What academic freedom means to me

Recently, Dr. Crazy posted on "Why I teach what I teach," which got picked up as a meme and became a discussion not only on commitment to teaching in one's discipline, but also a commitment to academic freedom. I got tagged to participate by Jennifer over at Mixed Race America (one of my favorite blogs), but I declined. As someone in administration and on the job market as we speak, I feel disinclined to name my discipline. As my regular readers know, mine is a professional field, relatively small (which is how my job seeking news got around nationally), and not so full of outspoken lesbians that I would not be quickly identified. That reality makes it challenging to respond to the meme.

That said, I realized, upon reading some of the responses, that I could discuss the academic freedom issues without naming my discipline. Honestly, my concerns around academic freedom stem less from my discipline and more from my personal identity as a lesbian and my research on LGBT issues.

I realized quite early in my teaching career that nondiscrimination statements that were bland and vague (ie., we won't discriminate against anyone for X characteristic) were fairly useless and not all that reassuring. What I wanted was protection in the classroom when I mentioned LGBT issues, or related a story from my own life that just happened to be about my relationship or my partner, or showed a film that used pro- or anti-LGBT organizing tactics as an example, or talked about my own research with LGBT people. Was that speech protected? I could certainly prove that the examples were educationally sound and appropriate, but would my chair, my Dean, the faculty senate, or the Provost get my back if students complained?

Over the years, I have had a small number of students complain about my "agenda." This term usually applied to my commitment to multicultural competency in educating my professional students, my discussion of oppression and discrimination, and my consistent questioning of issues of privilege. (These topics are actually accepted parts of the curriculum and the disciplinary expectations.) Usually, the complaining students had some other reasons for being frustrated with me--hard grading, challenging questions or critiques, etc. But the students found a way to get back on evaluations, comments to other instructors and administrators, and in word-of-mouth to peers focusing on who I am and what I do in the classroom.

I want a university nondiscrimination policy that explicitly discusses the right for all professors to use their judgment in the classroom, including the use of examples from our own experiences. I have only seen one policy like that, a departmental policy from a friend in a social science department. This policy actually named race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation as factors that should not impede an instructor from using personal stories or examples to illustrate a concept or clarify an idea. While I have always felt (implicitly) that this was the case in my own departments, I remember wishing my departments had adopted a similar policy. I have not seen an explicit policy of that sort on a larger (university or college) scale.

Further, most of the basic nondiscrimination policies on university campuses often do not discuss the protection and equal valuation of a professor's research area. My biggest fear in doing LGBT-related research was that I would not get tenure. Tenure committees are made up of faculty who reflect the same biases the institution does: valuing money-making research over other research, mainstream research over "alternative" research, and ultimately politically safe research over potentially embarassing research. They want mainstream journals and mainstream publishers. This reality presents a special challenge for those of us who do research on oppressed populations and/or in marginalized subject areas. I wasn't the only one who was worried about my research being considered acceptable because of its focus--tenure committee members, friends, and department directors also voiced their concern and suggested that I change my focus. Luckily, I applied for and recieved tenure at a school that was in a more LGBT-accepting community context (a progressive college town in the Midwest); had I still been in the more conservative South, I wonder what my chances would have been.

True academic freedom would value all research and teaching that contributes to knowledge and understanding or, in my professional field, better practice. That stand is what is laid out in the 1940 American Association of University Professors (AAUP) statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure and the 1970 Interpretive Comments. Yet, faculty are not provided with this statement upon entering the profession, nor are the tenure committee members provided this statement along with their charge. The untenured professors I know have never read about academic freedom and don't really understand the concept. If we are to take academic freedom seriously, we better educate our doctoral students, our faculty, our administrators, our advisory board members (and in public schools, our Boards of Regents) about these writings and the standards on academic freedom. Perhaps a resurgence of AAUP chapters** across the US would give us an opportunity to begin (or continue) this educational process?

Academic freedom informs everything I do: the decisions I make about the direction of courses, the texts and articles I use, the activities I require from students, the examples I invoke to explain concepts, and yes, the research I conduct and publish. Were it not for the guarantee of academic freedom, my life would be worse, as would the lives of my colleagues and students. I hope we can remember to enforce and value this freedom... before it is erodes. Perhaps we should offer that as one aspect of the new "college rating system" that is being pushed from the federal level? How does your school rate on enforcing and supporting academic freedom? Wouldn't that be a wonderful measuring stick?

**Note: In the interest of full disclosure, I am currently working on a project with the national AAUP, though one unrelated to academic freedom, but I am not currently a member. Having seen their important role, however, I may decide to join after this project is completed.

Democrats lose

This Democratic debate in South Carolina is a debacle. Next comes arm wrestling. Ugh.

http://www.americablog.com/2008/01/who-won-tonights-debate.html

The return of the Lesboprof

Well, the visit to Wooing School has come and gone, and it seems everyone and their mother knows about my interviewing there. I even heard from a friend--who works at a far away school where I know no one but her--that she was informed by a colleague that he knew about my interview. Once again, the smallness of my discipline emerges!

Quick upon my arrival back in my current college town, I was confronted by colleagues who wanted to know about the trip. How was it? Did I hate it? Did they hate me?

Looking back, I felt like the campus visit went fairly well. I didn't embarrass myself, which was my main worry, and I enjoyed my conversations with the faculty and the administration.

Now it is a wait-and-see game. If I get an offer, then I have decisions to make. Right now, I basically have to go back to work.

I promise to return to the land of the blogging... as soon as I get my class prepped for this week!

Reviving aphorisms as New Year's resolutions

That rough, old aphorism, "Never shit where you eat," doesn't seem to be followed very closely by academics.

We are known to go stomping into the Dean's office and rail about whatever grievous decision is vexing us at the moment. We write hateful notes to our colleagues, accusing them of high-handed skullduggery, and we exhibit cliquish tendencies that exclude peers we dislike. We act dismissive and thoughtless as we deal with support staff. We sometimes publicly embarrass students or blow off entire classes to suit our own (self-important) agendas.

The number of academics, especially men but some very well-published women, who sleep with staff members, grad students, or undergrads is consistently surprising to me. And it is rarely the case that the profs met the person in question in a bar. No, usually the first meeting happens in the professor's classroom or when the staff member was hired by the professor. Some academics are careful to wait until the grades are in before the first "date" (read: sex) occurs with a student, but many are not. While I would agree that not all of these relationships constitute "harassment," the problem is that the possibility almost always exists for this to occur in these relationships, even when the professor in question does not have that intention.

Perhaps these behaviors explain why the public sees professors as arrogant, elitist, and lacking common sense--because many of us fit the caricature.

I am sure Dean Dad will use this as another invitation to attack tenure... After all, if we didn't have an unreasonable sense of unending job security, we might be more careful in our actions. And if the Dean we yell at has to grin and bear it, rather than firing us, what impetus do we have to behave better? I am not sure abolishing tenure would rectify these issues, as the cultural identities of being a professor, an academic, and a scholar go far beyond the tenure issue.

We academic types like to think we are different from other workers, but the truth is, we could learn a lot from the 9-5 work world. Look around at the staff in your department...Staff members remember one another's birthdays, they ask about each other's children and families. They learn the rules of the systems of which they are a part, and they understand their role in the organization. They expect regular evaluation and feedback. Most important, they remember that maintaining positive relationships can greatly impact their success and happiness in the workplace.

Faculty members should take away a few of these ideas. We should learn the personnel policies of our employer and follow them, or work to change them when they are problematic. Our students are not consumers (ick), but their learning is one of the indicators on which we will be judged. We need to function within the organization, seeing ourselves as part of the system, part of something larger than ourselves. Along with staff and administrators, we establish the tone and culture of the department, just as we develop the curriculum. We should consider all of these part of our role as faculty.

So, when you are making your New Year's resolutions, perhaps you might consider reviving this old aphorism and making your department a better place to be. I'll do my part.

Oh, PU-Leeze!

You ever read something and just think... "Gimme a break! I mean, who ARE you?"

That was my reaction to reading Timothy Lukes' piece for the Chronicle Review. For those of you without the password, here is my somewhat biased synopsis. Lukes will not put a rainbow sticker on his door because it would compromise his politics and his desire to educate his LGBT students.

He has two primary points: First, he rejects the politics of identity and will not capitulate with any effort, however well-intentioned, that countenances such a politics. Identity politics obscures difference and posits only similarity related to one shared characteristic, offering a simplistic political understanding and ethos. He writes:

What I oppose, therefore, is not the safety of gay students, but the feeling of safety experienced by all students when they encounter the interest paradigm. A "safe space" sticker promotes a sense of comfort probably unintended by its promoters. It advertises the person displaying it as someone predisposed to a popular agenda, rather than an instigator of unusual, even unsafe, considerations.

So, identity-related stickers are out! Lukes is cool--he is an instigator.

Second, and his larger point, is that he believes that education is about unsettling students, making them feel unsafe and open to the larger truths and possibilities. We should not be about the business of worrying about issues of survival; ours is a higher calling, focused on issues of beauty and truth. A scholar of Marcuse, who teaches a course on politics and aesthetics, Lukes wants to talk about what matters--or what matters to him. He notes:

Thus by displaying the sticker, I would be betraying my gay students, not assisting them. I would be exempting them from the disorienting but essential epiphany that neither they, nor I, can be certain of their full identity. It would also preclude our sharing those beautiful exchanges of the fanciful and transcendental. Safety is a much more complex issue in a classroom than it is in a motor vehicle, and the best classes are those in which seat belts are occasionally unbuckled.

So if a student, gay or straight, craves a safe and secure recapitulation and celebration of popular identity taxonomy, my office is not the place to visit.

Thus, a "safe space" is stifling to creativity and real learning, and promotes a focus on the wrong issues.

These arguments are the kind of crap that makes my gf shake her head and denounce the uselessness of academics. Honestly, that is pretty much my own reaction as well.

I kept thinking what a noble and easy life has this tenured, white?, male, heterosexual?, full professor... I mean, he doesn't have to think about the gay male student:

1. who is just discovering his sexuality during his first six months away from home;

2. who isn't sure how to ask a guy out on a date, or even really where to meet or how to identify a gay guy;

3. whose roommate is filing a complaint because the student disclosed that he is gay, it "freaks" the roommate out, and he wants the student to move out;

4. whose parents are asking why he doesn't have a girlfriend;

5. whose religious upbringing teaches him that his desires are sinful and that to embrace his sexuality, he must discard any other notion of religious or spiritual connection or his sense of being a good person.

Being gay isn't all this student is, but it is certainly a part of him. Often, sexual orientation and gender expression become more important during people's teens and early twenties. And as LGBT students become more interested and aware of their sexual and gender orientations, they are made more aware, often at great pain and expense, of the ways in which society rejects and punishes LGBT people. Many studies of LGBT students have found a gross overrepresentation of these students among those who drop out of school, attempt suicide, and adopt unhealthy behaviors.

But, because Lukes is more concerned with his pursuit of beauty and light, he will demand that the hypothetical gay male student described above stop worrying about his damn sexuality and focus on real issues. And Lukes will forego any outward sign that he might be a good person to speak with this student. And perhaps, in the long run, he isn't. But what if Lukes is a good person, a good mentor, who is comfortable with LGBT people and can provide a friendly, accepting space for the student while they discuss and debate political philosophy?!

The "safe space" stickers do not signify the same thing as rainbow stickers worn by queers (and allies) around the world. (I would also argue that the meanings of the rainbow stickers also vary depending on time, location, and the people sporting them!) Instead, the safe space programs recognize that the benighted "real" world of fear, intimidation, and exclusion extends into the university, and LGBT students encounter these forces frequently. These students need very intentional signs of welcome, and that is all the stickers provide. Offering welcome and freedom from critique based solely on one's actual or percieved sexual orientation or gender expression is not antithetical to teaching in my book; actually, the creation of safe space allows the students to engage more fully and critically with materials, ideas, and differences, and to hear more challenging feedback from faculty.

Further, Lukes fails to recognize the many ways he already demonstrates who he is. What books sit on his shelves? What posters, comics, and postcards line his walls and cover his doors? Which books and articles has he written? Which courses does he teach? How about the ring on his finger, or the family picture on his desk? What groups does be advise? What is one more sticker, added to all that? One that says, "I am comfortable with diversity based on sexual orientation and gender expression. I am knowledgeable about issues people in these groups face, and I am not going to discriminate against you here based on these identity characteristics." What better invitation can an LGBT student get to engage in the process of higher learning?

As Angry Black Bitch might say...

Blink. Shudder.

Walk away grumbling.

Snow! YAY!

A lovely video of snow in the backyard.... the first snow of the real season for us. You can't really see it as well as I can, but it gives you a flavor. And it is still falling as I post!

I planned to work today, but it feels like a "snow day," so I have since decided to send out some holiday cards and sit by the fire with the gf.

Hope everyone has a great day!

Happy happy, joy joy

Oh, yeah, baby! This is what I would call a good time of year. Time to CELEBRATE!




Candidate interviews are done, class sessions are completed, and the holidays are around the corner. Even better, my side won recent departmental policy votes, and I have disclosed to departmental friends about the upcoming interview at Wooing School (WS). I feel unburdened, but I am still not sure what will happen with WS. I like my current program so much, I will have a lot to consider if I get the offer.

But all of that is to come later. Right now, I can be happy with my accomplishments and see the light at the end of the tunnel, which leads out of town for the holidays!