I feel so overworked and so under-appreciated (not to mention underpaid) at the university these days, that I tend to see the humanities professor – particularly a non-researching one, such as myself – as a low-level bureaucrat. We go to endless meetings, and as an occasional treat, we get to “entertain the kids” a bit like a clown at a birthday party. I don’t feel respected very much either. My students think I’m a weird older person (which is certainly true), and my colleagues think I’m a loser scholar who is now messing around with poetry and fiction, instead of doing what she’ is supposed to do (research) and really ACHIEVING something in THE WORLD OF IDEAS (sometimes, I think they are right).
Because life is hard in the academy, and it is really hard in the University of California system, and it is REALLY REALLY hard at the poor campuses (Riverside and Merced), it’s easy to forget that professors possess considerable privilege, and if they are white, upper class, heterosexual, able, and CIS (I just learned that term from my daughter [thanks to a wonderful former student for the spelling correction]), then they -- which means we -- have all of that privilege on top of the professor thing.
When you are a professor you convey mastery, genius, knowledge, expertise, and a certain scary something that means you are the authority (pronounced a la Eric Cartman) in the room. No one (other than a tycoon or another professor [especially in the sciences]) is going to fuck with you. It’s a little bit like male privilege, frankly, in so far as you get to swing your Lacanian knowledge phallus around the joint, or threaten to. And the threat is enough, generally, to create a certain awed hush, a reverent expectation, whenever you open your mouth to make a cultural pronouncement.
Folks, that’s power.
The fact of my own privilege was brought home to me last night, when I joined a table of high-school teachers and community college teachers all gathered to celebrate a mutual friend’s book publication. These teachers were all bright, attractive, younger, middle class and white.
And you know what? I scared them.
I scared them because they had learned already that I was OF THE UNIVERSITY. They were quiet. Until, I used the word ”bitch” and promised someone to guard his or her drink. Then the situation shifted.
Professors are rightfully busy and proactive in protecting their rights, fighting against tuition fee raises, and trying to battle for thinking in the increasingly commodified university. BUT, we usually forget and dismiss our sibs, our partners in arms, our -- in a very real sense – comrades in k-12, and in community colleges. Teachers regard academics as the enemy, because we often are the enemy. Or at best, we are semi-interested liege lords presiding over the lands supervised and tilled by our vassals and our vassals’ vassals.
I think we need to name the ways in which we are privileged, and begin the uncomfortable and necessary process of stepping away from that privilege, rolling it up into a box marked “HISTORY”, and moving on from it. So that we in education can all help each other, as well as model some actually progressive behavior for our students. So we can get some real intellectual work done.
Steph: just a minor correction, it's "CIS." For example, most people of my gender identify as CIS Male, but I'm more of a Cis-sy male. :)8. But more importantly, I find just a wee bit odd that you would not be taken seriously by your peers. Many colleagues of yours under whom I've studied hold you in high regard as far as I've heard. Just because your, for lack of a better term, discourse on life has taken the shape of fiction and poetry instead of academic jargon, does not make you any less a conveyor of culture. One of my grander aspirations is to model my own life in a way after you (minus the jewishness, heterosexuality and womanhood. You are frightening, yes, never forget it, and you do have privilege, never forget it. But you have inadvertently used such privileges to benefit others by being yourself and enriching others with that knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThanks bowtieguy! Spelling corrected. Remember, that junior faculty have to treat me well, because I vote on all their cases, and as the "Senior Female Faculty Who Gives a Damn," I am a valued ally. Senior faculty also have to at least be polite, because at this point, I vote on them too. So there is a large amount of politicking to privilege involved in all this "good feeling." The situation with students is a different power-relation, and there I think -- and hope -- the work I do has value. I have certainly enjoyed knowing and working with you at the university! You have inspired me as well, with your incredible wit, fashion sense, and literary joy. thank you!
ReplyDeletePssst, Steph: sometimes you scare me too, and I don't scare easy. It's all that book larnin' I know I will never achieve.
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, as bowtieguy said, you are a model of what an academic should be. I know plenty of profs who hide behind a low wall of knowledge they've managed to construct during their careers. I hate to use this analogy, knowing your political leanings, but you're kind of like Reagan, daring them to "tear down this wall" and engage the world at large on terms we can all comprehend.