the first step.

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22 W OUTERS ET AL.

L. Flores: That’s easy to say, but from what I hear from my own PhD students,
people find it hard to take that step and report problems they are facing with
their supervisor. The low response might also be an indication of this, even
though the survey was anonymous. PhD students are dependent on their
supervisor for guidance, a network, and recommendations in the future. We
should not underestimate this.

P. Renard: I would be very sad to hear that PhD students do not trust the good-
will of their supervisors. All people make mistakes, of course, and academics
are very busy people, but I cannot think of anyone in this department who
does not take the well-being of his students to heart.

O. Monti: or her—

P. Renard: Beg your pardon?

O. Monti: Or her. You said “his students”—

P. Renard: Right, of course.

L. Flores: Perhaps you should say that to the PhD student who was sexually
assaulted by one of our colleagues last week, Paul.

P. Renard: That’s a very unfortunate case!

L. Flores: That we as a department allowed to happen!

F. Jacobs: Let’s not get emotional! I see your point, Lucia. Actually, Emma and
I anticipated it. Right, Emma?

E. Davies: Yes! Frank asked me to develop a concrete plan to prevent similar

cases in the future and to optimize the department’s doctoral policy. First of
all, I wrote a protocol listing a couple of good practices regarding doctoral guid-
ance. We can hand this document to new PhD students. In this way, it will be
immediately clear to them what the department expects of them and what
they may expect of their supervisor.

P. Renard: You said “protocol.” Does this mean this will be a binding instrument?

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A D ECISIVE M EETING IN D EPARTMENT X 23

E. Davies: Well, yes. From my experience as the ombudsperson, I can say that
it’s better to have clear rules. But I can assure you that all the guidelines I pro-
pose are very reasonable. I state, for instance, that supervisors must talk with
their PhD students about their research on a regular basis, at least once per tri-
mester. I also include a paragraph on how to give feedback in a decent way, and
another one on respecting each other’s professional and personal boundaries.

O. Monti: Aren’t we overreacting? Just because there are a handful of troubled

relationships between a PhD student and a supervisor in the department, we
do not suddenly need moral protocols. I don’t see why we should hold every-
body to the same little rules because of a few cases where things go wrong.

P. Renard: I mean, where are we, kindergarten? We are all highly intelligent
people who should be trusted with knowing what works best for us.

L. Flores: What strikes me is that the discussion has so far been dominated by
professors. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think I am attending a meeting
on the well-being of PhD students. So perhaps we should listen to what they
have to say. Sander, I see you are busy writing, but what is your opinion on the
mea- sures that have been proposed?

F. Jacobs: Good point, Lucia! Please, Sander, speak up!—

S. Nielsen: Well, ehm, it is clear that it is a complex debate. I have a good rela-
tionship with my supervisor—

O. Monti: Thank you, my dear. I also think that we have an excellent

connection—

S. Nielsen: Regardless, I think it will be good to have a protocol on PhD guid-

ance. As PhD representatives, we have been asking for such a document for
a long time. Also, I agree with Emma that the protocol should be more than
a list of good practices. It should be an instrument for PhD students to hold
their supervisors accountable. I mean, in case of lacking guidance or abuse of
power, where it is really necessary. In my case, for instance, there is no need.

I. Lang: “Accountable?” This horrifies me. What has become of mutual trust
and respect? Only people who cannot take responsibility for their own prob-
lems would call in the help of protocols, accountability, rules. It horrifies me
that the university is turning more and more into a place where everyone mis-
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trusts each other and we must account for everything that we do.

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S. Nielsen: That is not what I mean. I am as wary as you are of the corporatiza-
tion of universities, but I am not calling for more optimization or administrative
burdens. On the contrary, I want more responsibility in dealing with each other.

I. Lang: Exactly, responsibility. That includes the responsibility of supervisors

to provide guidance and the responsibility of PhD students to stand up for
themselves. If I think about how it used to be … in our time, we were not wait-
ing for others to come and ask us how we were doing. We had to stand up for
ourselves!

F. Jacobs: Please let us stay calm. We can decide whether or not we make these
guidelines a binding instrument in a later meeting. Incidentally, the issue of
taking responsibility to come forward with complaints brings us seamlessly to
the next point, right, Emma?

E. Davies: Indeed. Apart from the protocol, we need to think about ways to
encourage PhD students to talk about their problems. As the ombudsperson,
I was shocked that I wasn’t aware of the misbehavior from one of our
colleagues, until I read about it in last week’s newspapers. How can we
find out about these issues more quickly? How can we help these PhD
students?

O. Monti: You shouldn’t blame yourself, Emma. You are a wonderful ombud-
sperson. Really.

I. Lang: Absolutely! You can’t help it if PhD students don’t come to you.

E. Davies: I know. But how can I make them come to me?

F. Jacobs: Any ideas?

P. Renard: Well, our department’s website really is a mess. Everything is so

unclear there. It wouldn’t surprise me if PhD students who want to ask for help
simply get lost.

E. Davies: So, you suggest improving the website?

P. Renard: Yes! But this will probably take a while. For now, we can place this
information on the home page.

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F. Jacobs: Excellent idea, Paul. That should help! I’ll pass this to the website’s
administrator. Sander, have you written down this suggestion? It should go into

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A D ECISIVE M EETING IN D EPARTMENT X 25

the meeting’s minutes. I shall also mention it in the press release that I have to
send out this evening, together with the protocol Emma proposed. Any other
suggestions?

S. Eder: I don’t have the feeling that we are taking this serious enough. The case
that elicited this meeting is very serious and the media do have a point when
they talk of widespread abuse of power. [Indignant exclamations, Sara speaks
louder.] I heard you talking about responsibility and trust. I am talking about
people in power not taking their responsibilities and people in precarious
positions not being able to trust those in charge. This case is not an exception,
and it rests on many smaller abuses that pass unreprimanded each day.

F. Jacobs: Alright, Sara, general accusations are not very helpful. Can you give
us a few examples of what you are referring to?

S. Eder: I am referring to supervisors who will not grant their PhD

students the right to a holiday, who expect them to be at their beck and call
at all times, who invade their personal space, who appropriate their
publications through unrightful co-authorship, or who do not provide any
guidance at all.

I. Lang: If these problems are as omnipresent as you say, why do we hear

noth- ing about this? Examples are all very well, but can you give us names?
Why are these people not speaking to us?

S. Eder: I hear from many of my colleagues that taking this first step is diffi-
cult because they haven’t met any examples in their surroundings of problems
that have been properly solved by taking such a step. It’s the reigning impunity
and a certain powerlessness of the administrative course they have to take that
makes it not worthwhile to even start with it.

F. Jacobs: I’m not sure what you are insinuating.

E. Davies: Indeed, as the ombudsperson, I sometimes feel quite powerless

myself when I cannot help a situation move forward. I’m not allowed, for
example, to get back in touch with someone who had been complaining about
a malpractice before. The initiative should always come from this person.

F. Jacobs: Yes, but that is for privacy reasons, of course. It is not our
responsibil- ity or even within our powers to look back, I’m afraid.
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L. Flores: But it is there you find the malpractices! You should not interview
current PhD students, but PhD students who have left, who have not finished
their PhDs, etc.

S. Haas: That, I find, is very dangerous. They are full of grievances towards
their old job. Did you know, by the way, that the word “ombudsman” goes back
to the Old Norse umboðsmaðr, which means representative? You can only
represent someone who wants to be represented.

[Hesitant silence.]

S. Eder: The problem is that our jobs are temporary and that our future in aca-
demia depends on the recommendations of our supervisors. And we should not
forget another characteristic of our academic culture: most of the PhD students
are very young, often doing a PhD as their first experience with a working envi-
ronment. How would they know what is normal and abnormal, also in a work-
ing environment that is loosely structured in comparison with other sectors?

F. Jacobs: That’s why agreeing on good and bad practices is important. We

should communicate them more clearly to the PhD students when they start,
so they know their rights.

S. Eder: I just wanted to explain why most people don’t even take the first step.
Once they know something is not right, they are probably closer to the finish
than to the start of their PhD, so why risk the entire endeavor at that point?
Why would they even come to a department meeting discussing matters that
will be implemented long after they are gone, in the best-case scenario?

S. Haas: It seems as if you are implying that all professors are bad guys who
intimidate and bully their PhD students. 70 percent are satisfied with the guid-
ance they receive from their supervisor. 70 percent!

F. Jacobs: Let’s all stay calm. Perhaps that’s also good advice in case of conflicts.
Stay calm, talk to each other and eat cake together. In my experience, a freshly
baked cake can do wonders.

O. Monti: Absolutely! Almond cake is my personal favorite, I admit.

F. Jacobs: Good choice, Olivia! All kidding aside, I take note of your concerns,
Sara, thank you for your intervention. For now, we stick to the plan to commu-
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nicate the protocol. If necessary, we can take extra measures.

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A D ECISIVE M EETING IN D EPARTMENT X 27

E. Davies: In my experience, it is often the little things that help create a good
and inviting environment. The other day, we went with a group of colleagues
to a bar, which was very nice.

F. Jacobs: Of course, not all supervisors should have to go to a bar with their
students. Personally, I think one should also keep a certain distance.

E. Davies: Perhaps it is a good idea to work with large pieces of paper to make
mood boards in smaller groups, to brainstorm together and work out some
suggestions to improve the work environment.

S. Haas: Maybe that suggestion should be tabled until the next meeting. That
deserves a separate get-together.

F. Jacobs: Indeed, Susan, that might be a good idea, but let me remind you
all that we have been making quite some progress already. Olivia already
took the initiative earlier this year to have a group sport activity. The turnout
was quite poor, but we might have to make this into an annual activity, every
year another sport or an excursion.

[Person in the back coughs.]

F. Jacobs: We are also currently having discussions with the university about
the possibility of moving some things around in the building in order to create
space for new breakrooms.

[Happy chatting.]

F. Jacobs: An update on this will be given later this month. We will also recon-
sider coffee machines. We had those in the past, but the machines tended to
break down and the repair costs turned out to be too high. But as I hear you
all speak today, I will move this up on the priority list. I will also contact some
people to create a team to organize these annual team building activities …

L. Flores: [muttering indistinctly] Ridiculous …

[Lucia Flores leaves the room; door

slamming.]

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F. Jacobs: I see some colleagues are leaving; we are indeed running overtime.
I want to thank everyone for their engagement. I think this meeting has
been very fruitful, given the short time. I will end by briefly summarizing the

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28 W OUTERS ET AL.

measures we have agreed upon: first, to put together a list of good practices
concerning the guidance of PhD students, second, to put the necessary infor-
mation for PhD students, like the ombuds and health services, more visibly
on the faculty website, and third, to organize yearly team-building activities.
Sander, will you communicate these measures to the doctoral and postdoctoral
researchers and put them in the minutes? Thank you so much. I have to run
now. Take care!

Minutes of the meeting

Meeting of the departmental committee in response to the request by the

Vice-Chancellor to carry out a risk analysis and propose some measures towards
improving the well-being of doctoral students and postdoctoral employees

Date and time: Monday, April 23, 2020, 10:00-12:00

Present:
Professor Frank Jacobs, head of department
Professor Susan Haas
Professor Olivia Monti
Professor Paul Renard
Professor Ian Lang
Professor Emma Davies
Assistant Professor Lucia Flores
Sander Nielsen, doctoral student
Sara Eder, doctoral student

Absent:
Dr. Emily Smith, postdoctoral researcher
Nicolas Leroy, doctoral student

Chair: Professor Frank Jacobs

Minutes secretary: Sander Nielsen

Purpose of the meeting: to discuss the results of the survey and decide on
measures that are needed to further the well-being of PhD students in our
department

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A D ECISIVE M EETING IN D EPARTMENT X 29

Items on the agenda:

1. Discussion of the recent survey of doctoral students
The overall impression is positive: a majority of respondents are satisfied
with the guidance they receive.
There is concern for a minority of people who indicate that they receive
insufficient guidance. The committee members hope these people will
find their way to the ombudspersons.
2. How can the quality of PhD supervision be optimized?
Action item: The ombudsperson has put together a list of good and bad
practices. These will be communicated to doctoral students.
3. How can we encourage PhD students to seek help when they experience
problems with their supervisor or others?
Action item: We will bring together information on the ombudspersons
and other facilities on the department’s homepage.
Next step: Create a dedicated page when the new website is launched.
4. What can we do to alleviate stress among PhD students?
Action item: We will reconsider the costs of repair for the coffee
machines, as places where people meet and connect with each
other.
Action item: We will make the excursion a yearly team-building
event and advertise the event more widely.
Next step: We will organize a meeting on the idea of mood boards
that will help people to connect with each other.

3 Afterword

This contribution is fictional, although based on personal experiences and

actual meetings from a group of researchers in different faculties and universi-
ties. The names and characters have been largely fictionalized.1
In writing this depiction, it was not our intention to address the issues con-
cerning harassment in the workplace in a direct manner, nor to reflect on or
promote certain solutions. Instead, we wanted to show the Kafkaesque situa-
tion PhD students and policymakers alike end up in, often despite good inten-
tions. The very process that leads towards needed change in academic culture
is a path scattered with surveys, meetings and reports, with half-hearted objec-
tives, selective interim conclusions and short-term solutions. This arduous
work is set in an environment that esteems intellectual freedom very highly
and considers HR policies to be part of the business world, or at least to be
a bit childish. Not surprisingly, individual needs and concerns hardly trickle
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30 W OUTERS ET AL.

down to the policies that are actually implemented. Accordingly, the effects on
academic culture remain insignificant.
In the meantime, persons who become victims of harassment are labeled
as the exception. They are either “vengeful” or “avoiding help,” and are hereby
silenced. Their anonymous testimonies are not taken seriously, or at best are
considered shaky foundations for bold and general policies that potentially
affect all supervisors. And thus, in this administrative process, victims of harass-
ment become victims once more, now of seemingly harmful platitudes—the
bad apple and the bunch, the half-empty or half-full glass of wine—that have
real-life consequences and deprive them and their future colleagues of any
perspective.
Above all, we wanted to show that the systemic nature of this process, most
clearly visible during endless meetings, has the dangerous consequence that
it nullifies all sense of urgency. Before actual change is enforced or even con-
sidered as a need, PhD students have either already left academia, accepted
their situation in the hopes of pursuing an academic career, or become part of
the same academic milieu that condoned previous harassment. By then, the
urgency appears to have gone down, as a new generation of PhD students is
still in the process of discovering how academia works, separating good from
bad practices, and starting to learn how to stand up for themselves and via
which channels.
Although universities and faculties can vary in degrees of transparency and
goodwill, it is our hope the fictional documents above will be recognizable in
their core. Once this modest goal is achieved, we can all go quietly back to
work. We do have meetings to attend.

Publisher’s Note

The identity of one of the authors of this chapter has been anonymized. Brill is
aware of the real identity of the author. The inclusion of anonymized chapters
has been permitted by Brill in view of risks to the general security of the author.

Note

1 We are very grateful to the colleagues and friends with whom we discussed this contribution
and whose extensive suggestions and feedback tremendously improved its argument. They
wholeheartedly support this book’s aim and intentions yet have chosen not to be mentioned
by name.

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 CHAPTER 6

Phantom Libraries
UNSPOKen WordS, Untold StorIES and Unwritten TeXTS

Moa Ekbom

There are really only three things that can ruin your life in academia: outright
malice, sheer incompetence (which is worse than malice) and silence. The first
two are the most startling, leaving you gasping in surprise, since it is beyond
you that someone would do something like that. Silence is easy and logical—
you just need to avert your eyes. Malice is strangely easier to deal with, despite
being infinitely more painful. It leaves little room for ambiguity, as it is usu-
ally quite clear that the intention is to hurt and batter. This makes it easier to
comprehend—it is of course awful to be hated, but you can categorize it as
nastiness, and occasionally it is so egregious that you can actually report it.
Abuse through incompetence, however, is harder to pinpoint, and the per-
petrator is protected by their incompetence. This kind of abuse is usually com-
mitted by those in leadership roles, by mishandling a situation—for example,
a malevolent campaign against a junior colleague by a senior one. Nothing
can be done about this, hence incompetence is the perfect shield. This can be
painfully shocking, since it can really beggar disbelief how someone employed
and paid handsomely to take responsibility can bungle it so badly. Ambiguity
regarding whether there is incompetence or malicious intent brings extra pain,
and an added layer of paranoia. It also undermines trust in authority and in the
possibility of holding a harasser accountable.
Incompetence can also manifest itself silently, through rage-inducing sins
of omission. Passive failure, by pretending something never happened, fol-
lows the law of least resistance. Inertia is something we all understand, and it
can even elicit envy—imagine being able to just sit and close your eyes, and
not have to fight for survival. The averting of eyes is particularly beloved by
academic management, since it also has an engrained aspect of gaslighting—
making someone question their perception and reasoning, since the silence
indicates that nothing bad has happened, and thereby the problem is dealt
with as if it never existed.
By choosing not to interfere and denying any problems, the collegially
elected chairs and administration aid in portraying someone who has been
inappropriately touched and stalked as a delusional brazen minx who actually

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32 E KBOM

wanted it badly, or the passed-over junior female colleague as a ruthless hys-

teric, untethered from reality, who needs to wait her turn, or the harassed
grad student as a confused incompetent hussy who should never have been
admitted to the program. With this framing and the decision to take no action,
there is nothing the abused can do, and the non-action stasis leaves everything
hanging in perpetuity. You are left in a vacuum, without breathable air, the
non-action having suspended everything, and the environment has become
uninhabitable—you must leave. Management has thus solved the problem by
forcing out the slag, the floozy and the madwoman.
There are many things that can be done at an institutional level to improve
academia, such as better labor practices with better contracts and safety nets.
Academic career advancement could be made less feudal, so that you are not
dependent on the goodwill of your liege lord, with transparency in hiring,
especially in short-term contracts. It should be in the interest of a vice chan-
cellor to ensure there are clear avenues for reporting harassment and hold-
ing people accountable. Yet at many universities, harassment is investigated
and arbitrated within a department, and everyone who has ever worked in a
department knows that no one is neutral in such situations. Enamored with
the idea of collegial leadership, I hesitate to call for a more professionalized
managerial stratum at universities, but I have gradually come to the conclusion
that collegial leadership does not work in the most fraught departments, since
it places power in the hands of people who have already established friends
and foes. There are very few incentives to improve the situation; the calm of
the status quo where no one is questioned or has to alter behavior is infinitely
more alluring than the mess of change and examination. Despite improved
labor law governance in academia, inertia is beguiling and all too easy.
I have no sweeping suggestions for solutions, since academia looks differ-
ent from the perspectives of different departments, universities and countries,
even if they share the same kinds of abuse and harassment. When problems
arise, good leadership is essential, but rare. That colleagues have a sense of
responsibility and call each other out and act, instead of averting their eyes, is
also essential. This is not even a culture of fear and retribution, but a natural
inclination to take the easy way out. Inertia is also connected with shrinking
funding in academia, as everyone must fend for themselves as money and time
disappear in cut-backs and reorganizations. Permanent positions are essential
for a fair, democratic and vibrant academia, since stability is necessary in order
to be a responsible and conscientious colleague.
In the magical #MeToo autumn of 2017, where change seemed possible and
I finally learned that it is not okay if someone masturbates in front of you with-
out consent (thank you, Louis CK!), the online journal Eidolon published an
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P HANTOM L IBRARIES 33

article by Donna Zuckerberg on the books that were never written and never
will be, because their potential writers have been harassed, shamed or just
so worn out that scholarship was not possible: “But in its shadow is a second
library—at once infinite and infinitesimal—of essays, articles and books that
will never be written because the people who would have written them were
pushed out of the field by harassment and abuse” (2017, para. 1).
This story of lost libraries mainly concerns sexual harassment, but it can
easily be expanded to include all forms of abuse in academia. Abuse that is
not expressed in a sexualized manner and not specifically sexist is in many
respects just as tiring and shaming as that of a sexual nature. This abuse is
also practiced more visibly and openly, perhaps under the guise of supervision
or scrupulousness. Specific excuses can include expressing worry about some-
one’s aptitude for academic work, with fake concern for a specific individual’s
personal suitability, and exclusionary approaches such as certain information
not being disseminated, with some particular person always falling off the
email list.
As a classical philologist, I am of course obsessed with lost texts—all that
has been lost through the ages and ravages of time, as well as the haphaz-
ardness of preservation—and I think about this ghostly library every day. It
includes a text or two by me, when I was too tired, beaten and angry to produce
them. The lost library should be as longed for as the (probably exaggerated)
Library of Alexandria, as the dispersed books that traveled with the Byzantine
princess Sophia Palaiologina to Russia, or the volumes that Ansgar and his men
abandoned to the Norsemen when attacked in their missionary travels.
Texts are created from language, and this is a reminder of how hard it is to
speak of abuse in academia. We all prefer exacting and precise terminology,
but where stories of abuse are concerned, there are only tentative phrases,
with glosses and subordinate clauses galore. Once again, the #MeToo autumn,
while having devastatingly little impact, at least started to lay the foundation
of a language for speaking out about and narrating abuse and harassment. The
non-sexual arena is in many ways equally fraught. We are still far from having
the vocabulary and narrative framework to be able to talk about this, to be
capable of discussing the imbalances of power in a mutually intelligible lan-
guage that encompasses the past, present and future. Translation, contextu-
alization and interpretation is hard, especially when the one trying to tell the
story is developing the language. Language cannot grow in a vacuum, when
there is a refusal to listen and see. Yet the evolving language helps the abused
find words for what happened. This is a delicate and precarious means of com-
munication among the bewildered, which may remain secret for some time to
come.
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34 E KBOM

In all probability, I will continue to work within the same field as my harass-
ers and their passive enablers for a very long time. I will see how others support
and laud them, and how they will be given opportunities to hurt others. I can
leave, of course, and I probably should, especially if I want to leave the anger
and sadness behind. I might one day, but for now, I control my anger and grief,
and I think of the library of lost books, and how one day it will no longer be
a secret library, but a public one, where we can learn, invent and discover
words, and ensure they are correctly transmitted and interpreted.

Reference

Zuckerberg, D. (2017, December 1). The lost library: E(i)ditorial—Philomela’s tapestry.

Eidolon. https://eidolon.pub/the-lost-library-dcac1adeb281

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 CHAPTER 7

On the Occasion of My Retirement

Cecilia Mörner

Last winter I decided to take early retirement. For some time I had considered
going down to halftime until I turned 65, which is the average retirement age in
Sweden. This would have meant continuing with at least some of my duties as
a lecturer for three more years. But one morning I woke up and said to myself:
No! I can’t! It’s simply impossible. Not fulltime, not halftime, not at all. I sent off
an email informing my superior and started to plan for a life with less income
than I have had ever since I was a PhD student, yet with greater peace of mind
than I have had for years.
What led me to make this decision, which seemed unexpected and totally
illogical to most of my friends and acquaintances? I mean, as a PhD student
I had struggled for years to achieve my goal of an academic job. Ever since my first
position, I have shared workplaces with intelligent and exciting colleagues, and
I have traveled around the world to meet other intelligent and exciting people
at international conferences. My salary is good. I enjoy a high degree of inde-
pendence when it comes to how I plan and carry out my lectures and seminars,
and I have nice and ambitious students. I have even been offered more oppor-
tunities to do research than I have asked for. Nevertheless, I gladly leave all this
behind because it will mean the end of a suffocating feeling that I believe can be
traced to the occurrence of a specific phenomenon: New Public Management.
New Public Management was introduced to Swedish universities in the
early 1990s in order to implement principles of the business world in the pub-
lic sphere. Most notable among these were documentation, measurement,
outcomes and efficiency. These keywords were, of course, established in the
academic world long before New Public Management was even heard of. Aca-
demics of all times have been practicing them whenever they build research
networks or decide which grade a student assignment deserves. What New
Public Management brought to the table was not so much the practice of doc-
umentation, measurement, etc., but rather the visible existence of documenta-
tion, measurement, outcomes and efficiency. Clear instructions and templates
of all kinds became mandatory. Days and hours were spent—and still are—
on writing various documents intended to ensure the quality of institutions
and academic work. Independent, collegial groups function as gatekeepers
who guarantee that not a single wrongly spelled word or misplaced comma

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36 M ÖRNER

blemishes the syllabi. The intranet offers templates for course guides, reading
lists and grading criteria in the name of efficiency and measurement. So far so
good. The question is: who makes sure that all these documents are produced?
Before the introduction of New Public Management, professional adminis-
trators typed timetables and made copies of students’ term papers and theses
to be handed out at seminars. They did other things, too, but these were per-
haps the most obvious tasks besides enrollment and registration. I worked in
administration at a department for some years back then, so I know. Today, the
amount of administrative tasks has grown enormously. One might expect that
the vast production of documents is done by real experts with plenty of time to
carry out the work. However, New Public Management focuses on the outcome
of processes—not on the processes as such. It is interested in what can be doc-
umented, measured and completed in an efficient way. It requires documents
which can be used to measure the outcome of a process, but what and who
makes this possible are not of interest. This has resulted in a workplace culture
where teachers and researchers are expected to be secretaries, though without
training or even time for administrative duties.
Personally, I have no difficulty with instructions and templates. I find them
timesaving. I enjoy writing course guides and I gladly publish them weeks in
advance. But there is a considerable group of academics who are highly intel-
ligent, hardworking and experienced but who do not fit into an organization
which expects everybody to be their own secretary. They are the kind of aca-
demics who would have had no problem in the pre-New Public Management
era, when lecturers were assumed to be eccentric and odd. In those days
nobody asked for details. Timetables were posted on the wall outside the lec-
ture hall the same day the course started, and the course books were available
in the university library and the local bookstore. Nobody cared about things
such as course guides. Students were concerned about the meaning of differ-
ent theories, but they rarely bothered about deadlines, objectives and grades.
Today is different. In the name of New Public Management, lecturers and
professors are expected to handle documents which assure students that
everyone involved in a certain course can say exactly what will happen day
by day and exactly what we expect from them. The actual meaning of differ-
ent theories is less important than to what extent students manage to demon-
strate knowledge about them. Lecturers and professors are supposed to spend
as much time explaining what the students must achieve to pass with a cer-
tain grade as they do explaining the actual content of a course. Above all, lec-
turers and professors are supposed to know exactly where to find the kind of
information students ask for. Some fail completely in this mission, a fact that
results in a reality where, on the one hand, there is an incalculable amount
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of neatly written documents somewhere in the jungle of the intranet and, on

the other hand, total chaos each time a course or a module is to be offered.
The students are coming! What to do with them? They send me emails! What
should I answer them? They ask which version of Bryant’s book on methods
they should buy! Whom am I to know? Grading criteria—what the hell is that?
And what is wrong with the course guide I just posted? It is the same as last
year and worked perfectly well then!
Some of my colleagues refuse to adapt to students’ requirements by point-
ing out that it is absurd to focus on things that really do not matter in the long
run. Who needs to know on which pages a certain theory was accounted for
once you have graduated? Students need to understand and use theories, not
remember where they read about them. I totally agree with this. Nevertheless,
lectures and professors are obliged to provide visible evidence of measurement
and efficiency, some of which are just for show and some of which students
find intelligible. I have noticed two main strategies among my less adaptive
colleagues in handling the problems, both of which often involve me. The
first one is mainly used by colleagues who rarely show up at campus and work
from home (even without a pandemic). They claim that they cannot log in to
the intranet where the information students request can be found. They have
tried several times and they have contacted university support. In vain. Could
I please email them this and that document? Well, I can, and I do. It doesn’t
take more than five or ten minutes to find what the colleague needs. Why
should I not help? However, it directs my attention away from what I should
be doing: planning a lecture, looking for an article, writing a course guide for
one of my own courses, etc. I would not mind if I were interrupted just now
and then, but it happens more or less every week. Sometimes several times
a day. Such days are wasted. I must either do whatever I had planned to do
on a Saturday or Sunday, or give it up. The second strategy is more evasive.
The colleagues who practice this strategy do not ask anything of me. Nor do
they respond to students’ requests. They just wait for things to happen. And
things do happen. Students have their own networks and they are well-
informed about the teach- ers. Sooner or later they will realize that the
teacher in charge of their course will not answer them. Instead, they turn
to me or another (usually female) teacher who has already proven willing
to help. And we will patiently answer their questions and send them
information about lecture halls, course litera- ture, examinations, etc., even
though it is not our responsibility. We will even revise our colleagues’
outdated documents. Meanwhile, our colleagues focus on their own
research projects and future lectures.
Maybe I shouldn’t blame them. Who knows, perhaps they are secretly
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38 M ÖRNER

skills that, to be honest, are as useful as the ability to write a good course guide
and upload it on time. Most of them have profound knowledge about theories,
methods and history, and they know everything worth knowing about various
iconic researchers. But they force me into the role of a clerk because it is I and
other well-organized New Public Management-adapted colleagues who com-
pensate for their lack of administrative skills. Instead of reading a new article
on a research field that interests me or drafting a research application, I found
myself carrying out not only my own secretarial duties but also those of others.
You may ask why I am doing this. Why can’t I just say no? I can at least tell the
students that it is not my job to prepare for courses of which I am not in charge.
But I do not, because I know it would cost me more energy than it does to just
fix what is lacking. Students will haunt me if I do not respond to their requests.
They will not be content with reading course syllabi (which are available at the
external website and not too hard to find), because they are too abstract and
complicated. Today’s students want to know exactly which pages in a specific
course book they are supposed to read and exactly how many pages they must
write in the take-home exams to pass. They quickly learn the logic of New Pub-
lic Management, which means that they know that some information, such
as a syllabus, exists solely because it is compulsory and not because students
are expected to read and understand them. Who understands the meaning of
learning outcomes anyway? Syllabi are visible evidence of documentation and
measurement, but they do not correspond to students’ day-to-day experience
of studying at a university. Students demand transparent, informative, easily
digested and extremely concrete information. If this is denied them, they will
make sure to denounce the course, its teachers, the program and the entire
university, not only in course assessments but also on social media. Students
are not just measured, they also measure. Bad student reviews will—in the
name of New Public Management—be used in the overall measurement of
courses and departments. And bad reviews will increase the already existing
tensions within the department, where those who sacrifice their research for
administrative tasks are on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I know several
examples of departments that were brought down by this. Not because of a
lack of academic and pedagogical skills, but because of problems with cooper-
ation within the group due to an unfair division of labor.
I would not complain if the administrative work I do for others were com-
pensated for in some way. Let us pretend that a colleague is working on an
application for a research program while I am struggling with his or her frus-
trated students’ questions. My colleague is aware of the favor and invites me to
take part in the program. This is done with mutual respect. I know that he or
she writes better applications than I do, and my colleague is aware that I am
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better administrator. It is also in line with New Public Management’s require-

ment of efficiency: those who are good at anticipating what kind of information
students will request make sure that course guides, reading lists and grading
criteria are available before the course starts, and those who are good at fore-
seeing which project will appeal to research funders write applications. Every-
one would benefit from this. Unfortunately, however, this rarely happens. As a
matter of fact, most of those who do not manage to write a decent course guide
are not good at writing research applications either. They are good at reading
hard-core theories and, to various extents, communicating their knowledge.
In addition, those who are successful at writing applications usually prefer to
keep their projects to themselves. They pretend not to know that administra-
tive work is an important part of lecturers’ and professors’ duties, whether we
like it or not. And there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.
Why not talk to your department head, you may ask. Believe me, I’ve tried.
I have also experienced what it is like to be a department head trying to explain
to lecturers and professors the importance of knowing where to find grading
criteria, as well as the importance of upgrading course guides and not just
copying old ones. For some employees this was not a problem. For others the
request was a violation of their professionalism. I understand that. Lecturers
and professors are hired for their academic knowledge and pedagogical skills,
not because they are good at administration. When hiring a new faculty mem-
ber, applicants’ research publications are scrutinized and their ability to teach
is tested. But they do not have to prove that they can foresee what students
would like to know in advance. Doctoral students are trained to handle data,
theories and methods, not to write course guides and answer email from stu-
dents. New PhDs who get their first job as a lecturer at a university are not pre-
pared to handle students’ demands. None of us who have worked for ages were
ever told how to be a good administrator. Yet, producing, finding and following
instructions and manuals are indispensable skills in the New Public Manage-
ment apparatus, and the job has to be done in order to make the institutional
machine grind on.
The biggest injustice in this system is the fact that administrative skills do
not leave any traces in one’s CV. Or rather: it leaves gaps in the CV. Taking care
of departmental administration and the needs of confused students does not
further one’s academic career. On the contrary, the more you help others by
finding documents or writing new ones, the more you try to be informative,
transparent and efficient when communicating with students, the less likely
that you will get an article accepted in a highly rated journal or invited as a
keynote speaker at an international conference. There is simply not time
enough for succeeding at everything. Someone in the department will always
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40 M ÖRNER

volunteer to help his or her colleagues handle students and this person will
probably do the job far more efficiently than those who have not adapted to
the almost 30-year-old unspoken requirement. But in the long run, the loyal
and cooperative ones are the losers. Attentive department heads may make
sure to raise the hardworking lecturer-cum-administrator’s salary a bit, but it
does not compensate for the measly CV. The true winners are those who con-
stantly improve their own CV by focusing on their own research and ignoring
the needs of others.
However, contrary to what might appear to be my standpoint in this text,
I wish that all lecturers and professors were able to concentrate on their own
research and teaching. I sincerely wish that we could go back to a pre-New
Public Management time when lecturers and professors focused on the mean-
ing of knowledge and well-trained administrators took care of the adminis-
tration. But finding myself squeezed between administrative demands, on the
one hand, and intelligent but hopelessly dated and often selfish colleagues, on
the other, was too much for me. I gave up research some years ago, and I do not
mind spending all my time and energy on teaching. But I am certainly not will-
ing to be an unacknowledged administrative slave in the academic machinery.
I’ve had enough and I blame it on New Public Management.

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 CHAPTER 8

How to Be a Professor in the Twenty-First Century

Wim Verbaal

“We’re heading for a time where you have intellectuals, on the one hand, and
academics, on the other, and where, at the university, you will find only aca-
demics.” The colleague who, about twenty years ago, addressed these words to
me recently retired. At that time, we stood up together for the rights of doc-
toral and postdoctoral researchers. We didn’t belong to the permanent aca-
demic staff. Upon his retirement, I remembered his words and repeated them
to him. We had seen them come true in a frightening way.
It is no revelation that the university landscape has changed dramatically in
recent decades. Nor do we lack analyses that lay bare the causes. These are usu-
ally referred to as the results of the so-called “neo-liberal policy model,” based
on an unrelenting belief in the forces of the market and thus in boosting “out-
put” and generating external funds (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2000; Fleming, 2021).1
That such a policy would prove disastrous for non-profit institutions and, within
the academic landscape, for all non-industrial disciplines, seems obvious.
The former vice chancellor of a leading university in Northwestern Europe
and a pivotal figure in the “neo-liberal reform” of the universities in his country
once remarked that there were “too few students going in the right directions,”
i.e. in the technical and industrial sciences, and therefore too many going in
the wrong directions, i.e. “in the humanities.”2 A look at the actual situation
might reassure him: since he made his statement, enrollment in the “wrong”
faculties has dropped dramatically. The neo-liberal policy model of the past
decades has borne fruit. Of their own accord, people align their professional
and educational choices with its objectives and, therefore, the social implica-
tions of this model can now be felt everywhere.
Of course, this has far-reaching consequences. Faculties such as those in
the humanities and the arts are faced with harrowing financial cutbacks. They
have to look desperately for ways to ensure their survival and, strangely enough,
they mostly do so by responding precisely to the demands imposed upon
them by the neoliberal policy model. The outcome is easily guessed. Whoever
brings in money is rewarded. Thus, everyone starts looking for opportunities
to strengthen their own position within the university institution that wants to
profile itself as an academic business enterprise. Education is compromised in

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42 V ERBAAL

the first place, in spite of any protest that this is a university’s most important
social task. Nevertheless, university policy in general shows that whoever puts
too much effort into education is punished.3 This does not pay off, at least not
immediately, and the university, like all “neo-liberal” institutions, mainly wants
to generate income in the short term.
Europe offers another opportunity for those who want to make a fast career.
Anyone who succeeds in obtaining European funding is welcomed with open
arms by many universities and can immediately count on a permanent posi-
tion, without any questions asked as to whether the scholar’s specialization
was necessary or an asset to the existing research or educational programs.
Nor is it asked which criteria Europe applies and whether they correspond
to a university’s requirements of its staff. The millions in monetary resources
coming in outweigh any internal policy concern (Schinkel, 2018). Researchers
with little or no experience in academic education or administration will be in
charge of the university for decades to come. In the meantime, absenteeism
is increasing in internal councils and boards whenever they are purely policy-
related and do not yield any immediate financial benefit.
Anyone who cannot knock on Europe’s door or does not have the right keys
to obtain European funding must secure a position in another way.4 One such
option is to become a member of those committees where money and doc-
toral scholarships are distributed. The past decades have seen an increase of
the well-established phenomenon whereby academics manage to accumulate
funds in certain councils, boards and committees while serving as a member of
them. Objections are almost always countered by the statement that only the
top of the research landscape is represented in such committees. However, it
remains mostly unclear which criteria are used to select this elite.
Administrative positions are also limited. What can be done by those who,
for whatever reason, do not qualify for similar functions? Academic funding
based on output focuses on the production of articles and defended PhD
dissertations. They constitute quantifiable academic production. Academics
thus have to publish a great deal. They must produce an avalanche of articles.
Anyone who succeeds in this is a good academic and can count on recogni-
tion with all the associated benefits. Nobody bothers about the content of
such overproduction. At a meeting of my own faculty board, I heard, to my
astonishment, a member of the university administration say bluntly: “It’s not
quality that counts. It’s quantity.” It should come as no surprise, then, that no
questions are raised as to how an academic can find the time to produce the
required quantities. And that is where the shoe really starts to hurt.
For one, plagiarism has become a significant phenomenon in academic
publications. Journals, review sites and editors all have to find ways to cope
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with this increase of intellectual theft. And more often than before, scholars
see themselves confronted with colleagues who “make use” of their results
without referring to their sources. One of the main problems, however, is
that plagiarists can avoid consequences once they are established names or
belong to established universities, or as soon as this could mean a financial
loss for their universities. The victims are mostly younger scholars who
have yet to establish a scholarly reputation, or scholars employed by
universities that do not belong to the select “highly rated” happy few. Rarely is
the damage to their career recovered.5 But younger scholars can fall victim to
other abuses, as well. If one browses through academic bibliographies at
some universities, one might notice that a majority of publications are the
work of multiple authors. The academic world seems to be an ideal world
where everyone works together to achieve a beautiful joint result.
Unfortunately, in many cases, the underly- ing reality turns out to be less
rosy. Of course, fortunately many researchers work, in good conscience,
together with their collaborators to achieve shared and common results and
publications. But in too many cases, the truth behind such “co”-publications
looks quite different. Often, the highest-ranked in the local university
hierarchy simply puts their name above an article without even looking at
it. The actual author suddenly sees his or her own work partly
or even completely pass into the hands of someone else.
In the humanities, reference is invariably made to established practices in
the applied sciences. As if there were no protest in the applied sciences against
similar forms of appropriation! Internationally, criticism is growing, especially
in the medical field, precisely because here these practices also extend to the
work of students and interns.6 But even apart from this, it is clear that
research in the humanities is strongly based on individual commitment.
Projects over long periods of time in which many researchers each carry out a
small step that contributes to some far-off result are rather the exception. For
this reason, any individual input must be recognized with credit given to the
person who pro- vided it. This is not only a moral obligation. It moreover
avoids the violation of the right of authorship. Authorship is considered
inalienable, unlike copyright (Nwabachili & Nwabachili, 2015).7 For
academics, the difference is virtually unknown, which means that, more
than once, they commit intellectual theft. Supervisors often derive their right
as “co-authors” from the fact that they acquired the funds for the research.
For this reason, they consider everything that is paid for by these funds to
be their property. They probably envisage a parallel with what happens in
industry. They do not realize, however, that, as opposed to industrial funding,
they do not invest anything themselves and that the only one who can assert
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ownership rights is the funding association. The supervisor is no more than
an intermediary who ensures that the investment

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(in the arts and humanities, it is usually public money) ends up with a capable
researcher. For this reason, he or she cannot assert any right of ownership.
In all these cases, however, the researchers who are in one way or another
involved in the publication usually act as supervisor of the actual author. But
there are others who impose themselves without any official link to the author.
Or who first impose a link—by making themselves co-supervisors—in order
to assert themselves as “co”-authors and increase their quota of publications.
Such researchers display a remarkable broadness in the specter of their exper-
tise. They seem at home in almost all the disciplines that can be found at their
home faculty. The way they manage this is by imposing themselves both on
younger colleagues who are not yet adapted to modern academia and its cus-
toms and, of course, on the PhD students who feel their academic career to be
under threat if they do not comply.
It is possible to go still further, for example, by appropriating the entire
research of a PhD student who is subordinate to you. At international con-
gresses, you present research as your own and under your own name, although
everything you present has been collected and written by someone else to
whom you refer as to “your” PhD student. Preferably, he or she should be in the
room in order to answer any questions that might come up after your lecture.
This way, you even display your own “generosity,” because you give your stu-
dents the opportunity to participate in the international debate.
Maybe you think that too risky? It is indeed easier to force the PhD student
who does not want to continue, or who will in any case not secure a postdoc-
toral position, to leave behind all material. Now, you have ready-made texts
to publish under your own name. Or you can open a page on social media
for academics in the name of the student in question and upload one of the
confiscated texts with your own name first. Preferably, of course, without the
student knowing about it.
Does all this sound difficult to believe? Unfortunately, all these examples are
drawn from real life. The victims are, of course, precisely those (post)doctoral
researchers who form the unprotected middle management in many univer-
sities. They see their work published under another’s name. Internationally,
they lose credibility. Some obtain their doctoral degree with a dissertation
based on articles that have all or largely been published with their supervisor
or co-supervisor as their “co-author.” To what extent can they still claim to be
the author of what they have written and published?
I saw several of them succumb to the never-ending pressure to publish, as
imposed on them by their (co-)supervisor wanting to meet the required quota.
The pressure can become unsustainable, as can the means of imposing it. In
my immediate surroundings, I have known doctoral researchers who were so
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severely bullied and harassed by their supervisors that they eventually needed
psychiatric help. One of them is still partially incapacitated after years. Another
was for three years refused even a single day off and ended up bed-ridden for
a year, suffering from total burnout. Of course, such individuals are considered
“unfit” for an academic career and shown the door. And the supervisors? They
continue to have new victims assigned to them. For, painfully enough, many
of those responsible at universities even appreciate that, in this way, doctoral
researchers become accustomed to “normal” academic practice.
When addressing the question of how universities counter such practices,
the answer can be as short as it is simple: nothing. University boards proudly
refer to the many hotlines and committees, where complaints do indeed
flow in and accumulate like litter in dead-end alleys. Nobody cleans up. If a
complaint seeps through, it is “an individual case,” or university boards try to
erase all unpleasant traces as quickly as possible and to exonerate the scholar
involved, despite the severity of the charges. Whoever dares to stand up for the
victims is quickly advised to be careful in order not to be accused themselves,
ending up as a prosecutor against whom charges are brought in order to anni-
hilate the charges he himself has brought.
One could even speak of a new kind of slavery that is developing in academia.
Extra money is brought in by inviting scholars from outside Western academia.
The prospects of an academic career in the West are indeed still appealing for
many in less prosperous countries with fewer opportunities. Those invited do
not know that their invitation is often also inspired by fundraising motives.
Sometimes this is a painful discovery. For, as soon as the money is received,
the presence of the invited scholar is less necessary. As soon as some tension
arises, he or she can simply be dismissed without further explanation. That
they gave up a life in their home country, that they brought over their partner
and children, that they suddenly become illegal, without work and thus with-
out a residence permit, seems of no importance to the inviting supervisor or
university. Their case now falls under the jurisdiction of the police and social
services. The check has been cashed.
It is painful to realize that most of the above excesses are not limited to
younger academics who are obliged to think about their careers. Established
professors are guilty, yet avoid consequences. Nor is this only a gender-related
problem, in which the female side always is the victim. True, women seem
to suffer more, and men seem to account for the majority of bullying behav-
ior. But one might wonder if this distribution of roles is not due more to the
still predominant male part in the higher university positions. Unfortunately,
women in similar positions do not always behave differently as some of the
aforementioned cases show, and as became clear from some of the #MeToo
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discussions. As far as invited scholars from non-Western countries are con-

cerned, the victims mostly are male.
The true problem must be looked for on a deeper level. It has to do with an
incapacity to handle power over others, even in the slightest way. It has to do
with loss of responsibility and respect toward the personal integrity of those
who entrust themselves to your guidance and leadership.8 But how do you
check it? How can a university—supposing there is a sincere desire to prevent
harassment, bullying and power abuse among staff—be sure that the individ-
ual it hires has this sense of respect and responsibility, as well as the capability
to handle power?
Somehow, this is an educational problem and, of course, it is not that differ-
ent from the problem hovering in the background. A society that invests all its
resources in those who know how to build up their career, irrespective of the
human or material consequences, will in the end create people who do not
care about the safety or health of others. Perhaps universities ought to resist
these developments. Perhaps universities ought to create islands of human
respect and responsibility towards the other, towards the world, towards the
future. Perhaps they should. But in reality, they are adapting to a system that, in
the end, is destroying the true missions of the university: high-level teaching,
intellectual innovation and fundamental research.
One wonders why universities do not feel the need to keep the intellectual
blazon pure. That is the impression they give, anyway, but it shouldn’t really
come as a surprise. Unfortunately, in recent history, universities have not often
been shown to excel in intellectual resistance. They rather breed academics
who are obedient employees.
When my colleague, twenty years ago, made the distinction between intel-
lectuals and academics, he didn’t have all these developments in mind. But he
has been proven right, perhaps more so than expected. Does this mean that
there are no intellectuals left at universities? Certainly there are some. But the
number is growing of those working at universities in whom the academic has
gotten the better of the intellectual, in whom the craving for a career has sur-
passed the urge to know. And what was once called “conscience” has become
extremely rare at universities. But of course, conscience has nothing to do with
either career or intellect. It would merely make the university more human.

Acknowledgement

This contribution is an enlarged version of my earlier Dutch opinion piece,

“Hoe word je tegenwoordig hoogleraar?”
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How TO B E A P ROFESSOR IN THE T WENTY -First C ENTUR y 47

Notes

1 On the dangerous consequences for emerging countries and economies, see Kigotho (2018).
See also Runia (2018).
2 André Oosterlinck in De Standaard, August 25, 2011.
3 For the Netherlands, see van Oostendorp (2019); for the UK, see Graham 2015, (p. 17). For
an interesting (Canadian) gendered approach to the problem of academic teaching,
considered as “care work,” see Fullick (2016).
4 For criticism of European Research Council policy, see Migliorato (2016) and Schneider
(2017). See also Sylos-Labini (2014, 2016).
5 For just one example, see Anonymous (2017).
6 See the guidelines of ICMJE (n.d.) and COPE (n.d.).
7 See also the guidelines of US Legal (n.d.) and the EU (n.d.).
8 See Chapman (2013) and Zhao (2016). For an example, see also Hall and Betty (2020).

References

Anonymous. (2017). Plagiarism is rife in academia, so why is it rarely acknowledged?

The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2017/
oct/27/plagiarism-is-rife-in-academia-so-why-is-it-rarely-acknowledged
Chapman, D. (2013). Abusing power for private gain—Corruption in academe.
University World News.
https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story= 2013100110401544
COPE (Committee on Publishing Ethics). (2014). What constitutes authorship?
COPE discussion document.
http://publicationethics.org/files/u7141/Authorship_
DiscussionDocument_0_0.pdf
EU. (n.d.). Copyright. https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/running-
business/ intellectual-property/copyright/index_en.htm
Fleming, P. (2021). Dark academia: How universities die. Pluto
Press. Fullick, M. (2016). Changing the value of teaching in
universities.
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/speculative-diction/changing-value-of-
teaching-in-universities/
Graham, R. (2015). Does teaching advance your academic career? Perspectives of pro-
motion procedures in UK higher education.
https://www.teachingframework.com/ resources/Does-teaching-advance-your-
academic-career-RAEng-online-report- (APRIL-2015).PDF.
Hall, R., & Batty, D. (2020). ‘Abuse of power’: should universities ban staff-student
rela- tionships? https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/feb/26/abuse-
of- power-should-universities-ban-staff-student-relationships
ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors). (n.d.). Defining the
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role of authors and contributors.
http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/ roles-and-
responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html

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Kigotho, W. (2018). The dangerous rise of neo-liberal universities. University

World News.
https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20181108130628468
Migliorato, L. (2016). Europe’s flawed race for scientific research
funding. https://undark.org/2016/09/23/european-research-council-
flawed/
Nwabachili, C. C., & Nwabachili, C. O. (2015). Authorship and ownership of
copyright: A critical review. Journal of Law, Policy and GLOBALIZation, 34.
Runia, E. (2018, January 19). Waarom ik ontslag neem bij de universiteit [Why I quit
university]. NRC. https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2018/01/19/waarom-ik-ontslag-
neem- bij-de-universiteit-A1589052
Schinkel, W. (2018, September 22). Waarom ik niet actievoer voor de universiteit
[Why I refuse to campaign for the university]. Groene Amsterdammer.
https://www.groene.nl/artikel/waarom-ik-niet-actievoer-voor-de-universiteit
Slaughter, S., & Rhoades, G. (2000). The neo-liberal university. New Labor Forum, 6,
73–79.
Sylos-Labini, F. (2014). European science policy and research risk.
Euroscientist. https://www.euroscientist.com/european-science-policy-
research-risk/
Sylos-Labini, F. (2016). Europea: Robin Hood al contrario.
https://francescosyloslabini.info/2016/04/06/la-politica-scientifica-europea-
robin-hood-al-contrario/
van Oostendorp, M. (2019). Neerlandistiek moet opkomen voor onderwijs [Dutch
Studies have to defend education]. De Nederlandse Boekengids/The Dutch Review
of Books, 2, 22–23.
US Legal. (n.d.). Authorship in copyright.
https://copyright.uslegal.com/authorship- in-copyright/
Vasishth, S. (2017). Lack of transparency in ERC funding decisions.
https://forbetterscience.com/2017/04/26/lack-of-transparency-in-erc-
funding- decisions-by-shravan-vasishth/
Verbaal, W. (2019). Hoe word je tegenwoordig hoogleraar? Streven, 86, 543–547.
Zhao, Y. (2016). Vigilance of power abuse in colleges and universities. Advances in
Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, 63, 239–243,
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 CHAPTER 9

Bad Days
Anonymous 3

It was Professor Oldboy’s turn to organize the Spring School that

year But we all have bad days sometimes

Like Pedro, who, on day one, chose not to use

slides and spoke with a heavy accent
Oldboy didn’t have to lecture him
on the academic courtesy of talking like a Western European

We all have bad days sometimes

Like Natalie who, on day two, took Oldboy’s questions in stride

—she’d answered them when he’d nodded off
yet somehow she was made to feel stupid

We all have bad days sometimes

Professor Oldboy should have known

that the museums close early off-season,
or might, on day three, have believed Sasha, who told him
so, or he might at least have remembered her name

We all have bad days sometimes

Professor Oldboy might even, on day four, have

listened to comments I offered in the evaluation
session

We all have bad days sometimes

Like the people who didn’t dare to speak up

when he started shouting
his “feedback on my feedback”

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50 A NONYMOUS 3

And my supervisor, he might have acknowledged

the issue
when I later recounted these events
but after all, as he put it

We all have bad days sometimes

Like—all those other days—

Professor Niceguy, who calls me a nymph
after I introduce his talk
Or Eric, who persists in a third
question though I tell him we’re
moving on
Or Jack, who tells me he
wonders how I look in a dress
Or Andrew, who gives me the
floor because ladies go first

We all have bad days sometimes,

or is it just me?

Publisher’s Note

The author’s identity is anonymized for this chapter. Brill is aware of the real
identity of the author. The inclusion of anonymized chapters has been permit-
ted by Brill in view of risks to the general security of the author.

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 CHAPTER 10

On Diversity Workshops
ChallengES and OPPORTUNITIES

Hanna McGinnis, Ana C. NÚÑEZ and Anonymous 4

1 Introduction

A not uncommon occurrence within academic walls: the (usually) older white
male scholar who makes an “off color” comment, or interjects a racist, sexist,
classist, etc. remark into an otherwise innocuous academic presentation. Of
course, for the minority targets of such opinions, these comments are not sim-
ply “off color,” but rather a real aggression directed at them. Perhaps even more
indicative of the lack of inclusivity and diversity in academic spaces is the fact
that such toxic comments are intended as “jokes” directed at a presumed like-
minded audience, the perpetrator unaware that within the room are individu-
als whose identities are indeed abused by such “jokes.”
This was the experience of the three authors of the present article at a con-
ference at our beloved undergraduate alma mater. In this essay, we leave the
details of the not uncommon “occurrence” purposefully vague, with a shared
conviction that to retell the “incident” in question would only serve to center
the perpetrator yet again. To dissect the blatant personal and systemic sexism
that such incidents reveal is work that has already been masterfully done by
other individuals.1
Instead, we three current and former graduate students focus on what we
accomplished in a workshop that we organized and delivered in response to such
abuse of power: the labor we invested, the lessons we learned, and our hopes for
greater inclusivity in those disciplines that study the pre-modern world.
In response to the inciting conference, we were approached by our trusted
former undergraduate advisor to build and lead a subsequent workshop that
would address, dissect and teach undergraduates about the challenges facing
minority groups within graduate studies.2 Though feeling out of our depth,
we accepted the offer because we felt that by holding our own workshop to
address sexism—as well as discrimination against other marginalized inter-
secting identities—we would transform the “incident” into a meaningful
learning opportunity in which workshop participants productively worked

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52 M C G INNIS ET AL .

toward greater inclusivity. Ambitions notwithstanding, we also took on this

responsibility to engage with inequality in academia because we felt an obliga-
tion to not let this “incident” go unaddressed.
The workshop into which we invested four months of planning was titled:
“Equity in Academia: Gender and Intersecting Identities in Graduate School,
Research, and Beyond.” We aimed to accomplish three things: discuss differ-
ent power dynamics in academia; collectively develop a toolkit for recognizing
bias; and end with a roundtable discussion with trusted faculty about their own
graduate school experiences, and how, as professors, they incorporate diversity
and inclusion into both their research and teaching. The workshop aimed not
only to share information about biases in the academic world, but also to col-
lectively develop and explore tools so that we can all be active bystanders with
the capacity to recognize and respond to witnessed bias, as well as be aware of
potentially enacting bias ourselves. Rather than dictate information in a top-
down approach, we wanted to practice more active pedagogy by incorporating
a combination of content delivery, small-group discussion, collective informa-
tion sharing and large-group discussion.
That said, none of us had prior experience leading workshops of this scope,
and a major concern was how to put this event together responsibly. Our back-
grounds are in medieval history, a notoriously white and cis-male field. As we
began to plan the workshop, we soon had to confront the fact that all of our
mentors in the field, and therefore the people we felt comfortable asking to
participate in our faculty panel discussion without monetary compensation,
were white. We felt that it was irresponsible to host a workshop on equity,
diversity and bias in academia with an entirely white faculty panel. However,
asking scholars of color to contribute uncompensated labor for the benefit
of our workshop would also be irresponsible and tokenizing. In this, we were
encountering firsthand the results of gatekeeping academic hiring practices
that have historically excluded scholars of color from medieval and other
pre-modern fields.
In an attempt to counterbalance the racial homogeneity of the faculty
panel, we sought to include resources throughout the workshop that centered
different identities and perspectives in terms of race, academic position and
research focus. We also addressed directly the lack of racial and ethnic diver-
sity in the workshop at the beginning of the day’s programming. In keeping
with the collaborative environment of the day, we asked participants to reflect
on what we could have done differently, and how they might approach this
situation if they ever find themselves in a similar one. For those of us in aca-
demia with racial privilege, it is imperative to seek out solutions that invite and
include diverse perspectives into the conversation.
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2 The Workshop

Our workshop ran for one full day, and the audience included primarily
pre-modern studies undergraduate students and faculty members. Because
the workshop was open to all undergraduates, however, we worked to design
sessions that would be widely applicable outside the study of the pre-modern
world, be it in other graduate fields or other workplaces. In taking this concep-
tual approach, we designed the workshop in such a way that the key takeaways
could be learned and then abstracted into lessons relevant to nearly any cir-
cumstance of implicit or explicit bias. Below is a discussion of the two main
sessions that we hosted, followed by a description of the faculty panel that fol-
lowed these sessions. In the appendices, we supply a full program schedule as
well as activities and discussion questions referred to below and used through-
out the workshop. Our hope is that such appendices will further illuminate the
nuts and bolts of the day’s programming, and may serve as a tool or reference
for any other graduate students planning a similar workshop.
We opened our workshop with a session called “Navigating Bias in the Acad-
emy.” This first session specifically focused on recognizing bias and abuse of
power structures within academia. Since we all grow up with biases ingrained
in us by our communities, families and cultures, it may seem like a simple
task to identify such biases. Nonetheless, it is often difficult to recognize bias
when it manifests as “small” incidents that we are accustomed to dismissing or
normalizing. These incidents, however, play a large role in systemic discrimi-
nation, elevating traditional white male voices and mentalities while keeping
people with marginalized backgrounds and perspectives from rising to posi-
tions of power and equality, particularly as graduate students, postdoctoral
researchers and professors.
For example, as a graduate student, an individual has different roles and
responsibilities daily. They might be a student, a teacher and a researcher; or
an intern and a student; or a student who is also a full-time working profes-
sional. As they move throughout their day, a graduate student likely transitions
among these different roles, beginning their day as a teacher, for instance, and
ending it as a student attending class. One of the challenges of balancing these
various roles is the unique position of power and authority that each entails.
As they move between these spaces, a graduate student will take on differ-
ent positions of power in their relationships with others, thereby changing
how they experience potential issues of sexual harassment, racial bias, gender
bias, etc. Our goal in this session was to discuss these shifting power dynamics
with the undergraduates, and to share and brainstorm responses to bias. On a
personal level, we each felt underprepared in this respect when we arrived at
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54 M C G INNIS ET AL .

graduate school, so we focused on this important skill from the very start of
the workshop.
In this first session on recognizing and responding to bias, we broke into
small groups to brainstorm possible power dynamics and how graduate stu-
dents with diverse identities fit into such dynamics. After a brainstorming
session in groups, we wrote a list on the board of different kinds of power rela-
tionships. Here is a sampling of what we collected:
– Professor/student
– TA/student
– Upper level student/lower level student
– Older student/younger student
– Younger student/older student
– Tenured faculty/untenured faculty
– Supervisor/student
– Extrovert/introvert
– Hierarchy based on perceived prestige of undergraduate school
– Male/female/non-binary
– White/Black, Indigenous, Person of Color (BIPOC)
– Well-known research focus/niche research focus
– Local student/international student
– Neurodivergent/neurotypical
– Disabled/non-disabled

We talked openly about how to react when we find ourselves in abusive or

subtly unhealthy dynamics within these power structures, particularly when
the other person(s) involved do not perceive the bias at hand. Then, we shared
three case studies focused on unhealthy dynamics within academia to dive
deeper into recognizing bias within certain power structures and identifying
possible responses, such as removal from the situation and self-recognition
that the situation was not one’s own “fault” (see Appendix 1).
In summary, the exercise was designed to help both students and faculty
members in attendance to recognize shifting vulnerabilities and privilege
within these power structures, and to thereby develop an awareness not only
to recognize when they are a recipient of bias, but also when they may be
unwittingly perpetuating or enacting bias themselves. For those teaching, such
an awareness can be particularly beneficial in moderating classroom partici-
pation in order to create a more equitable environment where diverse voices
and perspectives feel welcome and encouraged.
Moving forward in the day, the second session of the workshop focused on
resource-sharing and discussion for building more equitable academic spaces.
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We structured the information of this second half according to the three roles
that the graduate might inhabit as discussed in the first half of the day: the
student, the teacher and the scholar.
First, our discussion of the “graduate student” focused on formal and
informal sources of support in the face of gender-based bias or assault. A
campus officer from the Title IX Office—responsible for ensuring univer-
sity compliance with US federal law that protects individuals from sex-based
discrimination—presented information on the emotional and legal support
available through the Title IX Office. During this section, we also acknowledged
the potential barriers that students may face in accessing these resources. For
example, graduate students may feel dissuaded from reporting acts of bias
that involve their advisors or fellow graduate students out of fear of poten-
tial retaliation. With this in mind, we talked about some of the student-based
campus resources that graduate students may be able to rely on while preserv-
ing anonymity, such as campus advocates for survivors of sexual assault, or a
campus ombuds office. The undergraduates and early career scholars in the
room expressed familiarity with these potential barriers and appreciated the
open discussion of alternative avenues for support. While it was invigorating
to brainstorm alternatives together, it also served as a stark reminder of how
many students experience gender-based bias or assault before even complet-
ing their undergraduate degree, let alone embarking on further graduate study.
During the section on the “graduate teacher,” we emphasized ways of lead-
ing academic spaces that actively try not to marginalize students or fellow par-
ticipants in the space. Since teaching is typically a requirement for graduate
students in American PhD programs, we thought it important to give time
for workshop participants to think about and work through the dynamics of
lead- ing a classroom. We turned to critical pedagogical resources available
through Vanderbilt University’s Center for Teaching. We spent some time
exploring Van- derbilt’s many pedagogical guides, such as “Teaching Race,”
“Teaching beyond the Gender Binary in the University Classroom” and
“Increasing Inclusivity in the Classroom” (Thurber, Harbin & Bandy, 2019;
Harbin, 2016; Greer, 2014). Along with the undergraduates, we then
collectively sought out resources for specifically forming more critical
syllabi, paying attention to what and whom to include in the course content.
Here, we turned to the websites of the Medi- evalists of Color and the
Teaching Association for Medieval Studies (TEAMS) for their knowledge and
inspiration (Hsy & Orlemanski, 2018; Robinson, 2018). In this part of the
workshop, it was great to see how both undergraduates and more senior
faculty members re-approached the classroom with new critical pedagogical
ideas. As early and former graduate students with varying teaching
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56 M C G INNIS ET AL .

learning and discussion could benefit both students and advanced professors.
While it is difficult to gauge any ripple effect from this specific workshop, for
us it highlighted the importance of creating these spaces and opportunities as
part of the work toward more equitable classrooms—a key component of a
more equitable academic workplace.
In our final session on the “graduate scholar,” we shared and discussed
resources for carrying out research in supposedly “niche” areas within
pre-modern academia. These “niche” areas, such as disability, gender and race,
can often be treated as peripheral to “real” pre-modern scholarship, making it
harder for a scholar’s work to be taken seriously; in other words, academia can
marginalize scholarship as well as scholars. For students contemplating further
graduate study, we wanted to illustrate that finding the sources to pursue tra-
ditionally undervalued areas of scholarship is possible, and that communities
within academia have, in many cases, already put in the labor of assembling
online bibliographies or indices as starting points. We presented two such
resources as examples: the Feminae Index, and the History of Disease, Disabil-
ity and Medicine in Medieval Europe source database. We also shared tools
from online community spaces and blogs (such as Sarah Ahmed’s Feminist
Killjoys blog), as well as funding opportunities that specifically serve finan-
cially disadvantaged graduate scholars (such as those offered through Spor-
tula).3 Based on participant engagement, it appeared that these resources were
welcome news to many in the room, and we hope that they have been able to
assist those undergraduates who have gone on to further graduate study.
Finally, we drew together our discussion of the graduate student, teacher
and scholar with a close-reading of a Medium article written by Eugenia
Zuroski (2018), associate professor of English at McMaster University: “Holding
Patterns: On Academic Knowledge and Labor.” While not specifically aimed at
pre-modern disciplines, Zuroski’s work dissects oppressive dynamics within
academia and highlights the conditions necessary for building a more equita-
ble academic space for students and scholars. We asked workshop participants
to read this article individually and discuss it in small groups before moving
into larger group discussions and engaging with reading questions designed
to help unpack Zuroski’s work in light of the themes of the workshop (see
Appendix 3). Here, we asked participants to engage with the written work of
a scholar who has already devoted energy and time to the subject of equity
and abuse in academia. Looking back, it would have been beneficial to have
had more time to discuss Zuroski’s article, as it clearly resonated with many of
the participants in the room, some of whom expressed excitement at reading

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a compelling summation of the very dynamics that they hitherto had trouble
finding the words to describe.
To close the day-long workshop, we convened a faculty panel session of five
of our mentors and colleagues and asked them to reflect on their positional-
ity and experiences within academia (see Appendix 4). We asked them ques-
tions such as: When doing research or teaching, how do you think about your
identity in relation to the subjects you research and the students you teach
and mentor? How does an awareness of your positionality affect your work?
How do you think about minority representation in your work, be it in arti-
cles, presentations or in the classroom? Through this conversation, we found
that many of our mentors were familiar early on with the position we found
ourselves in while planning and putting on this workshop: a sense of being
unprepared and possibly unqualified, yet hopeful that our work would lead to
change within academia.
One key take-away from the panel session was the pressure to maintain
continuous passion for the discipline—in other words, the supposed dis-
tinction, lauded in academia, that jobs are not so much jobs, as they are
labors of love. While enthusiasm for one’s job is not inherently problem-
atic, it becomes burdensome when this expectation of unwavering passion
excuses hardships and inequities that graduate students may be facing. This
expectation of unfaltering passion is also troubling when it causes feelings
of inadequacy or inability—imposter syndrome—in graduate students who
aren’t as passionate as they “should” be. To combat this expectation, the five
panelists recommended drawing clear boundaries between one’s work and
one’s passions.
Another highlight from the discussion was a shared concern and frustration
among the panelists that far too often the extra, “para-academic” work falls
to persons (especially women) of color. While such work is necessary for the
health of the academic workplace, this extra labor consequently keeps those
individuals from the research and writing that moves their careers forward. For
prospective graduate students, the panelists recommended that the students
enter academia with a clear awareness of their personal willingness and capac-
ity to perform extra labor.
This panel discussion was a great conclusion to the workshop because it
further broke down barriers between faculty and students, both undergrad-
uate and graduate, and gave the undergraduate students a window onto the
upsides and downsides of an academic career. All too often, this kind of insti-
tutional knowledge goes unspoken, and the ropes must be relearned again and
again as new faces enter the field. For students from minority backgrounds, the

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58 M C G INNIS ET AL .

starting line at the beginning of the search for institutional knowledge may be
even further back. The panelists were exceedingly open in sharing their own
experiences, and we hope that the tips and tricks they shared to survive and
thrive in academia can be passed on to incoming students, especially those of
diverse identities.

3 Concluding Reflections

Reflecting on our experience of planning and leading this workshop, we are

proud of the result that we achieved. We did our best to organize an event
that reflected diversity without tokenizing; that provided resources without
embracing solely a content-delivery format; and served as a meaningful experi-
ence that somehow moved beyond the ephemeral one-day workshop. The stu-
dents and faculty who attended were committed to centering diverse thought
and minimizing bias in the pre-modern academic field. The students who par-
ticipated left with the skills to recognize and respond to different forms of bias,
preparing them to enter graduate school better able to advocate for themselves
and support their peers. Our panelist mentors (one of whom returned from
research leave specifically for our workshop) generously engaged with our
questions and were willing to share their personal experiences with the group.
Above all, we were honored to go back to our alma mater to engage with both
undergraduates and faculty and carve out a space for discussing diversity and
inclusion in pre-modern disciplines.
This isn’t to say, however, that we don’t still wonder what constitutes the
lasting impact of the workshop, or indeed perhaps of all one-day diversity
training workshops. The audience was a self-selected group of students who
wanted to spend a day (on a Saturday, no less) learning how to confront bias
in academia. Nobody in the room was unaware of the issues of diversity and
inclusion in academic spaces. After four months of work, countless hours of
team planning, individual preparation, and plane rides across the state, it was
hard not to wonder whether we invested too much labor for something rel-
atively “small,” because meaningful, actualized diversity and inclusion work
should not be assigned to just one day. Instead, this work should be modeled
and discussed by the visible, secure figures of the department or university
who commit to this work on a regular basis. This needs to be done in class-
rooms, during office hours and in administrative meetings, where identifying
bias and creating more equitable contexts have the greatest possibility for
effecting change.

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In conclusion, we realize that possible participant responses, or key take-

aways from the different program modules, might be missing. Thinking back
on the workshop, we remember with certainty that many participants—
undergraduates and faculty alike—offered critical, illuminating and self-
reflective comments on these difficult topics of bias and abuse in academia.
But what we, as the three current and former graduate students who organized,
planned and led this event, remember, is the immense labor we invested, the
stress and worry during the actual workshop, and the overwhelming relief
when the day had successfully concluded. We realize now that we could not
meaningfully join in the communal discussions because we were so focused on
simply carrying out the logistics of the event. This is part of the reason why we
include the four appendices that follow, to fill in the gaps where our collective
memory is lacking.
Finally, if we’re truly honest in our reflections, our hopes for the realization
of a more diverse and equitable academic world are slight and waning. It is
possible, however, that such a negative outlook is in part a response to our
current times in the US (early 2020), which are characterized by the coronavi-
rus pandemic, institutional anti-Black racism and a tyrannical president. The
current exceptional circumstances notwithstanding, it is disheartening to con-
stantly witness the lack of diversity that predominates in academic spaces, and
to observe that incidents of abuse continue to unfold (Cassens Weiss, 2020;
Loupeda, 2020). Yet, ever hopeful, we hold on to the aspiration of an academic
world free of bias and abuse. To arrive here will require that diversity training
be seen not as peripheral, but rather as integral to the classroom, the university
and the discipline(s). This means assigning credit (or other inducements) for
diversity learning, and incorporating diversity and inclusivity work into every-
day practices. This also requires that all levels of the academic world nurture
greater humility: the humility to listen to the unique perspectives of diverse
students and scholars; to self-interrogate; and to welcome changes in behavior
that was never really okay, but rather more widely ignored and accepted in the
academic spaces of previous times. Perhaps then we will make concrete steps
toward ensuring a more just academia.

Publisher’s Note

The identity of one of the authors of this chapter has been anonymized. Brill is
aware of the real identity of the author. The inclusion of anonymized chapters
has been permitted by Brill in view of risks to the general security of the author.

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60 M C G INNIS ET AL .

Notes

1 See, for instance, Perlata (2019), and the remarks in solidarity with Perlata by Chaganti (2019),
providing links to many other relevant pieces.
2 We would like to thank two other women who invested their aid, labor and resources in
helping us organize this workshop.
3 Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index. Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship.
https://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/feminae/WhatIsFeminae.aspx; History of Disease, Disability,
and Medicine in Medieval Europe, https://dishist.hypotheses.org/; The Sportula: Microgrants
for Classics Students, https://thesportula.wordpress.com/. See also Ahmed (2017).

References

Ahmed, S. (2017, December 19). Diversity work as complaint. Feministkilljoys.

https://feministkilljoys.com/2017/12/19/diversity-work-as-complaint/
Cassens Weiss, D. (2020, June 2). Stanford law prof who used quote with racial
slur in class says he won’t do it again. AbaJournal.
https://www.abajournal.com/news/ article/stanford-law-prof-who-used-quote-
with-racial-slur-in-class-says-he-wont- do-it-again
Chaganti, S. (2019, January 18). On context: AIA-SCS 2019. Medievalists of Color.
https://medievalistsofcolor.com/public-discourse/
Greer, A. (2014). Increasing inclusivity in the classroom. Vanderbilt University Center
for Teaching. https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/increasing-inclusivity-
in-the-classroom/
Harbin, B. (2016). Teaching beyond the gender binary in the university classroom.
Updated by L. M. Roberts et al. (2020). Vanderbilt Center for Teaching.
https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/teaching-beyond-the-gender-
binary-in-the-university-classroom/#cred
Hsy, J., & Orlemanski, J. (2018). Race and medieval studies: A partial bibliography.
Medievalists of Color.
https://medievalistsofcolor.com/resources/pedagogy- bibliographies/
Loupeda, M. (2020, May 11). Students call for accountability, faculty diversity after
pro- fessor twice uses racial slur. Stanford Daily.
https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/05/11/STUDENTS-call-for-accountability-
faculty-diversity-after-professor-twice-uses-racial-slur/
Perlata, D. P. (2019, January 7). Some thoughts on AIA-SCS 2019. Medium.
https:// medium.com/@danelpadillaperalta/some-thoughts-on-aia-scs-2019-
d6a480a1812a
Robinson, C. L. (2018). Featured lesson resource page: Race, racism, and the Middle
Ages. Teaching Association for Medieval Studies (TEAMS). https://teams-
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medieval.org/
?page_id=76

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On D IVERSITY W ORKSHOPS 61

Thurber, A., Harbin, M. B., & Bandy, J. (2019). Teaching race: Pedagogy and practice.
Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/teaching-race/
Zuroski, E. (2018, April 5). Holding patterns: On academic knowledge and labor.
Medium. https://medium.com/@zugenia/holding-patterns-on-
academic- knowledge-and-labor-3E5A6000ECBF

Appendix 1: Schedule (Created by Hanna McGinnis, Ana C. Núñez and

Anonymous 4)

Breakfast (9:30–10:00)

Session I (10:00 A m–12:00 pm): Navigating Bias in the Academy

The intention of this half of the program is to begin talking in more general terms
about gender and other bias and power dynamics in academia; to outline potential for-
mal and informal resources that students and scholars can draw from when deciding
how to respond to bias; to discuss strategies for how to support colleagues experienc-
ing bias; and to discuss strategies for ensuring against (unintentionally) marginalizing
one’s colleagues. This more general half of the program will be complemented by the
second half (see Session II below), in which we will seek specific answers from an
academic panel.
1. (10 minutes) Introduction: Intentions and Goals
2. (40 minutes) Power Dynamics in the Academy and Recognizing Bias:
i. Activity I: Small groups to brainstorm dynamics encountered in an aca-
demic setting. Here we will encourage the students to think critically
about more nuanced situations.
ii. Activity II: Coming together as a room to share thoughts. The master list
compiled will serve as a reminder throughout the event that will be crucial
in the second half of the program. The session leaders will then discuss
how bias plays into the broader hierarchical dynamics of academia.
iii. The session leaders will speak to personal experiences of bias and the sup-
port or resistance they encountered when deciding whether to confront it.
3. (10 minutes) Morning Break
4. (60 minutes) Toolkit for Responding to Bias:
i. Speaker I: A speaker from the university’s center for prevention, advocacy
and support for survivors of sexual violence and harassment will discuss
relevant campus resources.
ii. Speakers II: The session leaders will discuss additional resources, high-
lighting communities (both in person and online), gathering support sys-
tems and allies, and the power of collective action.
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62 M C G INNIS ET AL .

iii. Activity III: Bias Bibliography. Session leaders will present a few blogs,
book chapters and (online) groups as potentially helpful resources for stu-
dents and scholars.
iv. Activity IV: Small groups (2–3 people), brainstorming strategies for
sup- porting colleagues experiencing bias, highlighting how to proactively
offer support and how to respond when someone reaches out for
support.
v. Activity V: Coming together as a room to share thoughts culminating in the
composition of a second master list.
vi. Activity VI: Small groups (2–3 people), brainstorming how students
and scholars can attempt to proactively and meaningfully prevent the
further marginalization of students and scholars in these fields.
vii. Activity VII: Coming together as a room to share thoughts and build
another master list.

LUNCH (12:00 pm–1:00 pm) Over lunch everyone will be asked to write down one or
two questions for the culminating discussion.

Session II (1:00 pm–4:00 pm): Research and Teaching

The intention of this half of the program is to look at identity and bias in academia
through the lens of research and teaching. The academic panel will give scholars and
researchers the opportunity to share their experiences in academia, their approach
to pursuing research and teaching, and their assessments of how their fields can be
expanded. This session will culminate in an interactive discussion in which everyone
in the room will have a chance to ask questions or propose answers.

1. (100 minutes) Panel on Research and Teaching

a. Panel speakers will each be provided with a list of questions beforehand
from which they can choose several or all to address.
2. (15 minutes) Afternoon Break
3. (45 minutes) This concluding session will give the students and the panelists the
opportunity to engage in a fully interactive manner with the material covered
throughout the day. The questions that the students brainstorm over lunch will be
used to fuel this discussion in the case that lulls arise between questions/comments.
4. (20 minutes) Conclusion/Final share-out.

Appendix 2: Case Studies (Created by Hanna McGinnis, Ana C. Núñez and

Anonymous 4)

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1. Your advisor asks you how you’re habituating to the new environment of grad
school. You share your fears of being less prepared than your classmates, at

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which point your advisor tells you to be more confident and to “man-up” and act
the part of a graduate student, since this is no longer an undergraduate environ-
ment that will baby you as you go.

a. How does this comment make you feel? Would you leave the meeting
feel- ing better/more prepared than you entered?
b. Is this an example of a productive advisor/student meeting? Why or
why not?
c. How might you continue this meeting?
d. Would knowing the gender identity of the people involved in this scenario
change how you view the situation?

2. One day before class starts, you overhear Student A brag to Student B about how
much Student A has already written for an upcoming paper assignment. Student
A then asks Student B how much they have written. Student B responds, ner-
vously, saying that they have finished their research and have an outline, but still
need to write the paper. Student A laughs dismissively, saying Student B must be
struggling to keep up with the workload, which wasn’t designed to accommodate
everyone’s abilities.

a. Would you engage in this conversation, and if so, how and with
what intention?
b. If not, what might you say to Student B after the conversation with
Student A has ended?
c. Do you consider this conversation to be unhealthy? Why or why not?

3. At the 2017 International Medieval Congress at Leeds, when introducing the

keynote lecture on the theme of “otherness,” which was part of a panel of
white, European men speaking on the topic, the moderator joked that “If audi-
ence members thought he was just another old, white man, they should just
wait until after his holiday at the beach.” https://www.chronicle.com/article/
Medievalists-Recoiling-From/240666

a. How does this comment make you feel?

b. Imagine that after the conference, people are discussing the event, and a
colleague says that they don’t see anything wrong with the comment and
think people were overreacting since it was “just a joke.” Do you feel able
to further discuss this situation with your colleague? If so, what might you
say?
c. What might be an appropriate way to introduce an all-white and male
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64 M C G INNIS ET AL .

Appendix 3: Reading Questions (Created by Hanna McGinnis,

Ana C. Núñez and Anonymous 4)

Eugenia Zuroski, “Holding Patterns: On Academic Knowledge and Labor,” Medium.com,

Apr 5 2018, https://medium.com/@zugenia/holding-patterns-on-academic-
knowledge- and-labor-3E5A6000ECBF

Reading Questions

1. “If we want to build solidarity within hostile institutional conditions, we must

do better at respecting all knowledge formed at particular distances from power,
especially when it addresses us directly.”

a. What might respecting this knowledge look like?

2. “[S]ome of us are compeled structurally to perform kinds of labor that others of

us have never come to know, or not until now.”

a. What might this (often unacknowledged) labor look like?

b. In what ways do you think students/scholars with more privilege could
ease the burden placed on students/scholars with less privilege to perform
this kind of labor?

3. “[S]ometimes I have been part of this ‘we,’ and sometimes I have been the ‘you.’
I have tried to learn by listening.”

a. Imagining yourself to be part of this “we,” what might be ways of resisting

“hostile institutional conditions” (quoted from first excerpt)?
b. Imagining yourself to be part of this “you,” can you think of gaps in your
knowledge/experience, and ways you could educate yourself or be more
open to listening? What do you think is at stake in listening to folks whose
experience differs from your own?

4. “Academic allyship has to be focused on transforming institutions, overhauling

their missions and methods, to make them worthy of the people they mobilize
and claim to serve. We don’t need your admiration, your acclaim, your invitation.
We don’t need you to feel bad. We need you to hire more of us; we need you
to practice humility; we need you to take some instruction. There’s a collective

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endeavor underway, and we’re showing you this: step away from the center
and you’ll learn how to do the work.”

a. What might “step[ping] away from the center” look like?

b. Where do you think undergraduate and graduate students fit into
aca- demic allyship and transforming institutions?
c. Where do you think graduate students who don’t intend to go further
in academia fit into academic allyship and transforming institutions?

Appendix 4: Faculty Panel Questions (Created by Hanna McGinnis,

Ana C. Núñez and Anonymous 4)

1. Personal Introduction: Please introduce yourself to the group. When and why did
you realize you wanted to pursue graduate studies and a career in academia?
What was that experience like? How did you first encounter your research
interests?
2. Positionality: When doing research or teaching, how do you think about your
identity in relation to the subjects you research and the students you teach and
mentor? How does an awareness of your positionality affect your work? How do
you think about minority representation in your work, be it in articles, presenta-
tions or in the classroom?
3. “Standard” versus “peripheral” history: Within pre-modern studies, are there cer-
tain types of history that might be seen as “standard” (e.g., military, economic,
political), and others that might be seen as “peripheral” (e.g., gender, sexual-
ity, environmental)? What are the trends regarding these “two camps,” if such
a divide exists? Do ideas of “standard” versus “peripheral” history also emerge
based on the kind of platform used (e.g., Speculum versus Eidolon)? Or based on
the identity of the historian (e.g., white male versus brown woman)?
4. Advice to potential graduate students: Thinking back on your experience as a
graduate student and now a professor, and bearing in mind the theme of today’s
workshop—navigating gender and other identities in the Academy—what
advice would you give to students thinking about pursuing graduate studies
in the humanities? What lessons or words of encouragement would you like to
leave them with today?

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 CHAPTER 11

Still a World to Win

Anonymous 5

When I entered the Dutch academic world as a young (male) scholar in 1983,
I expected to become part of a broad-minded, open community in which
thoughts and ideas would be exchanged. Nothing could have been further from
the truth. I became part of a world in which scholarly ideas were hardly ever
exchanged and open discussions barely possible. Moreover, there were many
conflicts between my colleagues, on a professional as well as personal level.
Many of these were over power and status, and they often arose from jealousy
and frustration over the success of other scholars and/or those in positions of
authority within the university. Within this strange world, I have always done
my best to go my own way, to stay true to myself and to treat my colleagues and
students with the respect they deserve, regardless of gender, background and
skin color. Hopefully I have succeeded in this.
At the time of my entry into academia, it was much more hierarchical than
it is now. Full professors (most of them male) were at the top of the hierar-
chy and wielded considerable power over everyone lower in the pecking order.
Fortunately, that has changed somewhat over the years, and now the voices of
those lower in the hierarchy are also being heard. Yet full professors still exer-
cise substantial authority and sometimes abuse their power. I am sorry to say
that, in my experience at least, the increased number of female full professors
over the past decades does not appear to have improved this situation. Like
men, women in positions of authority sometimes behave in intimidating ways
towards those below them in the hierarchy.
Fortunately, I have seldom been a victim of abuse of power and intimida-
tion in my academic career. I remember only one such occasion, which had a
great impact on me personally. The incident occurred in the early 1990s, as I
was gradually becoming successful as a scholar and administrator within my
department and the faculty of arts. My boss at the time had, as a young scholar,
seemed to have a promising career ahead but did not live up to expectations. In
the beginning, he supported me unreservedly, but our relationship gradually
deteriorated with my growing success. We had disagreements and he tried to
thwart my career. Our differences of opinion increased and I was regularly the
target of his fits of anger. I thus avoided him as much as possible. The shit really
hit the fan one day when he stormed into my office because I had apparently

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S TILL A W ORLD TO W IN 67

said or done something that was not to his liking. He started bullying me and
said, “I am the professor here. I make the decisions, and you do as I tell you.”
I was shocked and asked him to leave my office. I filed a formal complaint
about his inappropriate behavior, shown towards others as well as towards me.
I think he received a formal reprimand. After that, we avoided one another and
were no longer on speaking terms. These strained relations gave me cause to
seriously consider leaving academia, but I’m glad I didn’t. Fortunately, over the
last decades academia has become more open, broad-minded, diverse and less
hierarchical, even though there is still a world to win.

Publisher’s Note

The author’s identity is anonymized for this chapter. Brill is aware of the real
identity of the author. The inclusion of anonymized chapters has been permit-
ted by Brill in view of risks to the general security of the author.

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 CHAPTER 12

Fragments of Missed Opportunities

Or UnrEALIZed Dialectical ExchangES with a Mentor

Anonymous 6

1 What Was Said

18/06/20xx, 23:50: Dear Denis,1 I will be in my office tomorrow morning. Come

see me, I need to talk to you. Professor
19/06/20xx, 00:02: Dear Professor, Of course. I hope it is nothing serious.
See you tomorrow. Denis

P: … remember, last summer, in the restaurant by the sea, when most of the oth-
ers had left, you were washing your hands in the bathroom and I approached
you from behind. You leaned towards me, but suddenly pulled back when you
heard a noise … [leans forward expectantly]
D: I’m really sorry, professor. I remember that dinner, but I really cannot
recall the moment you refer to. I’m sorry if I … [the rest of the record has
been cen- sored by survival mechanisms]

19/06/20xx, 20:45: Dear Professor, I am a bit troubled by what you mentioned

this morning. But only because I’m afraid you might be troubled, too. I was
trying really hard to remember what I did, and it is true that I recall a moment
of proximity that might have caused the confusion. And it is my fault. On the
one hand, you must have noticed that I am rather flirtatious in general and,
on the other, I am used to combining intellectual closeness with certain phys-
ical gestures. Anyhow, I am glad you mentioned it, since honesty and sincerity
are qualities I really appreciate in you. Please know that, from the very start,
you have been a great father figure to me, and you remain someone I respect,
admire and—moreover—am inspired by. As a student, friend and confidant, I
remain at your disposal.
Cordially, D.

19/06/20xx, 20:45: Dear Denis, no troubles, no problems, no worries. A long

road lies ahead of us. We talk, we explain, we live. A very important thing:
I

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F RAGMENTS of M ISSED O PPORTUNITIES 69

found a copy of my book, come pick it up on Monday. Complicitly yours,

and please, no father figures—I despise them. P.

2 What Could Have Been Said

2.1 Fragment I
P: What did you want to discuss?
D: Sexuality, rapaciousness and academia.
P: Why now?
D: Because the long road is over and you have no power over my life anymore.
P: You were always a strong and stubborn person. What kind of power have I
ever had over you?
D: You arranged for me to relocate to a foreign country whose language
I barely spoke, to a city where I had no social support, to enter a
system where I always felt slightly illegal, did not know my rights or the
admin- istrative mechanisms. You convinced me to pursue a long
unfunded endeavor without any structure, but with you as the sole
reference point in a foreign land.
P: When I was your age, I traveled Europe alone! Did I tell you about that
time in a monastery?
D: Many times. You also told me not to worry about money because you would
help me figure something out. I don’t know whether I prefer to believe
that you were just lying, or that you had some kind of sleazy arrangement
in mind.
P: You were always so sensitive and creative. I don’t know where you get your
ideas. You were always neurotic about money, too. You seemed to be doing
just fine.
D: I was lucky to meet genuinely generous people. I was also motivated
enough to juggle three jobs at a time. You call me neurotic, but while you
got a bonus for having an extra student, I had to get by at times with half
the minimum wage.
P: You’re exaggerating, reducing a fruitful scholarly relation to a moment of
physical weakness. My students are everything to me.
D: Scaffoldings for your robust ego?
P: Would not life have been harder for you in your country, where you could
not express yourself freely?
D: You made sure to establish that early on, didn’t you?
P: Whatever do you mean?
D: You asked my colleague if I was homosexual less than a week after you met
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70 A NONYMOUS 6

2.2 Fragment II
P: I felt you needed support, encouragement and acceptance. I felt I could
empathize with your position.
D: I was in my early twenties and living my sexuality more or less openly. You
were nearly retired, married, with children, inquiring about other people’s
sexuality by proxy.
P: You are twisting words and events. I was genuinely caring.
D: I believed you were caring, now I know you were
tentacular. P: I accepted you and appreciated you as you
were.
D: You imagined me as you wanted me to be. You were being duplicitous. You
said you had two sons and that, if you had a third one, you would like him
to be just like me. And I told that to all my friends as a wonderful example
of kindness and acceptance in academia. That is, before you made your
move and tried to convince me that I misconstrued you as a father figure,
or whatever.

2.3 Fragment III

P: I do not see anything wrong in a physical relationship between two free
and equal adults.
D: Then why did you wait for your wife to leave the city before approaching
me?
P: There’s no need to bring her into this, this is between a teacher and a
student.
D: I’m sorry to ruin your Spartan fantasy, but you have just tapped the nerve
of inequality in our positions as adults.
P: You are being so Anglo-Saxon and puritan! This bureaucratic tempera-
ment will be the death of free academia. Makes me wonder what hap-
pened to the spirit of ’68!
D: Mind your adjectives! What was this spirit of ’68, pray you?
P: Freeing bodies, unbinding spirits, unshackling minds! Society and aca-
demia have forgotten our great heritage.
D: And where were you while they were forgetting? Having a perfectly het-
eronormative life, dipping your spoon into the sexual liberties in the
cupboard, cashing in on social democracy, while letting it expire and
disintegrate.
P: But the spirit of freedom …
D: Freedom begins where necessity ends. How was I to live my freedom with
homophobes on one side and predators on the other, both latently threat-
ening my physical integrity?
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F RAGMENTS of M ISSED O PPORTUNITIES 71

2.4 Fragment IV
P: You’re accusing me of heterowhatever, while you defend a puritan tradi-
tionalism that only allows for relations sanctioned by bourgeois society.
D: It’s the dishonest predatory types that keep us trapped in our “chosen”
binary categories, because we feel it is safer there. Sexuality is the most lib-
erating thing there is. But you cannot blame me for not wanting to explore
the depths of a shark tank.

2.5 Fragment V
D: You know the joke you always tell about northern cavemen and southern
faggots in antiquity?
P: Brilliant, isn’t it?
D: It’s about as funny as the one about a woman’s head serving as a beer-
pint stand.

2.6 Fragment VI
P: You’re turning this into a trial.
D: I could have, had I wanted to.
P: So, I should just stop doing young people favors to avoid hurting their
feelings?
D: You know, I hooked up with a guy soon after I met you, just before
start- ing my studies. An “uneducated” fellow, professional waiter.
Dazzled by the opportunity you offered, I bragged so much about being
lucky, about the things you said and your warm endorsement. “Just you
wait,” he said, “soon he will name his price.” No way, I objected, not in
academia!
P: What is the meaning of this?
D: The meaning is that you are not extraordinary in any way, and that
the ivory tower is porous and rotten.
P: Do you think you are special?
D: No, now I know that I was not the first one to refuse you.

2.7 Fragment VII

P: You just want to hurt me.
D: I just wish I could unhurt myself.

2.8 Fragment VIII

P: Why are you so obsessed with this? It happened years ago and I
didn’t even touch you!
D: You touched me and others inappropriately so many times. And
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P: You did not object.

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72 A NONYMOUS 6

D: Was I in a position to object?

P: Now you are being duplicitous. On top of perverting an honest affection, if
this vision of frigid and sterile academia is what you believe in, why didn’t
you fight for it?
D: Even if we disregard the fact that I felt my career and livelihood were at
stake, there are still a couple of reasons.
P: I would never cause you harm.
D: You were doing it constantly without realizing it.
P: What are the other reasons?
D: Insecurity and empathy.

2.9 Fragment IX
P: Do you think it was easy for me? Do you know where and when I grew up?
It’s easy for you to talk about freedom.
D: Do not turn this into a generational thing. Do you remember that famous
scholar from our field who admitted his attraction to a male colleague? His
boss “found him a wife” to quiet down the rumors, because the object of his
attraction bullied and blackmailed him, threatening to ruin a joint project.
Do you know that less renowned scholar from our field who fled the dicta-
torship and jubilantly lived his homosexuality for decades, with or without
his partner, without harassing or harming anyone around him? They are
both of your generation, living in the same city. Alternatives become more
obvious when you move the axis of the world away from yourself.

2.10 Fragment X
P: Now you are being duplicitous. You admitted to being flirtatious.
D: And you did nothing to correct me.

2.11 Fragment XI
P: You always had a nasty character. And this dialogue is artless, you turned
me into a scarecrow, a one-dimensional caricature that no one can empa-
thize with. I don’t understand what kind of empathy you are talking about.
D: That afternoon, after you stood too close to me once again, while I was
thinking of ways to mend my vulnerability, when I did not know whom
to ask for advice, when I dug painfully deep into my memories and forced
myself to fill the void with your version of events, a part of me that was not
torn between panic and anger and guilt, a part of me was actually feeling
compassion for you.
P: You were pitying me?
D: I was trying to put myself in your thick skin. I imagined myself 30 years on,
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F RAGMENTS of M ISSED O PPORTUNITIES 73

fact that he happened to be attracted to male beauty and youth in front

of him, nostalgic for the beauty and youth that he wasted laboring behind
dusty volumes.
P: Your brain is too complicated. Didn’t you get anything from me?
D: Oh, so much! A life-long warning and empathy for those who deserve it.
When I opened up to my friends, I heard so many stories of unsolicited
exposures, implicit blackmail, wandering hands, rapes. Years later, I told
my mother about what you did. She shared stories of sexual harassment
by her professors. I was the first person she ever dared talk to about this.

2.12 Fragment XII

P: You admitted to being flirtatious. You’re a bright young man, you knew
what you were doing.
D: Throughout my education I overheard and imagined whispers. They said I
was gay because I wore a different outfit every day. They said I was sucking
up to professors because I always asked questions. They said my grades
were higher than what I actually deserved. They said I got where I was
through charm and rhetoric, they said I had no substance. And here I was,
starting out in a new environment, being told that the man who brought
me there was interested in my body. Were you ever aware that I disagreed
with most of your scholarly work? Did you even hear anything of what
I said?
P: You are twisting and projecting. You make it sound like I violated you.
D: Should I be grateful that you didn’t?

2.13 Fragment XIII

P: Your brain is too complicated. My students are all over the world, I gave all
I had to them. Didn’t you get anything from me?
D: You turned me into a monster from my father’s nightmares. I spent my
whole adult life secretly trying to prove to him that queer relations are not
necessarily “tainted” with perversion, illicit seduction and exploitation of
youth, falling into the decency trap. I thought I carved a stable ground for
myself, a safe social niche. And at the beginning of my independent life,
there I was, losing at my own game.
P: I couldn’t have known any of these things.
D: Would you have done anything differently if you had?

Note

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1 The name is fictitious.

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 CHAPTER 13

Flexing Muscles
Ingela Nilsson

A smile is formed primarily by flexing the muscles at the sides of the

mouth. […] Among humans, a smile expresses pleasure, sociability,
happiness, joy or amusement. It is distinct from a similar but usu-
ally involuntary expression of anxiety known as a grimace.
“S MILE ” (Wikipedia, n.d.)

∵
Looking back over some thirty years in academia, I sometimes wonder if
there has been more focus on my facial expressions than on my research. It all
started, I think, with a piece of friendly advice. I was on the shortlist for a posi-
tion and was to be interviewed by a panel. The day before the interview one of
my close colleagues and friends offered me some advice. She told me to relax
and be confident, then added, “And don’t look so sour, it will be off-putting to
the panel, you have to start looking more friendly, smile a bit!” I remember my
instantaneous annoyance: who was she to imply I always look sour? And any-
way, even if it were true, I had good reason to look sour, after years of pointless
criticism from colleagues who found faults with whatever I did. And even if
I looked sour for no good reason, it was my face, I had the right to look
however I wanted! But she insisted, to the point that I understood that this
was a com- mon conception of me: I was an angry and sour-looking person,
who risked my career unless I took control of my facial muscles and started
to smile.
Since I was an angry and sour-looking person who insisted that I had the
right to be that way, I did not smile at the interview. I was offered the position
nevertheless, but my well-intentioned colleague’s comment echoed at the back
of my mind and I began taking mental note of similar advice from other col-
leagues. I also started recalling such occasions in the past. The co-student who
told me to stop looking so angry, since it would scare away people—especially
men. The professor who called me aggressive when I questioned his critique,
claiming he was afraid to spend time alone with me. The supervisor who told
me to cheer up and smile more, assuring me it would make people be nicer in
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F LEXING M USCLES 75

return. The colleague who told me that I acted like a grumpy teenager, because
I didn’t sufficiently admire the environment of the posh research institute
and never smiled at the director. The mentor of the pedagogical course who
suggested that a smile would make my teaching more enjoyable. Had I always
been an angry and sour-looking person who put people off with my facial
expression? If so, why did my friends and quite a few colleagues accept me the
way I was without questioning my personality? I was perfectly happy, so why
did people keep telling me to cheer up?
I began spending time in front of the mirror, flexing and unflexing my facial
muscles. It was quite true, I realized, that when my face was completely relaxed
I looked rather sour, sort of like when I was fourteen. I practiced ways of
flexing the muscles at the sides of my mouth so that I looked friendlier,
without quite smiling. I wanted to look friendly, though I refused to humor my
critics by smil- ing. After months (or was it years?) of practicing, I noticed a
certain difference in my surroundings: I was clearly seen as less
intimidating, even if I did not actually smile much. It was an astonishing
discovery. What basic insight of the human mind had escaped me, and
only me, for so many years?

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76 N ILSSON

The careful study of my own face made me much more aware of other peo-
ple’s expressions and it slowly dawned on me that most people never relaxed
their facial muscles. They must have learned something earlier in life that I
had missed. Women in particular had splendid control over their faces. Their
eyes were constantly wide open and the corners of their mouths turned lightly
upwards, lending a friendly curiosity to their appearance. To me it seemed
rather exhausting, especially the eye thing. And several women also seemed
to smile while talking, an exercise that appeared not only exhausting but also
to affect their voices. Some of them looked as if they were caught in an eter-
nal grimace, which was more frightening than friendly to me. Men clearly had
other ways to flex their muscles, physically and intellectually, so they didn’t
care as much about their faces. On the other hand it seemed as if their facial
expressions were of less concern to others, and they were certainly interpreted
differently. A wrinkled forehead was not a sign of an aggrieved personality, but
gave character to a male face. A raised eyebrow signaled ironic distance, not
sarcastic critique. And even if quite a few men I observed seemed much more
intimidating than I thought I was, I never heard a man being offered the same
advice that I was: Smile and look friendly, otherwise it will harm your career?
Nah, not really.
I did not become the kind of smiling person that my colleague had perhaps
hoped for; if anything, my observations made me more determined not to give
in, to argue my right to be an unsmiling woman in academia. However, my new
awareness made me so much aware of my “problems” that I learned to put on a
well-practiced friendly face in professional situations simply in order to avoid
accusations of being unfriendly. After a decade or so I no longer thought much
about it, except for when I accidentally caught a glimpse of my relaxed face in
the reflection of a window and remembered to properly flex the muscles at the
sides of my mouth. I was careful never to let my half-smile turn into a smirk
or a grimace and I really tried to avoid the involuntary tick of raising my right
eyebrow, which apparently (so I was told) made it seem as if I was mocking the
speaker. I wanted to be seen as a friendly person, not an angry woman. There
did not seem to be many other alternatives to choose from. There still aren’t.
Although I was very angry at the time, I am now grateful for my colleague’s
advice. It was a useful reminder of the way in which women are perceived,
making me very much aware of both gendered power structures and my own
facial muscles. Am I hiding my angry self behind a controlled mask of friend-
liness? I guess I am, allowing her to appear in certain situations that demand
her presence. She is fearful and rather awesome, correct but sarcastic, and she

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F LEXING M USCLES 77

knows better than anyone that a smile expresses much more than happiness
and joy. In fact, she smiles much more than my friendly face does.

Reference

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Smile. Retrieved March 29, 2022, from

https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Smile

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 CHAPTER 14

Lessons I Learned at University

Ricarda Schier

A while ago I found myself attending an illuminating lecture. A teacher of

mine delivered a long monologue about how I, as a young woman, am simply
not taken seriously in this world and how I just have to deal with that. He illus-
trated this with anecdotes of what other men had thought and said about me.
This wasn’t exactly news to me. As a woman in academia, I am generally
aware, although many won’t admit it, that there are still a lot of people who
perceive me as less capable because of my gender. Not necessarily because
they actually think that women are less intelligent than men, but because a lot
of characteristics traditionally framed as female are not associated with ratio-
nal thinking, while many traits traditionally framed as male are. In other, more
personal words: several of the insecurities I had during my time at university
stemmed from the fact that when you think of an intellectual, you typically
don’t think of a young, blonde girl with a high-pitched voice, who laughs a lot
and likes to wear short skirts.
For a long time though, I would tell myself it was just that: my own insecu-
rities. Surely I was imagining that patronizing treatment I seemed to receive
a lot from mostly older men. Surely I misinterpreted those condescending
smiles they gave me when I spoke. However, that all ended the day that teacher
mans- plained sexism to me. Since receiving that lecture, I am now
convinced that I and other women (in academia or elsewhere) are not
collectively imagining things, and that if you feel you are not being taken
seriously for reasons that have nothing to do with your actual intellectual
capacities, you are probably not overreacting—it may simply be the truth. I
am perceived as weaker, less smart and less competent because of my
gender, at least by some people.
This lecture was, in a painful way, more educational than a lot of the semi-
nars and talks I attended regularly at university. It is a great example of how
as a student I learned a lot of uncomfortable lessons about the academic
world (and humanity in general). I want to share some of them in case they
might be helpful:

Lesson 1. Abuse and harassment come in many different forms and are often
not as easy to recognize as one would think, especially not by the victim. Our
bodies and minds normally tell us when our boundaries have been violated: we
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L ESSONS I L EARNED AT U NIVERSITY 79

feel uncomfortable, stressed, threatened, physically nauseous. But our imme-

diate reaction to these feelings is often to question them. We are taught to eval-
uate things from a rational perspective. Strong emotions, especially negative
ones, are often frowned upon. We don’t want to be regarded as hysterical or
weak. When we feel something is very wrong, though, something probably is
wrong. Although it is awkward to talk about an awkward situation, it is really
helpful to talk to other people and get their perspective, because it is often
easier to evaluate a situation that you are not part of yourself. Others can be
quicker to see when we are being treated inappropriately.

Lesson 2. If you want to work in academia, be prepared for exploitation. You

might be exploited by supervisors who steal your work, by fellow students
who steal your work, by other people who steal your work. You might also be
exploited by publishers who profit from the fact that you have to publish in
order to advance in your career but never have to pay you. I’m not saying you
will be exploited, but that you should be prepared.

Lesson 3. Being a brilliant scholar or a good teacher doesn’t mean someone is a

great person. It doesn’t mean they are kind, or altruistic, or honest. Academia
would be a better place if we paid as much attention to how we treat each
other as how many papers we published; if we valued people for their decency
as much as how big their name is in their field. It is better to stick with the peo-
ple who are nice and caring, instead of trying at all costs to get close to famous
scholars who you think might advance your career.

Lesson 4. Although you are taught much about objective thinking, constructive
criticism and how to make a professional argument at university, people are
still emotional beings and will take things personally, which is probably why
grown-up scholars sometimes behave like school children. It is a damaging pre-
tense that one must always be rational and free of emotion instead of acknowl-
edging when one feels unnecessarily attacked or provoked. Being more open
and honest with ourselves and others would make working together easier.

Lesson 5. There is no need to be loyal to people or institutions that treat you

badly. We tend to make excuses for people who behave inappropriately. We
don’t want to make unfair accusations, we don’t want to be regarded as judg-
mental, or we are simply afraid to make a fuss and are scared that we would
ultimately be the ones who come off looking bad. We may forget, however, that
those people who act abusively or simply unprofessionally are not being forced
to do so. They act in this way because their actions don’t have consequences,
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80 S CHIER

and they will continue to act this way until their actions have consequences.
This can only happen if someone speaks up.

∵
I learned some of these lessons through things that happened to me person-
ally; some I learned through stories I heard from others. Some people told me
they are not representative of academia. But then why do I know so many sto-
ries from around the world of stolen dissertations, sexual harassment, bullying,
sexism, racism, burnout, depression and the ever-present fear of unemploy-
ment? There is a lot of gossip and talking behind other people’s backs about
these kinds of problems; an open conversation about why they occur so fre-
quently at universities is sorely missing. This has much to do with prioritizing
work output above everything else—including creating a decent work envi-
ronment—and valuing only intellectual achievements while ignoring traits
like kindness, decency, integrity and professionalism. Moreover, many univer-
sities seem to need stronger mechanisms to prevent and deal with abuse. Vic-
tims of harassment and bullying are often unsure of where or to whom they
can turn for help. Sometimes those they talk to don’t believe their situation
requires action, or don’t believe them at all. Even though it might be hard, hav-
ing an open conversation about these problems and learning from all of these
uncomfortable lessons is the first step toward realizing that the way we treat
each other in academia not only can, but must, be better.

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 CHAPTER 15

Benevolence or Bitterness
Antony T. Smith

I found the pathway to tenure stressful and fraught with tensions, and I know
I am not alone in feeling this way. In the American university system, the
tenure track races toward a fifth-year tenure file submission and a sixth-year
vote by colleagues and administrators on whether to award tenure (i.e.
promotion to associate professor) or not to award it (meaning termination of
one’s assistant professor position). From day one of Fall semester I knew,
every moment, that the hourglass was trickling sand slowly and irreversibly
until my tenure file submission was due. I am not afraid of hard work, but I
soon learned that this high-stakes tenure pathway is not just about effort.
Academic expectations, university structures and senior colleagues create
tensions deeply rooted in systemic power imbalances. In trying to cope with
these tensions while mov- ing toward tenure, the destination became a
question about my own emo- tional and mental state: Would I arrive in a state
of benevolence or bitterness?

1 Availability

My PhD advisor tried to give me some advice on my upcoming academic jour-

ney as an assistant professor in a tenure-track position. Looking up from a
stu- dent essay, she peered at me over her reading glasses and stated, “Don’t
make yourself too available. If you’re around campus too much you’ll end up
doing more service work.” I wondered, what would that look like? How
would I, as a new hire and assistant professor, make myself scarce while
also somehow being regarded as a hardworking and contributing colleague?
Should I skip fac- ulty meetings, avoid the program office, or work from
home? How many days per week should I work from home? There were no
answers to these questions. I tried to strike a balance between being present
and not always being avail- able, but I don’t think I was very successful.
Course and meeting scheduling interfered with my efforts. As a junior
member of the faculty I did not have say in what courses I taught or when I
taught them, and as a result my weekly schedule was sometimes a disaster.
One semester I had one course that began at 8:30 am and another that
started at 4:30 pm, both on the same day, so rather than commuting back
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82 S MITH

myself unintentionally available for service work between classes. Faculty

meetings were scheduled on Fridays, causing me to lose a prime day for my
scholarship and instead be on campus for hours.
Summers were even worse when it came to availability. On nine-month
faculty contracts, we do not receive any salary from June through September
unless we teach summer term. Described as “optional,” teaching summer term
was a necessity for me since no matter how much I managed to save I could
not go without a paycheck for almost four months. Summer had the university
expectation of research, to which it was hard to dedicate much time during the
academic year due to teaching and service work—but in summer, this time for
research was without compensation. Established senior colleagues used grant
funding to support their summer research work, but I had no such grants in my
early years. I tried three times to secure an internal grant for this purpose but
was denied three years in a row—each proposal taking weeks to write with bud-
get plans I had to develop myself; with each rejection I was left with a denied
proposal that added nothing to my curriculum vitae. So I ended up being avail-
able to teach courses each summer, needing to pay rent and buy groceries.
In faculty meetings and other interactions I was inevitably asked to join
work groups, committees, search committees and task forces. For all my
attempts to be less available and to protect time for scholarship, I found I
couldn’t say no to these requests. Senior colleagues, some of them having been
full professors for more than 20 years, were watching, judging my actions to
determine my worthiness in academia: Does he work hard? Is he a team
player? Is he a valu- able colleague? Daring to say no, and making myself less
available, had conse- quences. Saying yes, and taking on service work that
would erode my time for scholarship, also had consequences, but only for me,
and so this was the path I took, thinking to myself, “I’ll find time for my
scholarship somewhere. Maybe I can get up earlier, stay up later, or work on
weekends.” So I said yes to multiple search committees. I said yes to being on
a campus-wide writing and commu- nication task force, a group notably
populated by junior faculty without insti- tutional knowledge and with the
absence of any senior faculty. Clearly these senior colleagues had the agency
to say no at times when junior faculty did not, to a series of meetings across an
academic year that resulted in a written report promptly ignored by the
administration.
The consequences of my inability to say no and to make myself less avail-
able extended beyond the workday into what could only be considered per-
sonal time. One time a colleague hosted a dinner for a candidate she wanted
to impress (and hire). It was scheduled at the last minute and my colleagues
and I were expected to come. As it turns out, I had a family commitment
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I could not cancel, so for once I did say no, and I was the only one who
did.

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B ENEVOLENCE OR B ITTERNESS 83

Everyone else attended the dinner, making me look bad. So bad that I ended
up taking the candidate to dinner the next night to make up for it, paying for
the dinner myself, since the university did not consider the dinner a reimburs-
able expense. The dinner turned out well, so it seemed that I had managed to
salvage this particular situation.
This incident showed me I had to make myself available despite my advi-
sor’s words of wisdom, to be at the beck and call of any senior colleague who
wanted or needed something, or who wanted me to represent the school at the
campus level so that they wouldn’t have to and could work on their scholarship
instead. One bitter senior colleague, who I ended up referring to as the Viper,
invited me to a holiday party at her home. The Viper’s unpredictable behavior
made me nervous, but I wanted to be on her good side, so I went to the party
with my cheerful husband Ken, who I thought might help gloss over any awk-
wardness at the party. Very few other people were there. While Ken and I stood
with our glasses of wine, she came up to us and said, “So good you came! But of
course you did, because you want tenure after all, right?” This was followed by
a forced and maniacal laugh. I cringed, knowing she was kidding but also that
she wasn’t. Vipers don’t make jokes. She and four other senior colleagues would
eventually get to decide my academic future.

2 Imbalance

My inability to make myself less available created an imbalance in my work

life. A benevolent senior colleague, whom I nicknamed Grace due to her calm
demeanor and ability to speak in complete paragraphs, once acknowledged this
work/life imbalance and her own struggles with it. She explained to me, “Tony,
this work is, at its very core, mathematically impossible. We are expected to
accomplish work in three areas: teaching, scholarship and service. The expec-
tation, really, is 50% teaching, 50% scholarship and 50% service. There’s always
more work than can possibly be finished.” I understood her point, and so for the
next five years I did my best to give 150% to my institution, always searching
for ways to create more time for scholarship, to work faster, to somehow teach
more efficiently despite having to create seven new courses in three years.
Being a former school teacher, I couldn’t justify cutting corners in teaching—I
continued with complex practicum-based assignments for classes of nearly 40
students, without a grader or teaching assistant. I couldn’t say no to service
work, so I continued to serve on multiple committees and, later, review and
editorial boards. I also ended up chairing the curriculum committee, a position
of authority ill-suited for junior faculty.
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84 S MITH

This increasingly severe work/life imbalance took its toll on my scholarship

and my personal life. Stacks of unread research journals accumulated in my
office and living room; articles and book chapters had to be written at four in
the morning, eleven at night, or on weekends when I wasn’t grading or plan-
ning for class. I missed one grandmother’s 90th birthday party, and I seldom
visited my other grandmother living in a nursing home. Persistent friends
stayed in touch, but the rest faded away, as did all of my hobbies and recre-
ational activities. I didn’t have time for them. Ken, a patient man, stayed with
me, but years later confessed he got awfully tired of hearing “no” and of going
to movies and concerts alone.
At my third-year review, the halfway point to tenure, I was told I wasn’t
doing enough, feeding a rapidly expanding and overwhelming sense of
inadequacy. I needed more publications and, importantly, I needed to get at
least one grant— and it had better be a big one. So I stayed up later, got up
earlier, worked longer hours on weekends and got a major state-level service
grant. This victory made my work imbalance markedly worse, requiring me to
travel multiple times over the course of a year to a remote logging town,
working with math and science teachers on content-area reading and
vocabulary instruction—topics they did not want to teach. I did my best,
spending time collecting tree core sam- ples and touring timber mills; I
wrote an un-publishable final report (service grants seldom lead to
publications, I later learned) and realized afterward I had missed nine
weekends of life with friends and family. The grant award is a single line on
my CV, at high cost.

3 Inadequacy

Over my years along the pathway to tenure, pressures and the persistent work
imbalance led me to feel an ever-expanding sense of inadequacy. No matter
what I did, I was convinced it would not be enough. I asked myself, How might
I get more manuscripts published? If I apply myself and work harder, might
I get another grant? A larger one? A multi-year research grant? How do my
peers from other institutions manage to publish more than I do, while
maintaining a cheerful attitude and networking with researchers all across
the country?
The Viper likely sensed my growing thoughts of inadequacy and feelings of
failure. She offered to help secure an internal technology grant, and I, desper-
ate to achieve more, foolishly said yes. Any momentary elation over receiving
an award vanished when I realized I was not on equal footing with the Viper
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on this project. Deeming herself the expert on all things technology, she seized
control of the project. “I’ve been working in educational technology for years,

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B ENEVOLENCE OR B ITTERNESS 85

especially mobile technology as a way to reach underrepresented communi-

ties. I don’t think you know anything about that.” The Viper did the
research and creative work, and I ended up installing software updates on
40 mobile devices, one at a time. She also took all of the mobile technology
home after the project ended, so that nobody else would be able to use it for
any purpose she wasn’t part of. I cautiously raised this issue with the dean,
believing that the equipment belonged to the university and not to her
individually; the dean agreed but did not want to intervene and provoke the
Viper’s maniacal wrath. Even though I spent huge amounts of time on
course development, teach- ing and advising, feelings of inadequacy filtered
into that part of my work, too. In my school, students can choose their own
advisor; not wanting to be picked on by the bitter colleague or ignored by the
inattentive benevolent colleague, a large number of students chose the
faculty member who was available and eager to please—me. At one point I
had 23 graduate student advisees, while the Viper and two other
colleagues, together, had nine. The school had no mechanism for faculty
to say no to new advisees. I could not find enough time
to advise each of them sufficiently and so I felt I was failing them, too.
My sense of inadequacy in teaching came from course evaluations. My
mentor and colleague expressed anguish at the end of one semester for getting
a combined student course evaluation score of 3.8 out of 5. “I’ve never gotten
such a low score in my whole career. I normally get at least a 4.8 or higher!” I had
never gotten a 4.8. What was I doing wrong? Was I failing my students as well
as my scholarship? When I send in my tenure file, will my senior colleagues see
my student course evaluation scores and shake their heads in dismay? Clearly I
wasn’t doing enough or working enough, so I tried harder. Every day. For almost
six years, until I turned in my tenure file with decent course evaluation scores,
several grants and a reasonable number of publications.

4 Attitude

Once I turned in my tenure file I did experience a gradual change of attitude

and all the emotions that come along on such a stressful and arduous journey.
First I felt a sense of profound relief, followed immediately by fear—after all,
the Viper was on my promotion and tenure committee. Her unpredictability
and moments of random wrath petrified me, so I remained terrified until,
months later, I received notice of my successful tenure and promotion.
Fear was mixed with gratitude during these months, as I came to appreciate
several senior colleagues (including Grace) who went to battle for me and neu-
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tralized the negative maniacal critiques and actions of the Viper. Outnumbered

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86 S MITH

and outvoted, all she could do was seethe and plot petty schemes to make my
tenured life miserable, which she did until her recent retirement. Nobody
bothered to throw her a farewell party, although she had been at our institu-
tion for almost 30 years. I wondered, what might have happened if I had been
in a school with three bitter senior colleagues and one benevolent one, rather
than the other way around? I shudder to think about it.
Immediately after receiving tenure I went on sabbatical for a year with high
hopes of resetting my work/life balance to make the next 20 years sustainable,
positive and interesting. I tried, but the following year I was appointed to lead-
ership positions for a number of years. In a small school with retiring senior
colleagues and newly hired junior colleagues, I found I could no more say “no”
as an associate professor than I could as an assistant, although the reasons
were different.
Looking back across this journey to tenure, it seems that once we arrive we
either become benevolent or bitter. Do I manage a better work/life balance,
find my teaching stride and a research niche, and be a benevolent colleague like
Grace, or do I stay off kilter and miserable like the Viper, spreading bitterness
in every meeting and class session? Assistant and Associate are both nine-letter
words, but what they represent are worlds apart. Shifting into the new title and
role of associate (tenured) professor was a positive experience for me overall,
as I realized I was ultimately free to pursue the scholarship I found interesting.
It wasn’t a publish-or-perish choice anymore; I hadn’t perished, so now I
could choose. I’m not sure if this has made me a benevolent colleague, but it
certainly has kept me from becoming bitter. I say no to service work, but
judiciously. I look out for and try to protect my new junior colleagues from too
much service work. I choose research projects carefully, focusing on what
interests me most. I take weekends off—all of them! I will go up for full
professor soon, but the dif- ference is that I get to choose when, based on my
own sense of readiness. That makes all the difference. It will be my decision,
not the hourglass trickling sand irreversibly, the way it did on the
pathway to tenure.
Perhaps the pathway to tenure could be different, more supportive and
less arduous, making the outcome more likely to be benevolence rather than
bitterness. I wonder, is six years enough time to prove worthiness? Are junior
faculty scholarship activities sufficiently supported by university structures?
Can junior faculty’s time be protected, limiting their service load for work that
is highly time-consuming yet counts for little on a CV? It seems that universi-
ties have no difficulty in demanding and expecting high amounts of work and
effort to achieve tenure. The true difficulty lies in actually supporting junior
faculty to succeed in their teaching and scholarship so that they grow through
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the process in a positive and supported way, emerging from their pre-tenure
chrysalis of panic as benevolent butterflies rather than bitter worms.

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 CHAPTER 16

Observations from a Non-Academic on

Academic Life

Ken Robertson

We met about three months before he defended his dissertation. One might
say that it was not a likely recipe for success in terms of starting a new relation-
ship. While I had recently left a depressing job for a new one as Construction
Project Manager, he was feverishly putting the final touches on his disserta-
tion. Only fellow academics (or their significant others) can understand what
those last weeks are like before defending the culmination of years of research
and hard work. In those early days of our relationship, our only opportunity
to meet was when he would come into the city to see his advisor and we’d be
able to work in a quick dinner.
As an ABD (All But Dissertation), he had already accepted a tenure-track
position at the University of Washington. I later learned that it is not common
for degree-granting institutions to warmly welcome their own newly minted
PhD graduates with open arms, which seems rather like shoving the baby bird
from the nest. I had always thought that years of academic study were a kind of
litmus test, which, if passed, would lead to employment and future success at
their department. Wrong! Most commonly, you have to apply elsewhere to find
gainful employment and you would be wise to have a back-up plan. So, having
survived graduate school and gotten a PhD, you are immediately turned out
to swim with the sharks in a very competitive environment. Tony had already
been called to interviews across the country, but his first was with his univer-
sity and they offered him a tenure-track position. Having a bird in the hand, it
seemed wise to accept. The interview and his choice to accept occurred before
we met, so as much as I like to think I’m a pretty good catch, I can’t take credit
for being the reason he stayed in Seattle.
The first year or so of dating we shuttled between my small city apartment
and his larger suburban one near campus. The benefit of my apartment: it was
close to all the fun (and distractions) a city can offer. Benefits of his? He could
walk to campus in 10 minutes and owned an Asian shorthair cat that would
curl up on his lap as he typed out his dissertation. Tony never stayed over-
night in the city the day before he taught a class. He needed that evening and
next day to prepare. Like many people, my thoughts of academic life were that

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88 R OBERTSON

professors had a pretty good gig. You work hard to get there, but once you get
your job and tenure you can coast. Summers are free for “research” trips and
time spent reading books on the beach. Over the course of his early years in
academia, I learned that none of those assumptions was remotely true. Achiev-
ing tenure would become the first big academic mountain we’d need to climb. I
say “we” not because I am an excellent research assistant or typist, but because
as partner I found myself in a supporting role. I literally had no idea what I had
signed on for. Achieving tenure is a much more arduous and capricious prize
to seize than most non-academics perceive. I had assumed that once you have
that PhD in hand, you have a clear path to success, with all the support of your
university. Although a PhD is definitely a milestone (some might call it a mill
stone), it really is just a toehold for the next six years of arduously pushing the
rock up the hill like a poor academic Sisyphus to achieve the nirvana that is
tenure.
Teaching in and of itself, along with all of its ancillary duties, is a full time
job. As a young academic, you somehow still need to find the time to conduct
research, publish your work, provide service to your school by participating in
various committees and review panels, and still show up at conferences in your
field to present your research. Oh, and if you could please, why don’t you write
a few grant proposals and bring in some dollars for your school and university.
I was incredulous that typically 50% of grant funds are held by the university
as “overhead cost.” It’s kind of like doing well at your job and as a reward they
give you a 50% pay cut. While there are a wide range of salaries for academics,
you don’t go into it for the money. University compensation seems grossly out
of balance with expectations and makes me wonder if the tenure process is
really good for academia in the long term. To me it seems that the playing field
is not level for all players. If you are a single parent, for example, how do you
accomplish tenure and still have a family life?
As I learned these truths of academic life, I pondered how our new relation-
ship would find space to grow and thrive. Even in the best of circumstances,
relationships are hard work and I wondered if there would still be time for dis-
covery and fun? How do you provide support for someone who needs you but
also needs you to give them space to get through the epic volume of work laid
out before them? As Tony wrote and wrote and wrote, I would occupy myself
with other things. Sometimes that meant going to a movie on my own or plan-
ning a social event he might not be able to participate in. The more he wrote,
the more I felt like it would never stop. It was as if he was working on an
end- less term paper—one that with a little bit of luck he might be done with
in six years. In my career I oversee development and design for large senior
housing projects around the US, and I could not imagine sitting down and
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working on

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O BSER vATIONS FR om A Non-A CADEMIC on A CADEMIC L IFE 89

the same project for that long of an extended time frame, refining the details
over and over again. In my management of architects and interior designers,
I often get to a point where I tell them “Pencils down,” meaning this is as good
as it’s going to get, let’s move on to the next steps of the project and get it built.
My project work has a distinct beginning and end. You typically work as a team
and share the experience with others. You gain experience from doing it,
but you also get to move on to the next project and often with a new team of
colleagues. There were many Saturdays and Sundays Tony spent working. We
would try and save one of the weekend days for something fun that we could
do together. A day trip or a hike, dinner and a movie. Somehow his
demanding academic pace had to be reconciled with our relationship. The
scale often tipped toward academia, but to his credit, he managed to keep me
in the picture. As a partner of an academic, I have learned that at times you
must draw on a deep well of patience and understanding. I certainly failed at
times, but the more our rela- tionship grew, I understood that I had a role to
play as well. To support, to listen and to occasionally make myself scarce
when he needed time for focused work
and reflection.
I travel a great deal for my career and routinely use my corporate credit
card for business travel, hotels and meals with clients. In academia there is no
such thing as an expense account, let alone any kind of reasonable budget to
support your work. You are expected to attend and participate in conferences
all across the country on a travel budget that usually only covers airfare and
accommodation for one such event per year. The expense of any additional
conferences is laid at the feet of young academics to absorb from their already
less than stellar annual salaries. When I asked Tony about this, he said it was
the nature of things at universities–an expectation without financial support.
I thought that not much business would be conducted in this world if
employers did not cover expenses. If it’s the expectation of your employer
that you need to travel as a condition of your employment as well as for the
success of the business, then it stands to reason that your employer would
be taking care of this cost. Not so in academia. For young academics, who
often might be shoul- dering student debt, this seems doubly unfair.
Over the years, I have joined Tony at various faculty social events. As
a spouse of an academic, I can tell you that the occasional social gatherings
are a bit awkward for someone like me who is not able to connect on an
academic level. I think of these as “putting all the smart people together in a
room.” It’s not that people aren’t social, but with such infrequent
gatherings, there is awkwardness. Talking about non-academic topics is a bit
challenging in these group settings. I think if you are an academic who toils
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away on your own for the most part, it can be daunting to be in social
interaction with your peers.

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90 R OBERTSON

Professionally, when you put a group of people with a high level of intelligence
in the same room, you will find that they generally possess very differing
con- ceptual framework filters, and thus conflicts can occur and you end
up with fractious moments. I have watched with fascination and some degree
of horror as common workplace problems or squabbles can quickly turn into
something otherworldly. Being correct in your work and research is vital for
an academic. Much of the conflict I have observed does not come from the work
or research but rather from the endless administrative tasks and committee
work. How do you approach a problem? How do you structure a program?
What kinds of sup- port are necessary for students? I have often observed
manipulation on a grand scale among academics. Every job has office politics,
but for an academic they seem to evolve in a way that is completely foreign to
me. In my professional life, people come and go. Some you like, some you
don’t. If you disagree with some- one or their approach to a problem,
hopefully you can negotiate a path forward to some kind of resolution.
Occasionally you have a boss you don’t like and your choice is to either work
out your differences, put up with it or quit. The private sector isn’t a workers’
paradise, but generally speaking you find like-minded
colleagues and with a little luck they can become your friends, too.
In academic life, you find colleagues with whom you might be able to col-
laborate on research, or commiserate over committee work, but the stakes are
high. There is a competitive dynamic among junior faculty. The overarching
goal is to achieve tenure and the pathway is not always clear on how to get
there. Do you need to curry favor with an older, more experienced faculty
member? Should you volunteer more of your precious time to support an issue
or cause they are championing, or are you merely someone on whom more
work can be off-loaded? Faculty meetings can be contentious and problems
and resentments can build up over time. And with typically infrequent injec-
tions of fresh talent, and sometimes long stretches between meetings with col-
leagues due to busy schedules, there often is not enough time to build good
working relationships. With effort, good relationships can develop, but it is
often not the natural course of things. Relationship-building that might take
weeks or months to achieve in private sector work environments might take
years in academia, if ever. You really have to work at it.
There is no playbook on how to achieve tenure but make no mistake that
there is a game to be played. That may sound sinister, but without the kindly
guidance of a true colleague or mentor, it can be a very long six years. As
I watched my spouse toil away for six years, I never really had any doubt
that he would achieve tenure. As for his endless term paper, he did indeed
finish it. Tenure was not a gift, but rather earned by hard work and sacrifice. I
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now know what it takes to achieve this and I’m proud of his efforts.

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O BSER vATIONS FR om A Non-A CADEMIC on A CADEMIC L IFE 91

Currently, our next destination on this journey is promotion to full profes-

sor. He is almost there and I have no doubt that he’ll make it. He possesses
a drive and ambition that most private sector employers would love to
harness. And I’m getting better at knowing when to push and pull the levers
of support when needed. I also know when it’s a good time to go see a movie
on my own. Balance, effort and striving to be better are not just academic
pursuits, they are also really great relationship fundamentals.

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 CHAPTER 17

Harassment and Abuse of Power from a Global

Perspective
Or the Importance of a ConvERSATION

Anonymous 7

This essay tells highly personal stories, which nevertheless convey uncomfort-
able recurring motifs, as well as possible blind spots—things we did not know
yet. As we do know, however, many people in worldwide academia—students,
scholars and administrative staff of all genders—fall victim to abuse of power
or harassment at some point in their academic journey. Most of the problems
can ultimately be traced back to a basic pattern, in which those with power
abuse those who are “weaker”—who lack resources and backing by peers,
institutional power or stable employment. But this pattern comes in many
guises. Some people face verbal or physical harassment. Others have to watch
their work being plagiarized or are forced to do things they do not want to do.
There is no single, unified narrative.
While working in an academic institution in a country where I was not born
or educated, I gradually became aware that the problems of abuse of power
and intimidation are often culturally determined, at least to some extent.
Sometimes it was even explained to me: It’s just part of the culture and you just
have to adapt. It convinced me that awareness of cultural aspects is crucial for
a better understanding of the nature and scope of harassment and abuse of
power. In this essay, I do not just reflect on my own experiences, but also
on those of others, with the aim of learning from the experiences and
consider- ations of people from different cultures than mine.1 What can we
learn from each other by telling our personal and often painful stories, and
how could an awareness of the cultural dimension of abuse in the academic
world help us process our own experiences? What is the cultural dimension of
our particular experiences, and what is more general? And what does the
global nature of abuse and harassment imply for the responsibility of
academics towards the worldwide academic community?

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© J ULIE H ANSEN AND I NGELA N ILSSON , 2022 |
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H ARASSMENT AND A BUSE of Po WER FR om A Gl OBAL P ERSPECTIVE 93

1 Consolation and New Insights

It was not easy to find the right form for this essay. I started over at least three
times, if not more. Every time I tried to write down the events that upset me as
a PhD student, they seemed so trivial that I wondered exactly what had hap-
pened, and if my experiences actually qualified as forms of intimidation and
abuse of power. At the same time, these memories evoked strong emotions,
which were difficult to put into words.
The breakthrough came when a colleague shared her experiences with me
from the time she worked at a university in Northwestern Europe.2 Just like
me, she was a foreigner and educated in a country that, although it was
“Western,” was very different from her new homeland. One of the things she
noticed was a different attitude towards hierarchy. She told me,

I felt that hierarchies of rank were more closely adhered to in comparison

with the bulk of my experience in my home country [the US], which places
great emphasis on independence and individual choice. In many cases, it
is considered bullying to pull rank on someone or to force or intimidate
a person into doing something they have the option of not doing. It took
me some time to realize this aspect of my new culture, which I would
consider falling under more serious abuse of power when faculty make
unreasonable demands in caustic and insulting ways of those with lower
rank—whether administrative staff, grad students or post-docs.

My colleague’s words helped me to formulate my own experiences. I realized

that what she described was exactly what had upset me early on in my aca-
demic career. I found it very difficult to process these events back then, not
least because they were sometimes covered up by “higher”-ranked people such
as my supervisors, or colleagues who should have protected me, such as con-
fidential advisors, and ombudsmen. It was immensely comforting to hear my
colleague say years later that she had faced similar problems. “This is not an
aspect of the culture prominently displayed or vocalized, even though it is a
major source of anxiety and depression among employees which continually
leads to massive burnout and high turnover rates.” Apparently, my experiences
were not as trivial as they had seemed. They had been experienced by more
people than just me.
My colleague also confirmed what I already sensed, namely that the cul-
ture of my new homeland was more hierarchical than that of other countries.
I had grown up and gone to school in a country where there was little distance
between teacher and student. They could communicate and work together
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94 A NONYMOUS 7

on an equal footing more easily than in my new home country. In the latter,
however, it was more acceptable that people with a “higher” position would
delegate certain tasks to lower-ranked people, often without much possibility
to refuse the request. My native colleagues had fewer difficulties than I did in
accepting these requests, as they considered them part of the culture in which
they were raised. It made me aware of the fact that the ways in which power
relations are constructed and perceived by people are culturally determined. I
also realized that there must be a strong cultural dimension to the problems of
abuse of power and intimidation in academia.

2 No Single Narratives

One of my most formative and positive experiences as a PhD student was

when I was invited to participate in a summer school for PhD students, on a
topic that was very close to that of my dissertation. Apart from the fact that
I gained a lot of substantial knowledge on which I am still building in my
cur- rent research, it was an unforgettable experience on a human level.
Normally, at academic events branded as “international,” you will mostly
meet scholars from the rich, privileged (and therefore highly-ranked) univer-
sities of the “West.” However, the organizers had deliberately chosen to invite
a mix of students from different cultural backgrounds. I remember students
from Venezuela, Georgia, Sweden, Poland, Belgium, France, Cuba and Syria
(the latter two making jokes about having fled from there by boat, a joke few
others would be in the position to make). The summer school was free of
charge, in contrast with other international academic events, which are usu-
ally quite expensive and therefore out of reach for many scholars—especially
the younger ones from less-privileged institutions. Most summer school stu-
dents had only minimal financial scholarships—if any—and probably would
not have been able to afford the summer school had it not been free. Extra
scholarships were awarded to those who could not pay the travel expenses.
This experience reminded me of the fact that there is much financial
inequality in the academic world, depending on the wealth of one’s institution
and/or home country. I also learned that if you are in the privileged position
to have sufficient financial resources, you can actively do something to reduce
that inequality, for example, by selecting and paying for people who normally
do not have the resources to participate in international events. Scholars can
make a difference in global academia by using their funds intentionally.
I also became aware of certain blind spots in my own thinking about the
academic world. Because we often know only our own story and do not get in
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touch with academics from other cultures, we do not realize—or do not real-
ize enough—that there are other stories as well, especially when it comes to
power relations within the academy. If I had not attended this summer school
and talked to scholars from other cultures, I might have believed that abuse
of power was mainly something between a professor and student, or at least
between academics that are not on the same rung of the academic ladder. I
would not have realized that abuse of power can also result from the unequal
division of resources and asymmetrical relationships between wealthy and
less-wealthy academic institutions in different parts of the world.

3 Intercultural Conversations

While wrestling with this essay, I stumbled upon Hans-Georg Gadamer’s idea
of the fusion of horizons. According to Gadamer’s Truth and Method, “Under-
standing is always the process of a fusion of these horizons supposedly existing
for themselves” (2004, p. 306). I was familiar with Gadamer’s idea from my phi-
losophy classes as an undergraduate, in which it was discussed as part of the
question of how to obtain knowledge. I did not know that this model also deals
with intercultural communication. According to Gadamer, in order to under-
stand the other, we have to demonstrate a willingness to listen to what the
other has to say. One has to learn to “look beyond what is close at hand—not
in order to look away from it but to see it better, within in a larger whole and
in truer proportion” (p. 305). In this conversation with the other, one’s earlier
expectations are fused with the new experiences and simultaneously super-
seded by a new horizon of understanding.
It occurred to me that Gadamer’s detached way of looking at things, beyond
the matter close at hand, might be a good way to give place to my personal
and painful experiences of harassment and abuse of power, and to gain more
insight into the nature of these problems in academia. What was general, and
what was culturally specific? I also realized that Gadamer’s call to open up
and listen to the other was probably the only way to detect blind spots in my
own thinking and to better know what my responsibilities are towards my col-
leagues in the academic world.
Over the past few months, I have spoken with academics from different
parts of the world whom I’ve met during my, at this point, relatively short jour-
ney through the academy. I spoke with D., a lecturer from the United States,
with R., an assistant professor from Mexico, and with G., a lecturer from India.
I deeply admire their courage and willingness to share their stories with me
and am grateful for all the things I learned from them. Here I would like to
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share

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96 A NONYMOUS 7

some of the recurring elements I discerned in the stories of my international

conversation partners, as well as some of the blind spots I had, as a scholar
trained and later employed at one of the many wealthy, privileged universities
in Northwestern Europe.

4 Blind Spots

One of my blind spots was due simply to the fact that the form of power abuse
did not originate in my own culture. This is the problem of caste discrimina-
tion in India, pointed out by my colleague G. from India. Caste discrimina-
tion is a serious obstacle to attaining a PhD position, she says. “Candidates
are selected based on their caste affiliations, which are clearly identifiable
through their surnames. The practice continues in the process of appointment
of supervisors.” It also affects the evaluation of the research of PhD students.
“Often a high caste professor is appointed as the supervisor for the student
from a similar background and a professor from a lower caste background is
appointed to advise a student from lower castes. This creates much inequality,
especially since students from the lower castes are evaluated by teachers from
higher castes on their research presentations, oral exams and thesis defenses.”
Before my conversation with G., I had never thought about the implica-
tions of the caste system for academic life in India. If you would have asked
me, I would have supposed that it would not have affected academic life that
much, trusting that humanities scholars in India would be more sensitive to
such issues of discrimination. Some undoubtedly are, and are perhaps fighting
these problems. Others may have blind spots, just like me.
Other blind spots had to do with problems of which I was vaguely aware, but
which I had not given much further thought. An example is the abuse of power
arising from institutional discrimination, something which is certainly present
in Europe, too, although it is not talked about much. My Mexican colleague R.
works at an institution she defines as “outside the core of the academic world
defined by the big universities and international rankings,” a “renowned but
low-resourced institution compared to others in and beyond Mexico.” The
institution is seen as peripheral to other universities in the Spanish-speaking
realm.
The perceived “lower” status of R.’s university has a direct impact on her
access to the academic world. “Alterity is a critical issue in this context,” she
observes. “Decisions such as acceptance of an abstract for a conference, or
invited lectures, are many times guided by tacit prejudices about the other.”
It leaves her in a “vulnerable position,” she says, not least because she does
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not have the institutional resources to fight back, but only her own personal
ones. As R. seems to suggest by “tacit prejudices,” the discrimination is at least
partly the result of the fact that scholars—especially those from wealthier and
higher-ranked institutions, who are in charge of most of the international aca-
demic events and communication channels—are guided by certain presuppo-
sitions about which they may not even be aware, and about which they never
really talk to another.
R.’s story makes it clear that such asymmetric inter-institutional power rela-
tions also reinforce forms of abuse in academia. She herself became the victim
of plagiarism and sloppy source referencing. R. discovered that parts of her
research—both central ideas and previous publications, and newly presented
sources—had been used by scholars from higher-ranked universities in Mex-
ico and other Spanish-speaking countries who even copied parts of her writ-
ings, most often without reference to her work. Having discovered this, she
wrote to the editors of the publication and pointed out to them the similarities
between the texts in question. The editors expressed concern, but evaded the
issue. R.’s complaint was essentially dismissed.
R. felt that her concerns and complaints were not taken seriously, and that
her case had suffered from the fact that she did not have the affiliation and
contacts that the other scholar could have had. Instances of plagiarism and
sloppy citation, seemingly informed by asymmetric power relations, are usu-
ally kept under the radar. However, they invoke the question of to what extent
they are part of a much bigger problem in which scholars use their position at
the expense of scholars in more vulnerable positions.
I discovered more easily-overlooked examples of intimidation and abuse
of power in academia. G. tells about how it was made impossible for her to
get a PhD position because she had the “wrong” political views. “Soon after I
completed my master’s degree, there was an opening for a temporary teaching
position for which I applied. The interviewer mentioned that although I was
the most qualified candidate, they would not offer me the position. The under-
lying reason was well-known to all the candidates—a difference of political
opinion. The faculty were strong supporters of the right wing and I wasn’t.” G.
learned “to maintain a safe distance between professors of a different opinion,
religion or caste, and not to openly state her opinion.”
Such occurrences, in which academics are put in a vulnerable position or
abused because of their personal views or beliefs, also occur at European uni-
versities. I remember how a colleague once asked me not to tell anyone that
he was a Christian, because he was afraid that he would be taken less seri-
ously and bullied. There seems to be a tendency among scholars not to be open
about their personal convictions, especially when they are different from what
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98 A NONYMOUS 7

is considered mainstream at a certain faculty or university. This situation is

widely accepted and often remains unquestioned. It is one of the blind spots
in the discourse about abuse of power and intimidation at Western European
universities.

5 Recurring Elements and Trends

From my conversations it also became clear that in addition to blind spots—

which sometimes have to do with culture-specific dimensions of harassment
and abuse of power—there are general elements that keep recurring in differ-
ent cultures. Some are at the root of abuse of power and intimidation; others
rather aggravate the problems.
One of these recurring elements is what D. calls a “bottom-line approach to
higher education” in the US. She means that universities are expected to make
money from their academic activities, “to turn a profit, turning students into
customers, and faculty into disposable cogs in a machine.” Many of these det-
rimental developments are also threatening the European academic world, D.
feels, where “output is greatly emphasized, as if research institutions are facto-
ries, sacrificing quality in favor of quantity.” The bottom-line approach leads to
inequality and discrimination, D. says. “Hiring committees tend to select inter-
nally favored candidates or only seek graduates of elite institutions or male,
white candidates of European descent. Tenure committees demand more of
women and women of color than they do of their white male counterparts of
European descent. And temporary (adjunct) positions are steadily replacing
full-time positions.”
One of the most striking recurring elements is the difficulty victims expe-
rience in raising issues of abuse in academia and fighting against it. “Being a
woman in academia,” R. says, “I have experienced and witnessed the difficulties
of fighting against plagiarism when you appeal to male committees at more
powerful institutions that have to resolve your case but seem more interested
in defending their journals, colleagues or institutions. No fair play at all and
nearly no institutional resources to help you.” D. suggests that this is an insti-
tutionalized problem. “Sexual harassment and intimidation of faculty of lower
rank and students are often kept secret, with the abuser—sometimes serial
abusers—with prominent standing in the scholarly community protected.”
The fear of speaking out can be reinforced by the cultural context. In India,
G. notes, “Most often incidences [of abuse] do not come to light for fear that
the student will lose all that he/she has worked for. The common reason for
all these instances in India is caste, religious or political difference, sense of
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hierarchy and seniority, and sometimes personal enmity or disagreement.

These cases are not only local, as the instances mentioned above come from
across the country. The abuse of power based on religion or caste is mostly
seen as a part of culture, rarely do people speak or raise a voice against it.” I had
the same experience in my own country, where I heard from both undergrad-
uate and postgraduate students that they did not dare report certain abusive
behaviors of their professors (verbal intimidation, the making of unreason-
able requests). On the one hand, this was out of fear that it would harm their
careers, on the other hand, out of the conviction that a complaint would not
matter anyway, because the abuse was part of the culture.

6 Broadened Horizon

What did I gain from these conversations with colleagues around the world?
They helped me come to terms with my own experiences, find words for them
and realize that they were not trivial but did matter, because others had similar
experiences. I learned that there is no single story but many, even if the basic
pattern is usually the same, involving the abuse of the more vulnerable by a
more powerful person. I also broadened my own horizon of understanding,
detecting blind spots in my own thinking, especially when it comes to expec-
tations, habits and social structures at the base of abuse of power and harass-
ment in particular cultures—India’s caste system, for instance, or the unequal
power relations between institutions within a country, or among countries.
Such elements, which are usually culturally specific, easily escape the attention
of people who do not belong to the given culture. Sometimes they contribute
to keeping asymmetrical power relations and all their consecutive problems of
abuse and intimidation intact.
It also confirmed for me that there are elements and trends recurring in sto-
ries of abuse around the globe. Such recurring patterns may help to make this
essay relevant to people from areas that go unmentioned here, such as Eurasia,
Africa and Oceania. The idea that we share a story is a relief—I’m not the only
one who had to deal with verbal intimidation by supervisors, who felt forced by
higher-ranked colleagues into uncomfortable situations and was confronted
with the grey zone of plagiarism by a close colleague. But the fact that there is
something like a shared story is also hugely alarming. For if we are aware that
there is a problem with abuse in academia which is even global, why does the
problem continue? Another essay is probably needed to answer this question,
even if it is clear that unequal power relationships within and between institu-
tions and countries play a crucial role.
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100 A NONYMOUS 7

The conversations with my international colleagues made me realize that

abuse in academia is indeed a global problem that requires a global approach.
There are many ways to raise awareness and contribute to a solution: expand-
ing our networks with colleagues in more vulnerable situations or from dis-
advantaged institutions and countries; inviting them to join our academic
events, give lectures or submit papers to our books and journals; and finan-
cially supporting colleagues who lack the means to participate in international
academic events. I think scholars working in more privileged and wealthy envi-
ronments have a particular responsibility to use their resources and influence
in ways that reduce the problem of inequality, which is often at the root of
harassment and abuse of power.
Moreover, as I learned while writing this essay, it helps to intentionally
engage in conversations with scholars from around the globe in order to
become more aware of the scope of the problems of power abuse and harass-
ment in academia. We can detect our shared stories, our own blind spots and
our tacit assumptions only if we open up to the other person, engage in real
and honest conversation, and listen to their experiences.

7 My Struggle

If a conversation is so important to understand the other person, should we

talk to our abusers? The answer will be different for everyone. Some people
will never want to see their abuser again, because the offense was too grave or
the memory too raw. Others have the courage to expose wrongdoings, which is
a very tough thing to do. Still others like me do not dare to enter into a conver-
sation or name wrongdoers for fear of further damage.
Exposure is crucial to break the silence surrounding the abuse and disclose
the truth. One of the things I struggled with while writing this essay was whether
I should put my own name on it. I did not have the courage, being afraid that
it would affect my career, which I have worked so hard for. At the same time,
it seemed unfair to me to present my side of the story without giving my col-
leagues the possibility of responding. By this I do not mean that I would like to
cover things up or defend my offenders. But we all have our own stories of what
happened, and they are inevitably impacted by the fact that we originate from
different cultures. I think the truth only comes to light if we open up to another
in a real and honest conversation, in which we explain how we experienced
things, and, if possible, try to bring each other’s horizons somewhat closer.
But what if, like me, you do not dare have such a conversation, or if it is
simply impossible? I learned a lot from the book Free of Charge (2005), by the
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Croatian-American theologian Miroslav Volf, whose thinking about dialogue,

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H ARASSMENT AND A BUSE of Po WER FR om A Gl OBAL P ERSPECTIVE 101

exposure and forgiveness was directly informed by the fact that he grew up in
a family belonging to the Protestant-Christian minority in former Yugoslavia,
at a time when the country was torn by deep ethnic and religious tensions. Volf
suggests that exposure is not necessarily about disclosing the culprit, but the
deeds. He refers to William Shakespeare’s play “Measure for Measure,” which
tells about Claudio, who is sentenced to death for getting his beloved pregnant.
Claudio’s sister Isabella asks the judge to show mercy and to spare her brother’s
life. She says,

I have a brother is condemn’d to

die. I do beseech you let it be his
fault, And not my brother.
(Shakespeare, quoted in Volf, 2005, p. 141)

Volf notes the following about the passage: “To be just is to condemn the fault,
and, because of the fault, to condemn the doer as well. To forgive is to con-
demn the fault but to spare the doer” (p. 141). Elsewhere, Volf states that for-
giveness entails two things: first, “to name the wrongdoing and to condemn
it” (p. 129); and second, “to give the wrongdoers the gift of not counting the
wrongdoing against them” (p. 130). One can see why exposure and forgiveness
should go together. On the one hand, mere forgiveness of the offender without
identifying the wrongdoing can easily result in a situation in which the wrong
is covered up and the potentially abusive situation perpetuated (something
that happens all too often in academia). On the other hand, mere exposure
of the fault without forgiveness can lead to bitterness and resentment (some-
thing that is often seen in academia, too).
Volf helped me to come to terms with my own story of intimidation and
abuse in academia, suggesting that it is also okay to expose faults without nam-
ing the wrongdoer. With this in mind, I have tried to keep a distance, leaving
the culprits for what they are, while exposing some general trends in abuse
and harassment in academia and blind spots in mine (and possibly others’)
thinking about the problems. Sometimes it is enough just to trace the contours
of what went wrong without publicly condemning individual perpetrators and
counting wrongdoings against them, in the hope that it opens up the space for
a real conversation in which we can better find each other.

Notes

1 My leading questions were inspired by Regulska (2018). Many of the problems exposed by
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the #MeToo movement as underlying causes of sexual harassment are similar to those under-
lying abuse and intimidation in academia in general.

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102 A NONYMOUS 7

2 I have tried to give as faithful a representation as possible of what colleagues wanted to share
with me verbally and on paper, quoting their words verbatim. Moreover, I have submitted
this essay to them for approval. Still, it is ultimately mainly the expression of my own position
on the problem of harassment and abuse of power in academia.

References

Gadamar, H.-G. (2004). Truth and method (2nd ed., J. Weinsheimer & D. G.
Marshall, Trans.). Continuum.
Regulska, J. (2018). The #MeToo movement as a global learning moment. International
Higher Education, 94(5), 5–6. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/
325701024_The_MeToo_Movement_as_a_Global_Learning_Moment
Volf, M. (2005). Free of charge: Giving and forgiving in a culture stripped of grace. Grand
Rapids.

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 CHAPTER 18

What My Younger Self Would Have Said, Had She

Spoken up, and How My Present Self Would Have
Replied
Ingela Nilsson

“There was this seminar the other day and I really didn’t get anything, or at
least close to nothing. Everyone else seemed to understand, nodding and smil-
ing and laughing, so I did what I always do: mimicked them, feeling stupid
on the inside while laughing along on the outside. Some part of me knows
this is wrong, but I’ve been doing it for so long it’s too late to admit I don’t
quite belong. Otherwise people would realize that I don’t know all these terms
they’re using, that I haven’t read all those books they refer to in passing as if
everyone had read everything. But above all, I don’t want to expose myself by
asking a wrong or stupid question. They would laugh, and even if I could laugh
along, my embarrassment might shine through and it would all be over.”
“What would be over?”
“Eh … this! Being part of this world, learning things, having coffee, going for
drinks, being at university, you know. I like it here, it’s very different from any-
thing I ever knew, and I’ve made friends. In fact, they are my best friends—
we do everything together, from morning to late at night.”
“But look, if you cannot tell them you don’t understand something, are they
really your friends? Do they really know you? Aren’t they just a bunch of guys
who enjoy having a young woman in their circle?”
“What a mean thing to say! Of course they know me, they know who I am
now: one of them. And what’s wrong with being the only girl anyhow? In fact,
it makes me feel special, I get a lot of attention. And I’m not some dumb chick,
you know! I’m a cool girl, one of the guys, they respect me for that and treat me
the same way they treat each other.”
“Seriously: you cannot believe that. You’re like a mascot to them, they think
you’re cute. And how can you claim you’re just one of the guys? Did any of
them speak up when you filed a complaint against that professor with the sex-
ist translation exercises? Did any of them stand up for you? No, they did not.
They are using you as a front figure when they dislike something, you get to
be the angry girl who takes the fire and the blame. You will see, that’s how it
works.”

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104 N ILSSON

“What a bitch you are, just because you can’t remember what it’s like to be
young—I bet you’re just jealous, wishing you were in my place. They’ve actu-
ally been really supportive.”
“Like when they wrote that poem about your breasts? Or left you alone late
at night with that guy trying to seduce you? Look, I don’t doubt their affection
for you, but I bet most of them are just as scared as you are of looking stupid
or making a mistake. You become an alibi, a kind of reflection of what they
don’t have the guts to be.”
“You’re so mean, I never want to speak to you again.”
“That’s fine, we will never have this conversation anyhow. I just hope you
won’t get too hurt and give up your integrity, it’s the last thing we can afford
to lose.”
“I’ll be fine, if you just get out of my head.”

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 CHAPTER 19

The Ghosts of Academia

Veronika Muchitsch

I am haunted by a particular kind of ghosts.

At times, they materialize in the subtle sting of mistrust upon new encoun-
ters. At others, they form a knot in my gut, heavy with anger and disenchant-
ment. They embody the specific kind of pain caused by the ruptures between
feminist theory and proclamations, and lived feminist practice in academia.
I have struggled with following this perspective in this contribution. Many
of these specters echo encounters with scholars, who are self-proclaimed femi-
nists and feminist theorists, whose work I had admired, and still admire.
Others formed within institutional contexts that off-handedly declare
commitment to feminist politics, and, most excruciatingly, within scholarly
networks, whose pronounced purpose it is to scrutinize and fight intersecting
forms of subjuga- tion including those along lines of gender, sexuality, class,
race and ethnicity.
I have struggled, as well, because giving voice to my experiences would risk
diverting attention from other, more explicitly misogynist, displays of abuse
of power. And because pointing to these problems threatened to cancel out
the experiences of feminist companionship and support that have carried me
through my early career in academia.
But my ghosts would not dissolve. They expanded and multiplied with time,
with reflection.
So, I knew I needed to paint their shadows on these pages.

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106 M UCHITSCH

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 CHAPTER 20

The Unbearable Shame of Crying at Work

Anonymous 8

Like many academics, I have over the years experienced various situations of
abuse and harassment. I developed coping strategies that helped me to move
on, but they were not necessarily positive for me. I believe that opportunities
to share and reflect on experiences of abusive situations provide one of the
most constructive ways to find healthy strategies to counteract this type of
behavior. I was spared during my first semesters in academia. Apart from a
few inci- dents of wandering hands at department parties, most lecturers
treated me with respect. I was completely unprepared, however, for my
first encounter with my future supervisor in France. I was excited to be
there, but when I went to see her after class, her gaze remained trained on
the wall behind me, signal- ing clearly my inferiority and insignificance as
she coldly explained that she would not meet with me until next year, and
only if I passed my master exams. She also advised me that on days when
students came out of her office crying, it was better to postpone the
appointment. During my five years as her grad- uate student, there were
many such days when I consciously avoided her out of fear of bursting into
tears in front of her and everyone else. All her students feared committing
faux pas in her presence, as she could be mean enough even
on a good day.
This was the history of the department. Her predecessor had made her suf-
fer tremendously for years and years as a lecturer and it was only by playing
power games that she had finally attained this position. She was not a partic-
ularly brilliant or successful researcher, but she was a ruthless strategist who
held the entire department in thrall to her persona.
She was not ready to open up to anyone at that time. Later on, during the
long periods of illness that finally led to her death, her attitude changed, and
one day soon after I had defended my PhD, she apologized for how she had
behaved during my first years as her graduate student.
I was lucky to be able to work on my PhD at an international research insti-
tute, although I didn’t have a grant and had to work in different projects on
the side. It was a vibrant environment with scholars of all ages and nation-
alities passing through. Being abroad made them more open and accessible
than at their home institutions. I was happy and inspired to share ideas with

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108 A NONYMOUS 8

researchers with common interests and with whom scholarly exchange was
independent of age or gender. Or at least that’s what I thought.
One day I was sitting together with a local colleague on a little bench outside
the library of the international institute. He was a senior researcher, but we
often sat there together, discussing our research, new publications or interest-
ing buildings. But today was different. The air was thick. He obviously felt it,
too, for he was sweating and breathing heavily.
“It’s very simple,” he said, “you do something for me and I’ll do something for
you. You can begin by filling in this form and returning it to my post box within
a week. Then I’ll know and can make arrangements accordingly …”
Who in my position wouldn’t want a grant to spend a semester at a presti-
gious research institute? It would be an ideal opportunity to write my disserta-
tion with a full salary, with access to an amazing library and renowned scholars.
But it was not due to my intellectual capacity, research topic or innovative
methodology that I would receive this. None of these things were of interest in
this exchange of services. Shame, disgust and guilt surfaced in my mind and I
could feel the tears burning. But I didn’t want anyone to know about this shame-
ful experience, so I kept a straight face. A few days later he reminded me to turn
in the grant application. I did so without having filled it out. He pretended it had
never happened, but he never, ever discussed research with me again.
In a job interview a couple of years later, I mentioned the situation as an
example of how I had dealt with harassment, and I later learned that this had
got me the position. It was outside of academia, but it was also an opportunity
to finish my PhD without exchanging services with anyone.
When I returned to academia as a postdoctoral researcher, I needed to go
on longer research trips to reconnect with the field and my topic. I also re-
established contact with researchers I knew from before, many of whom were
close to retirement, but very knowledgeable in the field. One of them had
spent all his professional life working on the same period as I specialized in.
When I was on a research visit in the city where he lived, he invited me to stay
at his house.
“Come and stay at my place,” he said. “No reason to take a room at the insti-
tute, there are so few. I can introduce you to my networks here and we can
discuss your work after hours.” I agreed, of course, eagerly.
This was followed by several exciting meetings with interesting colleagues,
long days of archival research and long evening talks about the history of the dis-
cipline and the current research environment in our field. It was such a pleasure
to finally get to know a senior researcher who understood and appreciated my
work. There was a wonderful intellectual connection that developed and made
me feel more confident about my own value and contributions as a researcher.
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T HE U NBEARABLE S HAME of C RYING AT W ORK 109

One night I was awoken by someone slipping under my covers.

“I can’t sleep,” he said. “I need to feel the warmth of another human being.”
I slipped out of bed, went into the kitchen that smelled of cold tobacco and
spent the rest of the night on a plastic chair smoking and staring into the dark,
concentrating very hard in order not to cry. The bond of trust and equal dia-
logue had obviously only existed in my mind. All that was left now was sadness,
anger and disappointment. I left early in the morning, before he woke up.
We stayed in touch because his work was intertwined with mine
through documents and connections that I could not disregard or avoid
without com- ing across as unprofessional. I remained silent for years, until
he passed away. In the numerous recommendation letters he subsequently
wrote for me, one sentence was recurrently used—a person with an
extraordinary integrity
and loyalty.
The vulnerability to harassment may decrease over the course of a career
and with age, but exposure to abuse of power, unclear distribution of (or
exclu- sion from) responsibility and non-transparent decision-making
processes are power strategies that can be just as intimidating, confusing
and disorienting. The effects of such behavior can be similar to that of
gaslighting, when the per- petrator manipulates another person into
doubting their perception of reality. When such a situation recently occurred
at my workplace, my reaction was surprisingly different from twenty years
ago. Instead of heavy, cold silence and guilt spreading in my mind, I could not
stop myself from expressing anger and frustration. As floods of angry tears
rushed over my face, I gave voice to my thoughts about the situation. This
time I conveyed my opinion to a person mature enough to take the
emotional reaction and who was wise enough to allow me the space and
time I needed to reformulate my thoughts into some- thing constructive.
But I was also confident enough to express my anger and cry without
shame, and mature enough to take a step back, analyze the situa-
tion and find a solution that was positive for me.
Harassment and abuse, whether emotional or physical, are ways of main-
taining power structures. They can also be a source of pleasure for the perpe-
trator. They are means of controlling or isolating strong individuals who are
perceived as a threat, or weaker individuals considered easy prey, denigrating
their intellectual capacity and equal rights.
One recurring observation I have made of academia in general, and the
humanities in particular, is that students and young researchers are especially
vulnerable due to the nature of the field, lack of funding and lack of perma-
nent positions. This situation opens up a space for individuals in power posi-
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tions to abuse or harass those with less power. Sometimes this behavior seems
to be hereditary within a department, following the logic of “my professor/

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110 A NONYMOUS 8

supervisor did this to me, thus I’m entitled to behave the same way when
I attain the same position.” Sometimes it is attributed to a certain individual
who is so brilliant that no one dares to question their behavior, although it is
clearly that of a bully.
The culture of silence and guilt that protects the perpetrators needs to be
addressed and dealt with. I know from experience that it is difficult to deal
with something like this on your own. In addition, the unbearable shame of
crying in an academic environment makes us keep it all to ourselves. It took
me two decades before I was confident and mature enough to cry without
shame in front of my boss. We need to raise awareness and create possibilities
to share experiences and get advice anonymously. Although it may be difficult
to eliminate harassment and abuse completely from any workplace, opening
spaces where experiences can be shared can strengthen those exposed to it
and diminish the personal and professional damage it causes.

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 CHAPTER 21

Panic Button
Ingela Nilsson

A colleague and former student sent me a draft essay the other week, asking
for advice about where to publish it. It was a brilliant text, discussing gendered
aspects of translation and the strong, basically corporeal sense of not belong-
ing that women sometimes feel in certain contexts and environments. I was
impressed, but also distressed, because the essay contained a personal anec-
dote from her time as a student. The (male) teacher had written a sentence for
translation on the whiteboard and said “This sentence is about you.” She was
the only female student in the room. “I tried to understand how this sentence,
a sentence that commented a woman’s body in sexual terms, could be about
me. I was not a body? I was a student.” The function of this memory was
to describe her own discovery of being reduced to a body, being reminded of
her flesh. Framed by citations from Christine de Pizan and Simone de
Beauvoir, it made for a strong case, but the reason why my heart started
beating (in my own body) was that this incident had happened under my
watch—at a time when I was responsible for all our undergraduate
teaching.
I instantly tried to remember who had been teaching what course back
then, in an attempt to identify the person who had done this to her, feeling
ashamed and embarrassed that something like this had happened without my
ever knowing or noticing. But it was a futile effort, because the time at which
this would have happened was not only distant in time but also rather mud-
dled in my memory, due to the kind of situation I had found myself in back
then: new at the job and under constant critique from colleagues who wished
someone else had been in my place. Was it even possible that she told me or
wrote about this in an evaluation and I had simply forgotten? That thought
made me even more distressed, reminding me of how easy it is to miss other
people’s distress when one is feeling unhappy, tired and weak.
Then I remembered an email I had received a few months back from
another young woman, a PhD student whom I had met at a few occasions.
We had shared some bad experiences of a colleague misbehaving and wrote
messages every now and then. In a recent email, she had suggested a remedy
for bad behavior in drastic but memorable words:

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112 N ILSSON

Increasingly, when talking to friends and colleagues about these experi-

ences, I have found myself wishing that we could install a sizeable red but-
ton on each desk in our academic environments, linked to a loud buzzer
and a large neon red sign of the word INAPPROPRIATE at the back of the
room. This is (though perhaps only half) a joke of course, but I think the
idea illustrates the lonely feeling that goes with how often even public
inappropriate behavior goes unchallenged. I have even experienced how
awkward laughs that ensue from the discomfort of the audience can be
perceived (by victim and perpetrator) as encouragement of bad behavior.

A panic button! That is what my student should have had on that occasion
some ten years ago! A red button and a neon sign going INAPPROPRIATE! The
shame would have been turned away from her and instead bounced back at
that teacher, whoever he was. In fact, that email put words to something that
had been at the back of my mind for quite some time: the culture of silence
that reigns in classrooms and lecture halls, in seminar rooms and lunch rooms,
in any kind of academic setting that I have ever known. We see things, we
hear things, but we pretend as if they are not there. I don’t even think it’s out
of spite, most of the time; it is rather an inability to cope, an embarrassment
or awkwardness, not knowing how to deal with inappropriate behavior. The
author of the email had recognized that as she wisely went on:

Clearly, as a community, we simply don’t know how to respond, or rarely

have the presence or wherewithal to do so appropriately when these cir-
cumstances present themselves (and I recognize this in myself as well).
Perhaps it’s a good idea, in absence of a red buzzer button, to offer sim-
ple ways to speak up, or other things to do, when inappropriate behavior
presents itself in a public setting.

Yes, but this is the trick question, isn’t it? What other ways to speak up do we
have, when there are no panic buttons and when so many are afraid to break
the silence? I cannot even count the times that I heard people say “Someone
should have stopped him,” or “Why didn’t anybody tell her?” I’ve said it myself,
too. Spent sleepless nights trying to understand what stopped me from being
the one who opened her mouth and saved someone else from a bad situation.
At the time when my student was being reduced to a body in a classroom
of our department, I was trying to cope with being the object of what I would
probably now call harassment. Back then it was seen rather as having “prob-
lems with colleagues.” And of course there were people who were convinced
(and still are) that I was as much of a problem as the others. It’s in the past now
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PANIC B UTTON 113

and I have no wish or need to revisit that shame of not being able to fit in or
even properly defend myself, but I remember an amazing person in the depart-
ment of human resources—one of the few people who seemed to take my
problems seriously. After having listened to some of my stories, she said with-
out hesitation: “These are master suppression techniques, you need to learn
how to deal with them.” She explained to me how people would use these tech-
niques in order to keep their own power and repress that of others. They were
often directed against women and minorities, including younger colleagues or
people considered “too young for the job.” They could consist of things like
making others feel invisible by ignoring their comments in a seminar or taking
a phone call in the middle of a conversation, ridiculing or shaming them for
their ideas or looks, or simply withholding information by not telling them
about a meeting or event.
It was such an eye-opener. Suddenly I could see the pattern of what had
been happening since I was a student, not just to me but all around me. All
those seminars of listening to male colleagues repeating what female
colleagues had just said, but suddenly receiving attention and praise. All the
eye-rolling at things other people said or the way they dressed. All the times
my colleagues had held back information, interrupted me or told me what to
do, since they

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114 N ILSSON

had “so much more experience.” But recognizing and knowing didn’t make it
much easier to deal with. It was still shameful to be the object of other people’s
techniques! Why me? Why now? After all, I had worked in other places where
I had been getting along just fine with people, being respected and pretty well
liked. What did I do wrong?
It was also painful to come to understand that women use the same tech-
niques as men, especially to other women. So far in my career, I hadn’t had
much of a problem with other women, but now that I had a proper job, all
female colleagues, or at least those who were older than me, seemed to hate
me. One told me how sad and worried she felt about the male candidate
who didn’t get the job. Others simply ignored my greetings in the corridor.
Yet another invited me to lunch just to explain why I should never have been
offered the position in the first place. It was devastating but slightly fascinat-
ing: to go through all that trouble just to humiliate someone over lunch! Oh,
if I had only had that panic button … But I didn’t, and being humiliated by
other women was somehow worse than being ignored or bullied by men. It
felt like being back in high school, being watched by the mean girls who
deliberately talk loud enough for you to hear. The feeling of wanting to
disappear, just not get out of bed in the morning because you know there
will be another day of whispering and smirks and dismissive comments.
I know that my memories are exaggerated. I know that I have made all this
much worse than it was in my head, simply because it made me so miserable
at the time. I’m convinced that some of the people around me never noticed.
I kept my head high, I clearly stated my ideas and stood my ground. To some
extent, I think that made it worse, provoking those who wanted me to show
more respect not only for them as persons, but for the system as a whole. A
decisive turning point for me was a discussion with a senior administrator, a
man who had worked at the university for some thirty years and who had seen
everything. We were having lunch and I complained, as usual, about how peo-
ple treated me as a little girl and didn’t see me as a real professor of X because
I didn’t fit the template, just couldn’t live up to people’s expectations. It wasn’t
the first time he heard me saying that. He looked at me and sighed, then said:
“But look, now you are the professor of X at this university, so a professor of X
at this university is just like you.”
It sounds silly now that I try to put it on paper, but that was more useful
than anything others had said to cheer me up or support me. It finally gave
me the strength to fully accept my new role and not to care so much about
what others think. It helped me decide who I wanted to be in academia, which
was exactly whom I had already been but with more self-assurance and con-
fidence. It didn’t stop people from being mean to me, but it helped me cope.
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PANIC B UTTON 115

And I don’t regret my experience of harassment, regardless of how painful it

was, because it has helped me to see and notice what happens around me.
There are no panic buttons, so we all need to take our responsibility and raise
our voice when colleagues misbehave. Those of us with permanent positions
have the greatest responsibility because we have nothing to fear, but we are all
part of the system, from undergraduate students to the vice chancellor: we are
the system, so when the system fails, we need to do more than just blame it as
an abstract entity. We speak up not only for ourselves, but for those who come
after. To make the system better. I strongly believe in that, but some things in
particular still worry me.
One is all the things I know I don’t see, even though I think I’m being watch-
ful. The anecdote of my student is only one example, but a scary one because
it happened so close to me and I feel I should have known. Other things have
happened in close proximity without any suspicions on my part. The male col-
league whom I thought was simply a bad and lazy supervisor, even a bit of
a womanizer, but who turned out to secretly harass his most attractive male
students. How on earth could I not have known, having spent so much time at
the center of that environment? Did I not want to see? Did I care less for the
young men than I would have for young women? Was I less suspicious because
of my gendered presumptions of who harasses whom? Why didn’t anyone tell
me? Did I not appear as a person who could be trusted? These questions are
haunting me and I think they should. Only by questioning ourselves can we
make things better.
The other is the way in which I see women behave to other women. I now
most often get a better treatment than I did fifteen years ago, but that’s clearly
because of my current status and my age—I finally look old enough to be who
I am, more or less. But the fact that I am treated better doesn’t help when I see
constant gender and age discrimination all around me, not only from men but
from women. In fact, anything that stands out as odd is being commented on
and often made fun of, regardless of what kind of deviation from the norm it is.
Being a heterosexual man in gender studies is also a deviation of sorts, let’s not
forget about that. Or a straight blond woman in queer studies. We’re all judg-
mental, that’s for sure. And why should women be better than men, you might
say—but why on earth should women keep suppressing other women when so
many men are finally starting to change? The topic is very tricky, because criticiz-
ing other women is not comme il faut. It easily falls back on you: aren’t you then
a nasty woman who doesn’t like other women? The commonplace of women
being mean and competitive by nature is so prevalent, it even contributes to the
way in which we accept all kind of things going on around us, because we don’t
want to be accused of being a bitch. It saddens me and drives me crazy.
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116 N ILSSON

This fear of being a trouble-maker or annoying in any way stops us all, but
especially women, from acting as panic buttons, and in the end it really stands
in the way of a better academic work environment. One of the things I learned
from my advisor in the human resources department was how to confront peo-
ple using master suppression techniques by simply asking then, nicely, what
they meant by saying this or that. This is not something that always works,
especially if the technique in question is to ignore someone. But this is where
we need each other: if someone ignores me, I want to have a person there who
says, “But why are you ignoring her?” When one of the men repeats something
a woman just said but now gets acclaim, I want someone—and not always
me—to say, “But that is exactly what X just said.” When someone said, “Is green
nail polish really suitable for a professor?” I wish someone had said, “Why do
you comment on her looks?” We have to be each others’ panic buttons—there
is no other way. But if we all dare to do it, the behavior will change.
To my former student, I want to say that I’m sorry. I wish one of the
other students had interrupted the teacher and said, “Why do you talk to
her like that?” I wish I had been there for you, to tell you that you are not
just a body, but that being a body is also not a bad thing. Perhaps I was too
caught up in my own problems to see or understand yours, which is not an
excuse but possibly an explanation. Yet I hope, and know, that you have
learned from that experi- ence, that you would never to treat others like that
and that you would speak up if someone does it to someone else.
Wouldn’t it be great to have panic buttons in every academic setting! But in
the meantime, let’s simply speak up. Nice could be the new brilliant.

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 CHAPTER 22

Quit

Thomas Oles

I called to him, rapidly stating what it was I wanted him to do—

namely, to examine a small paper with me. Imagine my surprise, nay,
my consternation, when, without moving from his privacy, Bartleby,
in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied, “I would prefer not to.”
I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties.
Immediately it occurred to me that my ears had deceived me, or
Bartleby had entirely misunderstood my meaning. I repeated my
request in the clearest tone I could assume; but in quite as clear a
one came the previous reply, “I would prefer not to.”
H. M ELVILLE (Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street, 1997, p. 21)

∵
An early evening in late March, several weeks past my forty-eighth birthday.
I am seated in the departure lounge of Salt Lake City Airport, wrapped in
a Loden coat and staring into a half-empty plastic sushi tray on my lap.
I am on my way home from an academic conference. I chaired a panel on
fieldwork with some close colleagues. It all went well. Interest was expressed,
much future collaboration promised. It fell to me to sum up. Fieldwork is about
chance, I whispered, my voice ravaged by laryngitis, about risk. It is about the
learning that comes of being vulnerable, exposed, raw. In the field you can and
do get hurt. In the field you are never really in control, never really the master
of your fate, and in this it is like life, I said.
We call ourselves a tribe, this group. Who knows how we found each other.
We came together this year as we do most years, to affirm friendship, offer
support, steel ourselves anew for another year filled with the mundane disap-
pointments and degradations of university jobs. “Academic positions” is too
grandiose for us. We are not superstars. We do not write our own tickets. The
offices where we toil are small, they look onto loading docks and brick walls.
We live all over the world in places we tolerate, barely, for the paycheck. We

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118 O LES

dream about someplace better. We spend (or spent, before the Covid year) a
great deal of time in airplanes and even more in airports, waiting for flights
delayed, rerouted, rebooked, cancelled. We have learned to turn those hours
to our advantage. In departure lounges and airport bars, at ticket counters
and security checkpoints and border control, we are always throwing together
our next lecture, trudging through our students’ prose thickets, tending the
ever-unruly email gardens.
I had such high hopes for this hour. But the room is packed: every seat occu-
pied, children splayed at their parents’ feet, young people propped against the
walls. To a one, all are device-entranced. Blue fluorescent light reaches every
corner of the room and leaves only the darkening world beyond the plate glass
as refuge. I lift my eyes, slowly trace the pink ridge of the Wasatch Front. It has
just snowed.

You must quit, I think.

Do I say the words aloud? Do I even “think” them at all? They seem at once
more and less than a thought. A conviction, an epiphany? No. This is a state-
ment more like “it is Tuesday,” banal and self-evident. No chain of reasoning
leads up to it. It needs no argument, no explanation. It arrives just so, without
fanfare, from some place far beyond thought, beyond reason or plan or conse-
quence. But it demands utterance.
Now, years later, I know where the words come from. It is the “swamp brain,”
the reptile inside me fed up with the frontal lobe and its chatter, its endless ifs
and howevers and at the same times. Fed up—and not fed.

You must eat, the reptile orders.

It has my attention now. It is angry. Yes. I suddenly realize I am dizzy, have

not taken a single piece of food all day. I look back down at the pieces of sushi,
each a sad little expression of the industrial food machine. I am about to
take one when the frontal lobe barges back in, yelling.

crAZY!
not so bad—
the children—
what about money?!
she will never accept—
things will surely—

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Q UIT 119

I wait for the words to assemble themselves into sentences, sentences into argu-
ments as they usually do. But the words are sheepish. They sit there, random
once shiny objects sticking out of the muck. The ruler of the muck is amused.
Haveyour fun, he says to the front brain. Go ahead with your crystal palaces. They
will all sink in the end.
The reptile is in no hurry. It settles back while the words drag themselves
to attention (they have had so much practice). This institution is toxic, they
recite. It will never change. They fired you without cause, then tried to cover it up.
You hate your colleagues, you hate your students. They are poisoning you. And—
final insult!—the pay is lousy, you are going broke. And then suddenly emerges
the sentence I will not forget, the sentence I will bear with me every day from
then on, fully-formed, lapidary, like fully grown Athena from the head of Zeus:
I would rather never work in academia again than work in this university another
minute.
As rhetoric, not too bad. Perhaps the words will convince my skeptics. But
the problem with words is that they are fickle. Once they get going there is no
stopping them. Almost immediately, they turn on me:

OK, but what will you do? This work is all you know, all you can do. Sure
universities have their problems. This one might be a bit worse than others,
but how can you be certain you will end up—deserve to end up—with some-
thing better? Don’t be so hasty. You are in no mental state to make such a
consequential decision. Cool down, tot up the ledger. Wait a month or a year
or two or three.

My spirits sink with each clause, each premise. I am so damn good at this. But
I am not the only one paying attention. The reptile is there, too, watching and
waiting. It, too, knows a thing or two about words, and it has plans for me. I
am just about to add the next proposition when it lunges forward, hisses and
strikes:

Dear Dr Oles,

I understand that you received a UK Visas and Immigration letter stat-

ing that your residence card application has been refused. This letter
confirms that you no longer have the right to work in the UK, therefore
the University cannot legally continue your employment at this time.
Your employment will terminate, as of today, on the grounds of statu-
tory enactment. As this is a summary dismissal no notice or payment in
lieu of notice is due to you. This decision has been reached after seeking
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120 O LES

legal advice and guidance from the University’s contact within the UKVI
Premium Customer Service Team who confirmed that the University can
no longer legally employ you.

Yours sincerely,
LR
Senior Human Resources Administrator

I step back and wait for the old sting. I know it well, for I have worried
these lines to threads since first reading them. They came attached to a
late email from my chair (last task, no doubt, before he headed off for the
long weekend). The email was festooned with empathy. I stood at my desk
and stared at the screen, words oozing and ramifying before me. My son
was eight months old, my daughter three years, mine the only salary. The
world was inverted. There was nowhere to turn, no succor to be found. I—
we—were in hostile territory. I walked down to them in the park below, where
they were playing with neigh- bors. The smiles of pity, the polite assurances (all
a mistake, will be put right soon
enough) enraged me. They—will—regret—this! I said, but thought: You.

Dear L R,

I was surprised and disappointed to receive your correspondence dated

06 April 2015, in which you inform me that I have been fired as of today
on grounds of “statutory enactment.”
I would have appreciated the opportunity to discuss my plans for
appealing this erroneous decision with you before being summarily
dismissed over the Easter holiday on the basis of advice from the “UKVI
Premium Customer Service Team.” I have attached to this letter my Home
Office appeal and supporting evidence. I have also instructed my solic-
itor to review the circumstances of my dismissal, and request that you
immediately forward him complete transcripts of any and all legal advice
obtained from the Home Office in relation to my case.
Naturally I have suspended execution of all duties associated with my
position pending resolution of this matter.

Sincerely,
&c

I wait for the venom to hit the skin. And wait. Adrenaline and dopamine ebb
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away by increments. Still nothing. Finally, I relax. Not only have the words lost
their potency, I realize, they actually bore me. How can that be? Have I grown

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Q UIT 121

immune from exposure? Am I just too weary, too worn down by airports and
greasy food and stale conference hotel air? The reptile knows my brain too well
to give me time to answer. As quickly as it deploys its venom it sucks it all back
in again, like a film in reverse. All the words are gone. All, that is, except one.
Quit, a verb and a noun and an adjective. The 27-page entry in the OED
tells me the word comes from Anglo-Norman and Old French quiter, meaning
release, discharge or exonerate. To abandon, relinquish, renounce (an obliga-
tion or a debt). To leave, go away. To pay a penalty, to match or balance or
redress. To rid of something undesirable or troublesome. Like retching.
Before the retching, though, the swoon. That sour certainty of sweat and
bile. I mechanically avert my eyes from the sushi, try to ignore the food-court
fragrance behind me. I look back out the window, where it has grown dark.
I take imaginary gulps of jet fuel-spiked air. Perhaps I can get some work
done. I reach down to the floor to pull out my laptop, then freeze. No. The
reptile is not done with me, not yet. It crouches there, grinning, waiting. It
knows.
The old definitions are ambiguous. To rid of something troublesome. But who
is troublesome and who is troubled? Who is ridded and who does the ridding?
What is matched, to whom is the penalty paid? Who owes, and who forgives?
“I wolde wel quyte your hyre” Chaucer wrote, but Melville’s Bartleby never says
the word. His boss does.
Who is troublesome? I am troublesome.
I am a bad colleague.
I am not a “team player.”
A team player would not file a grievance and insist on a formal apology—
not when he is reinstated three weeks later and receives hush money in the
bargain. A team player would not go to the press. He would not speak to a
lawyer. He would keep his head and play the long game. He would go meekly
before that tribunal of students convened by his “line manager” (we all work
on the shop floor now), charged with … what, exactly? Defying the learning
outcomes? Going off-script on assessment? Holding a class meeting at an
open-air museum? (Yes, I was indeed censured for this.)
No matter. Team players “welcome the opportunity to clear the air.” Team
players play ball. They do not tape record every meeting with superiors. Denied
promotion to a rank they have already held in another institution, they do not
protest. They accept the committee’s verdict (“it was decided that you are not
quite ready for promotion at this stage …”) with grace. They stick it out, try
again next year and all the years after that.

Team players do not prefer not

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to. Team players do not fold.
Team players do not quit.

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122 O LES

It is not that I do not know the rules of this game. I know I should smile
like a good colleague. But I have grown sullen in my privacy. I sit there,
immobile. Some words are issuing from the Head of School seated beside
me. Student. Experience. Transparency. Openness. Mutual. Respect. I turn and
notice the straight teeth, the sequined shoes, the open palms, practiced
and unquitterly. I remain a study in not smiling. When the floor is mine
(“Thomas, is there any- thing you would like to add at this point?”), I turn
and fix an icy gaze on my accusers. Who called for this meeting? I bark,
deliberately rude. Much general squirming, then two hands slowly rise of
the fifty assembled. Do I imagine the awkward laughter? It makes no
difference. My sentence arrived on the docket. Max Weber, now he knew the
rules of this game as well as anyone. He saw them being written. In 1917
Weber gave a short speech to a group of doctoral students. To my mind it is
the truest thing ever said and written on the modern
university.
“What is the situation of a graduate student who is intent on an academic
career?” he asked (Weber, 2004, p. 4). The first part of the answer concerns
the transformation of the university into a capitalist bureaucracy, scholars
into wage laborers alienated from the means of production. Their position
is “as precarious as that of every other ‘quasi-proletarian’ in existence” (p. 4).
But while “the old constitution of the university has become a fiction,” Weber
thought, one “feature peculiar to a university career” remained (p. 4). Luck.

I personally owe it to a number of purely chance factors that I was

appointed to a full professorship while still very young in a discipline in
which people of my own age had undoubtedly achieved more […] I have
developed a keen eye for the undeserved fate of the many whom chance
has treated, and continues to treat, in the opposite way and who have
failed, for all their abilities, to obtain a position that should rightfully be
theirs (Weber, 2004, p. 4)

Weber’s luck ran out a year later. In 1918 he was dead of Spanish flu at the age
of 53, my age today.
I see now what Weber saw then. But when, exactly, did I see it? When did
I learn that I might be tolerated, but would never advance? When did I know
not only not to smile, but that I would not forgive myself if I did? When did
I learn to tape my conversations with superiors? When did I understand
that each email, however trivial, was a piece of evidence in a case not yet
assembled against me? When did I learn that I was a means to others’ ends?
When, come to think of it, did I even read that Weber essay in the first
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place? Was it the cause of my knowledge, or its effect?

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Q UIT 123

I search for some watershed between the two selves, ante-quit and post-
quit, AQ and PQ. The PQ self sits here now, years later, worrying these words.
That self knows. But how exactly did the other self meet its end?
No matter. We make stories to forget, not remember. This one will do.

∵
I rise and walk over to the recycling station. I balance the empty tray (somehow
I have eaten the remaining pieces) atop a hillock of identical landfill-bound
receptacles, then start down the hallway back toward security. Eyes fixed on
the psychedelic purple carpet, I walk slowly, gingerly, testing each creaky floor-
board so as not to rouse the baby next door. That baby is a light sleeper. Worse,
he babbles. Once he gets going there is no putting him down.
The reptile—now he does not like children. He is old and cranky. He wants
his peace and quiet, and he wants my undivided attention. Will he follow me a
little way? Am I worth his time?
So far so good. I continue down the concourse, lazily contemplating the
variegated doughnuts and Brigham Young effigies. I wait for the front brain
to awake, the old fighting words to return. But the baby sleeps on. And then
I realize it is no accident. The reptile has done more than follow. It is there on
my back, black claws digging into my shoulders, long head pivoting slowly
back and forth. I feel the stored heat through my coat. It has me now. I stop
amid the current of travelers, look without seeing. My muscles go slack, my
frame goes heavy and—I float. Thanatosis they call this, tonic immobility. So
that’s it. I am playing dead, and the dead are done with words.
I let myself be swept down the hallway tributaries of Salt Lake City Inter-
national Airport, emerging just enough, at each successive terminus, to swim
back up again. An hour, maybe two has passed when I hear the muffled sylla-
bles of my name. Last call … Proceed immediately … Your baggage will be off-
loaded … I crawl onto the bank, stand up and enter a newspaper stand. Do not
exceed two capsules daily, the maximum strength sedative label admonishes.
I rip open the box, take six and bear my precious passenger toward the gate.

∵
Later, but not much later, you will run out of the house, down the steps and
into the spring night. You will not have a map. Before long you will remember
your empty pockets and bad shoes. Not too late to turn around, but you will
continue, each step another sunk cost. One mile, two miles past grey houses
and gravid rhododendrons. Three miles and you will feel the land slope on your
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124 O LES

breath. You will see the mountains, giant black waves frozen mid-crest, and
press on, upward, the way choosing you. At no place in particular you will stop,
turn, look. The city is a distant yellow galaxy at your feet. You stand there in the
rain and blackness, waiting.
So this will be your life now. You will work for universities again, but never
again will you be not quit. That fall, you will understand, is absolute. The road
back (you will know because you will try to find it) is washed out, gone.
A knowing means (you will know because you will try to do it) cannot bend
itself back into an unknowing end.
Well, what on earth kind of life will that be, you ask. A life exposed and
raw, certainly. A life more resigned and remote, probably. Some will say, a life
poisoned by cynicism and darkness. But also, you will come to learn, a life less
fearful. A life more fierce, more truly your own. A life—here now is another,
much bigger word—more free.
The moment of change is nothing special. You will not see it coming. One
day, like Bartleby, like me, you will simply withdraw behind the screen, to your
privacy, and remain there. The event is not heroic or grandiose. You cannot give
it a name. It is just what happens when the reptile, long mute, finally demands
to speak. It is just what happens when you see—in some airport, stuck in traf-
fic, almost too late—you are a means, not an end. It is just what happens when
you cut your losses and walk away from the table. It is what happens, what will
happen, when you quit.

References

Melville, H. (1997). Bartleby the scrivener: A story of Wall Street. Simon & Schuster.
Weber, M. (2004). Science as a vocation. In M. Weber, The vocation lectures (D.
Owen & T. B. Strong, Eds.; R. Livingstone, Trans.). Hackett. (Original work
published 1917)

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 CHAPTER 23

Diving Deeper
The Redemptive Power of Metaphor

Helen Sword

When the higher education research and development center that I had nur-
tured and led for seven years was quietly taken behind the barn and shot in the
head (figuratively speaking), I felt disempowered, grief-stricken and angry. The
whole operation was performed in such a secretive, cynical way—apparently
designed by senior management to avert criticism rather than to ensure insti-
tution-wide consultation—that whatever faith I had once held in my univer-
sity’s self-declared values of inclusiveness, fairness and research-led inquiry
was left battered and broken at the scene of the crime, along with some of
my center’s most cherished initiatives, not to mention the careers of several
valued colleagues.
Unable to avert this abuse of institutional power (although goodness knows
I tried!), I decided to focus on changing what I could control: my own
emo- tional response to the event. Harnessing the power of language to
shape real- ity, I turned to metaphor to help me restore and restory my
personal narrative. I started by interrogating the shot-behind-the-barn
metaphor that I had been using to frame that narrative, posing a series of
questions adapted from a rubric that I had developed as part of an earlier
research project on the emo- tional habits of academic writers from
across the disciplines:1

1. Domain Does my metaphor invoke the natural world, the world of

human experience, or both?
Key principle: DEEPER metaphors typically invoke both nature
and culture.

2. Emphasis Does my metaphor emphasize the event itself, the unfolding of

the event, or both?
Key principle: DEEPER metaphors typically encompass both process and
product.

3. Emotion Does my metaphor convey positive emotions about the event,

negative emotions, or both?
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126 Sw ORD

Key principle: DEEPER metaphors typically emphasize the positive

aspects of an event while also acknowledging its negative side.

4. People Am I present in my metaphor? Are other people part of my story?

Key principle: DEEPER metaphors typically include both the subject and
the subject’s social networks in the narrative.

5. Empowerment Am I an active, engaged protagonist who faces challenges

and is open to learning new skills, or does the metaphor depict me a pow-
erless pawn caught up in someone else’s game? (Do I control the story, or
does the story control me?)
Key principle: DEEPER metaphors typically grant personal agency to the
subject while also acknowledging the influence of powers beyond their
control.

6. Resonance Does the metaphor have personal resonance—that is, does it

speak to me in some meaningful way? Does it have universal resonance—
that is, does it speak to others?
Key principle: DEEPER metaphors are personally relevant to the subject
while also speaking to a wider audience.

These questions are intended not as “either/or” alternatives but as “both/

and” prompts leading to the development of what I call “DEEPER metaphors.”
The “taken behind the barn and shot” metaphor, I quickly realized, fails the
DEEPER test on almost every count. For example, it focuses on a fait accompli
rather than a process of becoming; it presents a narrative of helplessness in
which my colleagues and I feature as a passive victims rather than as human
beings possessed of agency, spirit and heart; and it allows no space for positive
transformation or intellectual growth.
DEEPER metaphors are capacious and complex, embracing not only the
positive aspects of human existence but also what educator Parker J. Palmer
(2007) calls the “shadow side,” the sharp edge that leads us to change and grow.
Diving DEEPER into the emotional wreckage of my own experience—a seabed
strewn with sadness and shame—I eventually rose to the surface with a new
metaphor, recasting my shot-behind-the-barn narrative as an intrepid ocean
voyage instead:

The seagoing waka

Seven years before the big wave hit, twenty intrepid voyagers set sail in
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a seagoing waka, a large double-hulled canoe designed to traverse vast

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D IVING D EEPER 127

distances and explore unknown territories. As their navigator and ran-

gatira (leader), it was my job to set the course, read the star signs and
inspire my loyal crew to pull the oars, trim the sails and keep us on an even
keel. Together we rode the ocean currents and caught the tradewinds;
together we sailed past whirlpools and through tempests; from time to
time we forged alliances with other adventurers, lashing our vessel to
theirs to share stories and trade provisions. When at last our beloved
waka went down, swamped by a tsumani too massive for us to weather,
the bonds that we had forged during our seven-year adventure helped us
all make it safely to shore, the weakest among us buoyed up by the stron-
gest. Some of my shipmates went off to crew on other boats; some built
new lives working the land; a few ended up marooned on the rocks, too
exhausted and dispirited to pick up the pieces of their shattered careers
and start anew. As for me, I climbed to the top of a hill and built a light-
house there, a beacon of hope for weary travelers in need of a safe harbor
as they traverse those same perilous seas.

My new metaphor helped me to shift the focus of my story from institutional

violence to human agency and to paint an emotional landscape tinged with
darkness yet suffused by light. However, when I subjected the metaphor to the
twelve questions from the DEEPER rubric, I uncovered two central weaknesses.
Firstly, my ocean voyage metaphor lacks personal relevance or resonance; I
have never even sailed on, much less captained, a seagoing waka and have no
direct affiliation with the Polynesian cultures (Māori, Tongan and Samoan)
from which I have appropriated some of the metaphor’s most compelling fea-
tures: the seagoing waka; the lashing of the canoes, the art of star navigation.
Secondly, in my eagerness to reclaim agency and empowerment for myself and
my crew, I have allowed the metaphor to go overboard (so to speak) in its
repre- sentation of administrative decision-makers as an unstoppable force of
nature. We were not in fact struck down by a natural disaster such as a tidal
wave or a tempest; rather, our vessel was deliberately sabotaged by senior
managers in an act that resembled the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior (the
Greenpeace ship infamously limpet-bombed by French government agents in
New Zealand to prevent its crew from protesting nuclear testing in the South
Pacific), rather than that of, say, the Edmund Fitzgerald (the Lake Superior
freighter that sank with all hands aboard after reportedly being swamped
by a rogue wave).
While neither of these shortcomings would, on its own, necessarily have
forced me to scupper my waka metaphor, together they contributed to a nag-
ging feeling that the sea voyage trope wasn’t quite working. Reluctantly I aban-
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doned ship and cast about for a redemptive metaphor with greater personal
resonance and a darker edge. Eventually I settled on the art of mosaic-making,

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128 Sw ORD

a metaphor that I have frequently used to describe my writing practice and

now broadened to include academic leadership as well:

The mosaic path

I love collecting objects that have been discarded or passed over by

others—stained glass offcuts, chipped crockery, river stones, seashells—
and assembling them into new works of art, creating unexpected juxta-
positions of color and form. When the intricate mosaic walkway that
I had spent seven years designing and grouting into place was bulldozed
by autocratic university administrators and replaced with a straight and
narrow footpath, I understood their motivation: my joyfully meandering
pathway was too non-conformist, its colors too rich, its energy too
vibrant, to suit their dehumanizing neoliberal agenda. But a mosaic,
having been created from fragments, can be reassembled in new
configurations even after having been blown apart. I now spend my days
on a beautiful South Pacific island laying out another crazy paving, this
one even more colorful and playful than the last. This time, however, the
pathway runs through my own property rather than the university’s;
never again will I risk hav- ing my life and art consigned to a dumpster
by philistine landlords.

The mosaic metaphor helped me recognize my former academic leadership

role—indeed, my entire scholarly career—as a creative practice that, like
all art-making, is richly fulfilling but fraught with risk. At the same time, the
DEEPER rubric prompted me to pose some hard questions thrown up by the
metaphor: for example, what does it mean to be a scholar whose creative ener-
gies feed on the smashing of icons? As a leader, do I treat those I lead as mere
tesserae in my mosaic, to be manipulated and glued into place? My metaphor
becomes even more powerful and emotionally nuanced when I cast light into
those shadows, reaffirming my commitment to what academic activist Kath-
leen Fitzpatrick (2019) calls “generous thinking” and celebrating my colleagues’
roles as co-creators of a pathway that we designed and built together. Like me,
they are now picking up the scattered pieces and laying out new mosaics of
their own. In the years to come, I expect that our paths will intersect in unan-
ticipated ways, linked by a shared history and ethos.
I do not mean to suggest here that metaphorical language can always pave
over pain, nor that beleaguered academics should respond to all administra-
tive abuses of power as I have done in this instance, by retreating to an island
(literally as well figuratively) and giving up on institutional activism. My deci-
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sion to start my own business as an international writing consultant, building

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D IVING D EEPER 129

new pathways into writing for scholars around the world, has come towards
the end of a long career spent fighting in the university trenches for causes
such as gender equity, cultural inclusiveness and student-centered teaching.
If I were ten years younger, a different set of metaphors might have inspired
me to gird my loins emotionally and return to the fray. (Rest assured, however,
that I would not have persisted with the military trope for long; its shadow
side is too dark to dwell in, even if academic life does sometimes feel like a
war zone.) Either way, redemptive metaphors have helped me find my way for-
ward. Indeed, the very process of writing this essay has accelerated my trans-
formation from a self-perceived victim of circumstance to a maker and shaper
who has taken my future into my own hands. By diving DEEPER into metaphor,
I have salvaged my sense of personal agency, affirmed my creative resilience
and emerged from a fetid swamp of negative emotions into clearer air.

Note

1 Adapted from an exercise in Sword (2019).

References

Fitzpatrick, K. (2019). Generous thinking: A radical approach to saving the university.

Johns Hopkins University Press.
Palmer, P. J. (2007). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life
(10th anniversary ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Sword, H. (2019). Snowflakes, splinters and cobblestones: Metaphors for writing. In
S. Farquhar & E. Fitzpatrick (Eds.), Narrative and metaphor: Innovative
methodologies and practice (pp. 39–55). Springer.

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 EPILOGUE

The Privilege of Writing One’s Story and Reading

Those of Others

Ingela Nilsson

It is 2021 and we are preparing this volume for submission and peer review.
In a museum shop I see a notebook, on the cover it says: “If you don’t write
your story, who will?” I like this, I buy a whole bunch and hand them out to my
friends.
I read a new book by Elif Shafak, How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division
(2020). She argues that if you cannot tell your own story, you will not be willing
to listen to the stories of others. This suits both my personal view and my aca-
demic interests, so I talk a lot about this book, plan for an essay or a blog post
about the transformative power of stories to bring people together.
I take part in a seminar on minority narratives and my colleague, a histo-
rian specializing in the Armenian minority of Turkey, points out that stories—
despite their potential for consolidation and understanding, also risk creating
or sustaining conflicts and make violence on the one whose story is not heard
or understood. This statement is unsettling in its simplicity. I repeat to myself
what has by now become almost a mantra: if I don’t tell my story, then some-
one else may. But is it really that easy?
Critical storytelling has received increasing attention in recent years and
even formed a new field of studies—with this series as an important platform
for publication. In the wake of classical and postclassical narratology, storytell-
ing has come to play a significant role in several academic fields, not the least
in Psychology and Conflict Studies. A basic assumption for most of these stud-
ies is that narration is a human constant, or that “the act of constructing stories
is a natural human process” (Pennebaker & Seagal, 1999, p. 1243). In that sense,
the position of Roland Barthes, one of the foundational fathers of narratology,
is still formative for the field: narrative is seen as “international, transhistorical,
transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself” (Barthes, 1977, p. 79).1 A central
implication, then, is that to understand how stories function is a way to under-
stand human beings. For someone like me, a literary historian who has been
working on narratological angles of both fictional and factual texts for some
twenty years, this is obviously a crucial assumption.

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T HE P RIVILEGE of W RITING O NE ’ S S TOR y AND R EADING T HOSE of O THERS 131

At the same time, the increasingly common cue to “control your narra-
tive”—a kind of self-help exhortation to “craft the life you want for yourself”
(Riley, 2017)—gives the impression that each individual story is “true,” as long
as it is personal and sincerely narrated as a kind of “serious storytelling” (Lug-
mayr et al., 2016). But it goes without saying that if each individual has their
own story and their own version of any given event, these stories are bound
to clash with each other. This is indeed what is happening at this point in
time, on both micro and macro levels of society: from the presentation of “my
story” on individual Instagram accounts to recurring major narratives of Male
and Female, East and West, Christianity and Islam. In such a situation, is the
encouragement to craft and tell our own story even helpful?
The contributions in this volume are responses to such an encouragement:
please share your story of academia with us, of harassment, abuse, of unfair
treatment, so that we may feel less alone in our daily struggle. Share not only
your anger and disappointment, but also your experience and strategies—
help us find ways to make things better. And do that in any form you want, as
long as it is candid. Unless you have skipped the previous chapters and went
straight for the epilogues, you have just read the results of this request. It is
a collection of tales and experiences as diverse as the individuals behind
them, yet sadly consistent.
If classical narratology focuses primarily on structure and order, storytelling
is rather about the social, cultural and political activity of telling and sharing
stories. It takes us back to where Barthes started: as human beings we need sto-
ries not only for entertainment and comfort, but also for our shared memories,
for stating moral values, for education and cultural preservation. Critical story-
telling takes us one step further in the direction of the individual: its aim is to
find alternative perspectives, to question previously unquestioned narratives
and norms, to expose oppression and envision possibilities for change.2 In that
sense, it wishes to avoid metanarratives and reach for minority angles. Such a
definition makes me think of Svetlana Alexievich as a critical storyteller par
excellence, relentlessly telling the stories of the unheard. The fact that she was
awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize shows how not only important but also appreci-
ated such perspectives are: “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffer-
ing and courage in our time.”3
Ironically, Alexievich was nominated by a committee consisting of Swedish
Academy members tacitly accepting the kind of gender-based abusive prac-
tices that would cause an international scandal a couple of years later; this is a
good example of how hypocrisy is present on all levels of society, including its
most sacred intellectual circles.4 But regardless of those events, the polyphony

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underlined in the press release of the Academy is essential, not only in Alexiev-
ich’s writings, but also in critical storytelling in general: individual voices may
not easily be heard, but the function of polyphony is infinitely useful. First,
it shows that the individual story is unique and not like any other; second, it
demonstrates that all these individual stories have several similarities despite
their differences; and third, it offers comfort and support to an endless num-
ber of individuals thanks to the above. Polyphony, moreover, demands of the
reader or listener a critical stance, since many voices offer no unanimous mes-
sage. They demand critical reflection, which in turn encourages the investiga-
tion of possibilities for change (Morley, 2014).
The stories collected here all bear witness to such theoretical processes, even
if representations such as poems, drawings and fragments are presented with-
out footnotes or academic references. As editors we have also had the privilege
of following the benefits of the writing process itself—our own, of course, but
also that of our contributors. Many of them have underlined the painful and
yet liberating experience of “writing their story,” and here the narratological
perspective needs to be brought back in: this is not just a question of “being
heard,” but also about finding the right form and structure for your narrative.
Because it is the construction of a sequence of events, argue psychologists, that
helps us deal with emotional distress:

Once an experience has structure and meaning, it would follow that the
emotional effects of that experience are more manageable. Constructing
stories facilitates a sense of resolution, which results in less rumination
and eventually allows disturbing experiences to subside gradually from
conscious thought. Painful events that are not structured into a narrative
format may contribute to the continued experience of negative thoughts
and feelings. (Pennebaker & Seagal, 1999, p. 1243)

So forming a story about life experiences improves mental health, something

that has marked psychotherapy since Freud. This is related to the sense of
meaning that a narrative sequence creates; in the words of Hannah Arendt,
“the story reveals the meaning of what would otherwise remain an intolerable
sequence of events” (Arendt, 1979, p. xx; Wilkinson, 2014). This is how myths
and folktales play such a central role in most cultures, by offering models of
interpretation for life experiences: stories offer good or bad examples of behav-
ior and in this way helps socialization, from antiquity onwards (Ingemark &
Asplund Ingemark, 2021, esp. p. 151). As society changes, or stories travel from
one culture to another, the narratives inevitably change too, offering new mod-
els of understanding life.
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T HE P RIVILEGE of W RITING O NE ’ S S TOR y AND R EADING T HOSE of O THERS 133

Storytelling thus remains at the very heart of who we are and how we under-
stand ourselves, but a problem (among many) is that our own story can only
be seen and constructed in hindsight. As noted by feminist philosopher Adri-
ana Cavarero, “Life cannot be lived like a story, because the story always comes
afterwards, it results; it is unforeseeable and uncontrollable, just like life.” (Cava-
rero, 2000, p. 3). This reveals the problem with the notion of “control your life-
story” projected in social media and by self-help guides, noted above, because it
means that one tries to impose order where there is none (yet). Indeed, another
kind of story that is common in our time—conspiracy narratives—function
in a very similar way: they transform senseless events or “facts” into more or
less well-ordered accounts (Butter, 2021). Somehow we need to find a way to
deal with the constant friction between our own story—the construction and
telling of which can lead to our well-being—and the overarching narratives of
a global world, in which many of us feel lost and alienated.
Critical storytelling is an important tool here, employed in many forms and
for multiple purposes, from “the slippery slopes of silencing” of women (Solnit,
2014, pp. 4–8) and the #MeToo movement to the “common story” of minori-
ties and refugees (e.g. Nguyen, 2018). And despite the perhaps overly critical
comments above—which, I think, have to be part of Critical Storytelling—I do
think that we have to follow Shafak’s cue and start by telling our own story, in
order to be willing to listen to those of others:

If wanting to be heard is one side of the coin, the other side is being will-
ing to listen. The two are inextricably connected. When convinced that no
one—especially those in places of power and privilege—is really paying
attention to our protests and demands we will be less inclined to listen to
others, particularly to people whose views differ from ours. […] if perpet-
uated and made routine, the feeling of being systematically unheard will
slowly, gradually, seal our ears, and then seal our hearts. (Shafak, 2020, p. 15)

This may seem like a simple and even naïve observation, but it takes us back to
my colleague’s caution about the violent potential of stories. Indeed, narratives
not only benefit mutual understanding, they also “constitute crucial means of
generating, sustaining, mediating, and representing conflict at all levels of social
organization” (Briggs, 1996, p. 3; my emphasis). When Jean François Lyotard
in his famous book La condition postmoderne (1979) described Postmodernism
as “incredulity toward metanarratives” and urged a focus on local stories
rather than grand narratives, he initiated a new way of thinking about
competing stories as fractured narration. This was later applied in
postcolonial theory to the way in which both imperial narrative and indigenous
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134 N ILSSON

part of the conflict: the stories that conflicting groups tell themselves and each
other are, in practice, the ideological fuel of either strife or reconciliation. So
if we believe in storytelling as a method in both academic and social contexts,
we need to be willing to acknowledge also those qualities and potential abuses
of narration, finding a critical balance between the singular/individual and the
plural/collective in both representation and analysis.
In a recent and somewhat unexpected publication by Princeton University
Press—a graphic novel on political violence in Turkey in the 1970s—social
anthropologist Jenny White has chosen this particular media in order to reflect
the kaleidoscopic or fractured nature of the stories she came across in her
interviews:

Why a graphic novel? When doing the interviews, I had no specific agenda
and allowed myself to be surprised by people’s stories and motivations.
People’s memories of the time were vivid and often they seemed to relive
their experiences in the telling. It occurred to me that academic analysis
flattened these stories as it folded them into discussions of abstract issues,
like factionalism. Perhaps I could make the same points by allowing peo-
ple to tell their stories in graphic form and thereby retain the nuances and
contradictions of history as it is lived. (White & Gündüz, 2021, p. 9)

The result is a vivid and truly polyphonic narrative: personal and emotional,
yet educational and critical.
White’s emphasis on nuances and contradictions must be taken into
account not only for history, but for human expression at large. Stories clearly
possess more power than is often acknowledged and they should therefore be
taken seriously, not just as a means of expressing one’s own identity, emotions
and aspirations, but also—or perhaps above all—as a way of understanding
others in relation to ourselves. In a world currently disposed towards group-
think and filter bubbles, we need to heed not only those who are systematically
unheard, but also those who want to be heard for all the wrong reasons. If we
do not accept the kaleidoscope that include accounts we do not like or agree
with, we cannot expect tolerance and solidarity from others.
Critical storytelling must accordingly include self-examination and accep-
tance. When we narrate our experiences, as we have done in this volume, we
should challenge both ourselves and our readers. This act of sharing stories
should not be merely about feeling better for having presented our version of
events, but also about accepting different perspectives even in shared experi-
ences. We must be willing to listen also to those we see as perpetrators, pro-
vided that they would be willing to listen to us. There is no point in creating
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T HE P RIVILEGE of W RITING O NE ’ S S TOR y AND R EADING T HOSE of O THERS 135

or sustaining conflicts through storytelling, only in using it for expanding our

cognitive horizons and engaging in a process of mutual learning about each
other and ourselves.
Let us be honest: academia has not exactly taken a lead in this respect, but
it is never too late for change. It has already been thirty years since Thomas E.
Barone urged his readers to employ the method of story sharing in educational
contexts in order “to make palpable and comprehensible the pain and cruelty
of isolation inflicted on people” (students, teachers and administrators). He
wanted us to use our “privileges to tell stories that enable readers to locate the
sources of that pain.” That is what we—the voices in this volume—have now
done: we have used our privilege to tell stories, now it is up to you, our readers,
to read them with a critical gaze and then tell yours.

Acknowledgement

The writing of this chapter has been undertaken within the frame of the
research program Retracing Connections (https://retracingconnections.org/),
financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (M19-0430:1).

Notes

1 The assumption of universalism has been rejected by postclassical feminist narratology,

arguing that it was “founded on an androcentric bias” (Page, 2006, p. 4). Beyond that aca-
demic field, it seems that narrative as a human constant remains rather unchallenged, but
see also below on narrative as inevitably polyphonic and fractured.
2 This is how the Critical Storytelling series is defined at https://brill.com/view/serial/CSTO
and how it is defined in several prefaces to previous volumes, esp. Braniger and Jacoby (2019,
pp. xv–xvI ); for the confusing claim that they have coined the term, see however Barone
(1992), also cited below.
3 For the press release in different languages, see
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/ literaturE/2015/PRess-release/
4 One of the best accounts of these events remains Voss Gustafsson (2019), translated
into several languages but sadly enough not into English; see
https://ahlanderagency.com/ books/the-club-a-chronicle-of-power-and-abuse-at-
the-heart-of-the-nobel-scandal/

References

Barone, T. E. (1992). Beyond theory and method: A case of critical storytelling.

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Theory into Practice, 31(2), 142–146.

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Barthes, R. (1977). Introduction to the structural analysis of narrative. In Image,

music, text (Essays selected and translated by S. Heath) (pp. 79–124). Fontana
Press.
Braniger, C. J., & Jacoby, K. M. (Eds.). (2019). Critical storytelling in millennial
times: Undergraduates share their stories of struggle. Brill.
Briggs, C. (Ed.). (1996). Disorderly discourse: Narrative, conflict, and social
inequality.
Oxford University Press.
Butter, M. (2021). Conspiracy theories—Conspiracy narratives. DIEGESIS.
Interdisciplinary E-Journal for Narrative Research/InterdisZIPLinäres E-Journal für
ERZählforschung, 10(1), 97–100. https://www.diegesis.uni-wuppertal.de/index.php/
diegesis/article/doWNLOAD/415/601
Cavarero, A. (2000). Relating narratives: Storytelling and selfhood. (Translated and
with an Introduction by P. A. Kottman). Routledge. (Original work published
1997).
Ingemark, D., & Asplund Ingemark, C. (2021). Socialization: Fairytales as vehicles
of moral messages. In D. Felton (Ed.), A cultural history of fairy tales in antiquity
(pp. 149–168). Bloomsbury Academic.
Lugmayr, A., et al. (2016). Serious storytelling—A first definition and review. Multimedia
Tools and Applications, 76(14), 15707–15733.
Morley, C. (2014). Using critical reflection to research possibilities for change. British
Journal for Social Work, 44(6), 1419–1435.
Nguyen, V. T. (Ed.). (2018). The displaced: Refugee writers on refugee lives. Abrams
Press. Page, R. E. (2006). Literary and linguistic approaches to feminist narratology.
Palgrave
Macmillan.
Pennebaker, J. W., & Seagal, J. D. (1999). Forming a story: The health benefits of
narra- tive. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55(10), 1243–1254.
Riley, M. (2017). Control your narrative. https://medium.com/the-
ascent/control- your-narrative-D55602295DD7
Shafak, E. (2020). How to stay sane in an age of division. Profile Books.
Solnit, R. (2014). Men explain things to me. Haymarket Books.
Voss Gustafsson, M. (2019). Klubben. En undersökning. Albert Bonniers förlag.
White, J., & Gündüz, E. (2021). Turkish kaleidoscope: Fractured lives in a time of violence.
Princeton University Press.
Wilkinson, L. R. (2004). Hannah Arendt on Isak Dinesen: Between storytelling and
the- ory. Comparative Literature, 56(1), 77–98.

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 EPILOGUE

Gathering Voices for a Better Academic Workplace

Julie Hansen

Academic life, then, is a wild venture.

M AX W EBER (“Wissenschaft als Beruf,” 1917/2008, p. 30)

∵
What conclusions can be drawn from the stories in this book? Are they just a
handful of exceptional cases, or the tip of an iceberg? It is difficult to general-
ize about the academic workplace. The opening dictum in Leo Tolstoy’s novel
Anna Karenina—each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way—arguably
holds true for university departments, too. Happy departments are charac-
terized by transparency, constructive leadership and what organizational
researchers call “psychological safety.” Amy C. Edmondson (2019) defines psy-
chological safety as

a climate in which people are comfortable expressing and being them-

selves. […] they feel comfortable sharing concerns and mistakes without
fear of embarrassment or retribution. They are confident that they can
speak up and won’t be humiliated, ignored, or blamed. […] They tend to
trust and respect their colleagues. (“Introduction,” e-book, n.p.)

By contrast, the symptoms of unhappy departments can be hard to diagnose

and even harder to treat. If, as David Damrosch (1995) posits, “the modern uni-
versity is built upon alienation and aggression” (p. 78), then those of us who
inhabit it risk becoming blind to these qualities. After all, stereotypes of aca-
demia encourage us to tolerate divergent behavior. As Darla Twale and Barbara
De Luca (2008) observe, “College faculty have been characterized as quirky,
eccentric, and absent-minded. Unexpected behaviors are considered normal
to the insider in addition to being thought simply odd to any outsider” (p.
101).1 Reputation-conscious university administrations have been known to go
to great lengths to cover up power abuse. Academics, for their part, are often
poorly equipped to recognize it when it occurs.

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138 H ANSEN

Fortunately, academics seeking to better understand the psychosocial dynam-

ics of their profession will now find a growing body of scholarship devoted to
work environment issues in higher education. Other sectors were the focus
of the earliest research on adult bullying that came out of Scandinavia in the
1990s, but since the turn of the millennium, behavioral scientists in Australia,
Europe and North America have begun to focus more on academia.2 A number
of recent studies indicate that academic work environments are particularly
susceptible to bullying, harassment and power abuse.3 As Kenneth Westhues
(2004) notes, “a university is a complex maze of overlapping rules, purposes,
positions, committees, and codes,” and thus the mechanisms of power abuse
are also complex (p. v I ). Twale and De Luca (2008) observe that the “unique
organization structure of the university supports an equally unique academic
culture,” which in turn provides “a breeding ground for incivility, bullying, and
mobbing” (p. 93). Loraleigh Keashly and Joel H. Neuman (2010) maintain that
“the academic environment has a number of organizational and work features
that increase the likelihood of hostile interpersonal behaviors” (p. 49).
As the stories in this book show, power abuse looks different from different
positions in the academic hierarchy (see Chapter 10 by Hanna McGinnis, Ana C.
Núñez and Anonymous 4 for a discussion of this point). Culture-specific dimen-
sions can be discerned within this global problem, as the anonymous author of
Chapter 17 shows. Power abuse can also play out differently in different educa-
tional, economic and political systems, with harsher instruments of abuse occur-
ring in authoritarian regimes. Nevertheless, organizational psychologists and
sociologists have identified a number of factors associated with power abuse in
academia. These include (but are not limited to) low job security, institutional
structures, organizational culture and a disconnect between academics’ own ide-
als of their profession, on the one hand, and real working conditions, on the other.

1 Peculiarities of the Academic Workplace

Already in 1917, the German sociologist and political economist Max Weber
devoted a lecture entitled “Wissenschaft als Beruf” to a consideration of fac-
tors that influence scholarly careers.4 One of these is sheer luck. Whether an
academic achieves promotion is, according to Weber, “a matter of pure chance.”
This observation is worth quoting at length:

Of course, chance is not the only factor, but it is an unusually powerful

factor. I can think of almost no other career on earth in which it has such
a large part to play. I am especially well placed to say this, as I personally
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owe it to a few instances of sheer chance that at a very early age I was

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G ATHERING V OICES FOR A B ETTER A CADEMIC W ORKPLA ce 139

appointed to a full professorship in a discipline in which at that time my

contemporaries had undoubtedly achieved more than I had. And I feel that
this experience has given me a keener awareness of the undeserved fate of
those many others whom chance has treated unkindly and still does, and
who despite all their ability failed to reach the position they merited as a
result of this mechanism of selection. (Weber, 1917/2008, p. 28)

A century later, journalist Sarah Jaffe argues that in contemporary American aca-
demia, “the distinction between tenure track and adjunct track is an accident of
timing” (2021, p. 163). Those lucky to be hired into a tenure-track position must
cope with years of pressure to impress the senior colleagues who will ultimately
decide whether tenure is granted (for more on this, see the chapters by Antony
T. Smith and Ken Robertson). Those hired as adjuncts on part-time or short-
term contracts comprise a growing “untenured underclass” lacking job security
and decent working conditions (Fleming, 2021, p. 94; Jaffe, 2021, pp. 161–181).
This situation has been exacerbated by academia’s adoption of neoliberal
principles. New public management (examined in the chapters by Cecilia
Mörner and Wim Verbaal) has been implemented differently in different
places, but everywhere, academics report increased workloads and chronic
stress, as well as subjection to what is termed “corrosive” or “destructive lead-
ership” (Thornton, 2004; Einarsen et al., 2007).5 Many point out a fundamental
incompatibility of the mission of higher education with neoliberal tendencies,
such as quantification, commodification and commercialization (Davies, 2005;
Fleming, 2021). Francesca Coin (2017) observes that in the wake of neoliber-
alized academia, “scholars have felt a growing conflict between their ethical
ideals and the array of measured, meaningless and bureaucratized tasks that
fill their lives” (p. 707). Neoliberal audit culture and top-heavy management
clash with established traditions of collegial self-governance in academia
(Jaffe, 2021, pp. 161–181). “Fear is now the go-to technique for motivating faculty
and staff,” concludes Peter Fleming. “Managers choose this method since it’s
far easier to issue orders fait accompli via email than talk with colleagues and
build a consensus” (Fleming, 2021, p. 4). Bronwyn Davies (2005) asks, “What
then can we say that academic work is? Within neoliberal regimes we can no
longer say it is the life of the intellect and of the imagination” (p. 1).6 All this
serves to create “conditions that incite incivility, workplace bullying, and other
forms of employee abuse” (Zabrodska et al., 2011).
Jaffe discerns a downward trajectory in the conditions of academic work
that is pushing more and more of the professoriate into the security-lacking
precariat, depriving them at the same time of power and putting them at
greater risk of exploitation.7 Jaffe describes “precarious academics” (along with
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artists, musicians, writers and athletes) as “workers who are expected to find

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140 H ANSEN

the work itself rewarding, as a place to express their own unique selves, their
particular genius. In these jobs, we’re likely to be told that we should be grate-
ful to be able to work in the field at all, as there are hundreds of people who
wish they had the opportunity to do jobs half as cool” (2021, p. 20).
Of course, work won’t love you back, as noted in the apt title of Jaffe’s recent
book-length critique of this “labor-of-love ethic” (2021). The belief in a calling
is a double-edged sword for academics, to whom it accords “a sense of purpose,
meaning and satisfaction” (Barcan, 2018, p. 106), yet also renders them vulner-
able to burnout and exploitation (Jaffe, 2021, pp. 161–181; Malesic, 2022).8
Aca- demic culture encourages self-exploitation “as a meritorious form of
conduct” (Coin, 2017, p. 711), manifest on the individual level in feelings of
inadequacy and failure, as well as the belief that the solution lies in working
ever harder and longer.9 In this way, academics are poorly served by their
own devotion to their work. “The constant mis-match between
organizational strain and per- sonal values,” notes Coin, “produce[s] burn-
out and ethical conflicts particu- larly in those individuals who perceive
academic labor as a passion or a labor of love” (2017, pp. 712–713). Many
academics identify closely with their chosen profession, which means their
sense of self can be on the line when things go wrong with the work
environment. “Rather than a labor of love, academic labor sometimes
appears an abusive relationship, an exploitative system char- acterized by high
expectations and uncertain prospects” (Coin, 2017, p. 713). In this respect, the
view of academics taken by the burgeoning field of Critical University
Studies—i.e. an unembellished understanding of them as workers performing
labor—provides a necessary corrective to the prevalent (and often self-
destructive) devotionalist approach.
The above factors—job precarity, neoliberal transformations and academ-
ics’ high ideals of their own profession (the list is not exhaustive)—all increase
the risk of power abuse. They also contribute to a culture of fear, shame and
silence, which indirectly support power abuse by serving to isolate and alien-
ate academics from one another, making it easier for department chairs, deans
and other administrators to divide and conquer faculty.10 As Damrosch writes,
“Alienation breeds a defensive aggressiveness; this aggression in turn magni-
fies the alienation, and the whole unhappy cycle begins again” (1995, p. 96).
The question is how to break this cycle.

2 Where Do We Go from Here?

Although not all the stories in this book can be said to have happy endings, they
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illustrate various constructive responses to power abuse in academia. While
some of the authors have chosen to leave academia, others remain within its

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G ATHERING V OICES FOR A B ETTER A CADEMIC W ORKPLA ce 141

walls (at least for the time being). It is a testament to the deep investment of
academics’ identity in their profession that a decision to quit is often met with
surprise and even disbelief on the part of colleagues. This kind of investment
can make it hard to imagine alternatives to the status quo, rendering “the idea
of leaving voluntarily inconceivable” (Barcan, 2018, p. 115).
Yet more and more academics who feel their working conditions to be
untenable are taking this leap—at least if we are to judge from the new genre
dubbed “quit lit.” These stories, told in blogs and columns of publications
such as The Chronicle of Higher Education, “transform the act of quitting into
a political process whereby the subject abdicates its competitive rationality to
embrace a fundamental loyalty to different values and principles” (Coin, 2017,
p. 707).11 If it is true, as Fleming suggests, that “everything about us that isn’t
quantifiable is now desperately searching for a way out,” then an exodus is per-
haps to be expected (2021, p. 81). Ruth Barcan sees “a grave risk that rather than
merely fighting for survival in the academy, more and more people will choose
to thrive outside it” (2017, n.p.).
Quit lit thus raises issues of crucial relevance for the future of academia
and—not least of all—the well-being of academics. As Barcan argues in Aca-
demic Life and Labour in the New University: Hope and Other Choices (2013):

The serious questions raised by academics about how healthy, viable and
prosperous a life a prospective academic might have within a university
are […] grave interrogations of the intellectual and personal sustainability
of a mass system organized around exploitative labour, whether that be
the precarious labour of the ever-increasing casual staff or the overwork
of the diminishing tenured staff. Such questions concern us doubly—as
they bear on both the individual welfare of thousands of workers and the
higher education system’s capacity to systematically, impartially and care-
fully generate knowledge into the future. (p. 217)

By publicly voicing discontent with the status quo, the authors of quit lit lay
down a “stepping stone in a collective discourse that ought to transform an
inner conflict into a political alternative” (Coin, 2017, p. 708). Collective is the
operative word here, because no matter what solutions we may find for our-
selves at the individual level, lasting change at the institutional level requires
collective action.
It is indicative of a culture of silence that the salutary effects of quit lit are
achieved only after individual academics have made an exit. Thus far, there has
been less discussion of work environment problems from within universities
(a kind of ‘stay lit,’ if you will), but this, too, is a conversation that we as a pro-
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fession need to have.

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142 H ANSEN

3 Solidarity as an Antidote

Academic workers are “remarkably lousy at translating their frustration into

a sustained movement,” as Fleming laments (2021, p. 9). Yet recent years have
seen examples of successful collective action by academic workers in the
United States and the United Kingdom. Some of these have taken a page from
the playbooks of other professions. “The university’s culture of individualism
[…] mitigated against academics’ collective action for a while,” explains Jaffe,
“but as the conditions of academic workers began more and more to resemble
those of those other workers, academic workers began to reach for the tool of
the working class: labor unions” (2021, p. 173).
A good example of the crucial role of collegial solidarity in the face of
power abuse is found in a Swedish television documentary from 2021 about
whistleblowers whose employers had retaliated against them. Train driver Ola
Brunnström was threatened with termination after criticizing, in his role as
union representative, the company for which he worked. We see him entering
the meeting at which his future hangs in the balance, cheered on by co-workers
protesting his firing by threatening to strike. Their message was heard by those
in power, and Brunnström kept his job. “It’s an emotional roller-coaster to be
fired one day and have your job saved by your colleagues the next,” he says in
the documentary. “This show of solidarity also rescued me personally, my psy-
che and well-being. If you are alone and try to fight a battle without back-up,
things can end badly. But sometimes you feel that you simply must fight”
(Sveriges Television, 2021).12
Academic workers would do well to heed the wisdom of Ola Brunnström.
Abuse of power in academia can be counteracted if we confront it collectively.
“If we are even partly responsible for creating institutional dynamics,” as Parker
J. Palmer argues, “we possess some degree of power to alter them” (2017, p. 206).
It does not always have to be the same old story. By working to overcome the
divisive effects of the individualistic, ego-driven and hyper-competitive aca-
demic workplace, by forming coalitions and community, we can build a kinder
and more sustainable work environment. For the creation of such a movement,
giving voice to our experiences in stories like these is just the first step.

Notes

1 Damrosch (1995) also notes the normalization of deviant behavior within academia:
“The sociologists who discuss behavioral patterns among academics speak quite directly
about the unusual—or even deviant—nature of the contemporary academic personality.
Thus, Michael Cohen and James March describe academic modes of decisionmaking as
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G ATHERING V OICES FOR A B ETTER A CADEMIC W ORKPLA ce 143
‘pathological’; but this is not a criticism, for they simply see such pathologies as the norms
of an abnormal world […] Seeking an analogy to campus patterns of interaction, another
sociologist refers matter-of-factly to prisons” (p. 105). Damrosch concludes: “We should not
remain content with a state of affairs that leads sociologists to compare universities as a
matter of course to prisons and mental asylums” (p. 107).
2 The phenomenon of workplace bullying was first studied by the Swedish psychologist Heinz
Leymann (1992). For recent research on workplace bullying, see Einarsen et al. (2020), which
defines it in the following way:

Bullying at work means harassing, offending, socially excluding someone or negatively

affecting someone’s work. In order for the label bullying (or mobbing) to be applied to
a particular activity, interaction or process it has to occur repeatedly and regularly […]
and over a period of time […]. Bullying is an escalating process in the course of which
the person confronted may end up in an inferior position becoming the target of sys-
tematic negative social acts. A conflict cannot be called bullying if the incident is an
isolated event or if two parties of approximately equal “strength” are in conflict. (p. 26)

3 For statistics on the prevalence of bullying in higher education, see Keashley and Neuman
(2010); Zabrodska and Kveton (2013).
4 Translated into English as “Science as a Vocation.” I cite here Gordon C. Wells’ translation.
5 Einarsen et al. (2007) identify three categories of destructive leadership: tyrannical, derailed
and supportive–disloyal. The first two are associated with abusive behavior toward subordi-
nates, while the third shows concern about “the welfare of subordinates while violating the
legitimate interest of the organization” (p. 213).
6 Davies (2005) summarizes the effects of neoliberalism in the following way: “a move from
social conscience and responsibility towards an individualism in which the individual is cut
loose from the social; from morality to moralistic audit-driven surveillance; from critique to
mindless criticism in terms of rules and regulations combined with individual vulnerability
to those new rules and regulations, which in turn press towards conformity to the group”
(p. 12).
7 For a definition of the precariat, see Standing (2011). Jaffe writes:

Increasing enrollment has not come along with increased full-time staffing, and sal-
aries have stagnated as class sizes have increased. While European universities still
offer more security than many US institutions, the situation of part-time faculty in
the Americas […] is a bellwether for the rest of the world. By 1999, an estimated one-
fifth to one-half of European countries’ academic staff were “nonpermanent.” In the
United States between 1975 and 2003, according to the AAUP, “full-time tenured and
tenure-track faculty members fell from 57 percent of the nation’s teaching staffs to 35
percent, with an actual loss of some two thousand tenured positions.” (2021, p. 171)

8 Jonathan Malesic (2022) defines burnout as “the experience of being pulled between expec-
tation and reality at work” (p. 12). His own experience as a tenured professor prompted him
to write the book entitled The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better
Lives.
9 On the topic of academic imposter syndrome, see the chapter “Feeling Like a Fraud: Or, the
Upside of Knowing You Can Never Be Good Enough” in Barcan (2013). Chapter 10 in the
current book, by McGinnis, Núñez and Anonymous 4, touches on imposter syndrome and
academia’s “expectation of unfaltering passion.”
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10 On the role of shame in power abuse, see Lewis 2004. On the risks associated with a
culture of silence in the workplace, see Edmondson (2019).
11 For a study of quitting as a response to workplace bullying, see Lutgen-Sandvik (2006).
12 My own translation of the Swedish transcript, which is available here:
https://www.svt.se/ nyheter/granskning/ug/ug-referens-hall-kaften-och-lyd

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