It’s safe to say that the funding and employment prospects for researchers in Australia are poor.
When I first drafted this piece, I wanted to say that the prospects were ‘challenging’, then realised that this is the way we have come to talk about—and cloak—the many stark inequities in our system. The circumstances are not challenging in the sense of being a series of personal adversities that must be overcome.
The perfect storm of scarce career pathways, highly metricised researcher valuation, and diminishing funds for research mean that early career researchers work in an area that is broken in many ways. There are options—good, bad, and often precarious. The challenges are systemic and institutional, with pressure brought to bear on the individual as a consequence.
This is not new knowledge—many have written about this situation and its consequences for our national research workforce. With few career pathways, many are leaving the country, or research, and Australia’s research capacity will diminish. The personal costs of investing in, then having to leave, academia can be very significant, materially and emotionally.
The truth
What I want to focus on here is why we still lie about many of these aspects to early career researchers and PhD researchers. Maybe lie is too strong a word? Perhaps it’s a case of not telling the whole truth.
I recently chaired a panel that talked about the early career researcher’s career context and Australia’s research terrain. What came from the speakers and through the ensuing discussions was the harshness of the choices many researchers face when they’re trying to establish their independent academic track records, publishing, gaining funding, and finding job security.
Being able to share tales of the contradictory, unsustainable, and overly bureaucratised aspects of being a contemporary early career researcher also means being able to give voice to strategies for negotiating these issues. The combination of openly shared peer experiences from across institutions, and insight from more senior academics who were willing to take on thorny, negative topics, was strangely exciting. The vibe was energetic and engaged.
The whole truth
What this demonstrated to me yet again was the pointlessness of putting up a veneer about the state of the academic careers. There are many well-meaning but ultimately wrong-headed assurances given to early career researchers explaining that the situation’s not great but that they’ll be OK.
Avoiding discussion around these issues because you don’t want to depress your colleagues is doing them a disservice. Early career researchers are subject to high performance pressures while they’re undertaking the significant work of establishing their research publication and funding pipelines.
Nothing but the truth
While no one needs to hear endless tales of woe for the sake of it, being able to speak honestly about the stresses and prospects of academic life, and the ways that one might negotiate or agitate against aspects of it, are increasingly necessary. This is even more the case if our research and institutional leaders fail to do so.
One major example of the avoidance of honest talk in academia is the unfortunately very common instance of fixed-term or sessional staff not having clarity around their status when their contract is up.
Academics can think they are doing their contract colleagues a favour by keeping happy faces on about their prospects of future employment with the school or department. They are not. If there is no work, find a compassionate way to tell your colleague there is no work, or discuss possible other avenues for them if the work doesn’t come through. Having been a fixed-term researcher for much of my academic career, there was nothing worse than people telling me there’ll be something lined up for me, then nothing materialising. Don’t give false assurances. They help no one.
Three ways to start making things better
Here are three things that I think are most useful for early career researchers in our current climate:
1. Honest reasons why things haven’t happened
Why did an internal grant application fail? Why didn’t they get that role? What happened to the contract extension? Fobbing disappointed people off is what usually happens, but what is more useful is for colleagues to let the researcher in question know what went wrong. It could be something they need to improve, or it could just be the vagaries of the system. Whatever it is, it’s always better to know than not.
2. Finding and creating non-institutional ways to gather
While institutions want to keep their fabulous researchers, they also have their own priorities (and the same is true down to the level of heads of schools or research directors). These priorities may run counter to a researcher’s best interests. It’s extremely valuable to find a relatively neutral space where scholars can feel safe voicing their concerns and receiving advice that’s not tempered by the priorities of key performance indicators for senior personnel or their organisation. Scholarly associations and societies have a big part to play in this.
3. Getting together to establish an institutional voice
Early career researchers’ forums can take various forms and operate at varying levels of institutional endorsement and resourcing. Networking is excellent for internal peer-to-peer connections, which are so important and often overlooked in the rush for external collaborations and partnerships. It can only be a good thing to have a group that can represent early career researchers’ concerns and advocate for changes at higher levels within the university.
So, the truth about academic employment and research funding may be hard and unpleasant to hear but the situation is what it is—for now. The more informed, and activated, early career researchers are by what they’re dealing with, and where potential change can happen, the better it is for them and for academia.
Honest conversations about what is happening, and what can’t happen, need to occur across all levels: among peers, within faculties and colleges, with senior research executives, and in national higher education debates.
Let’s not pretend that things will work out for the best, when we know that things in Australian research have only worsened over recent years.
Can we work together to improve the situation? Of course, we can. But not until we can tell the truth about it among ourselves and within our institutions.
I’ve been a bit quiet on this blog recently because I’ve started the creative work of my analysis chapter.
For the first couple of weeks I was stumped at how to “do” the creative work. It’s different to the data. My data is a historical narrative of presidential leadership in Venezuela. The process of writing it has been one of investigation and a fairly straightforward recount of past events. I became used to that style of writing as I’ve been working on the data since 2013.
Yet, as those who have completed an analysis chapter know, the approach is different.
HOW DO WE “DO” CREATIVE WORK IN ACADEMIA?
For me, the chapter requires a creative synthesis of literature, events, policies, decisions, and speeches to generate my original contribution. While I have kept track of my ideas for the analysis chapter throughout my program and I have been looking forward to reaching this stage of the PhD, I was not quite ready for the change the analysis would bring.
This is not to say that I haven’t done any creative work until this point, however the stakes feel higher, and I realised that I had no clear or consistent strategies for encouraging my creative side.
And, I also have to admit, despite having a pretty good relationship with my PhD gremlins these days, I was not prepared for the intimidation I felt at the prospect of finally doing the creative work. These gremlins said to me that I was not cut out for the creative work. That, despite the years of working with my data and my literature, I would not be able to produce an adequate original contribution.
In an attempt to combat my gremlins, I paid a visit to our trusty old friend Google. I searched for resources that dealt with creativity and dissertation writing. And I came up with pretty much nothing. The one blog post I did find was by the Thesis Whisperer on starting work on the discussion chapter. It contained some good, practical tips on generating ideas. However, I was looking for something else to help me get the creative juices flowing.
CREATIVE STRATEGIES
To an extent, gaining an understanding of the strategies that best draw out your creative side is an individual journey. Strategies that work for someone else may not work for you, and vice versa. However, the advice and reflections from a book called “The Art of Slow Writing: Reflections on Time, Craft, and Creativity” by Louise DeSalvo have been helpful to me. I really enjoyed this book. Though its writing tips are predominantly targeted at novelists, it was not a difficult feat to apply them to academic writing.
The first strategy I adopted was a mindset change. I gave myself permission to take the time tonot produce work. In other words, I gave myself space to think and to dream. This is hard when you feel the pressure of deadlines, but creativity needs space. Moreover, I think we too often get stuck in this idea that the only work of value is the kind that produces words on a page. The cult of busyness in academiais one that is well documented, and it is hard to fight those gremlins sitting on your shoulder, whispering, “dreaming is not real work”.
In actual fact, however, it is important work for research.
Dreaming is creativity, and it is essential for the analysis chapter of the PhD and broader academic work.
To nourish and draw out my creativity to assist my “dreaming”, I use the following strategies, adapted from DeSalvo’s advice:
Go for a walk in nature. Don’t listen to music or podcasts – go unplugged, so to speak. Feel the space around you, and let your thoughts gently drift over your data and literature. Don’t hurry; instead enjoy the opportunity to dream and think.
Keep a process journal. This is a journal that serves as “an invaluable record of our work patterns and feelings about our work, our responses to ourselves as writers, and our strategies for dealing with difficulties and challenges” (p.70). According to DeSalvo (p.220), John Steinbeck was a big fan of the process journal, recording his daily concerns and tasks in it so that when he was writing he could solely focus on the creative work. It was crucial to his creative process and enabled the development of his ideas.
Understand my “rhythms”. This means both knowing and accepting how and when I work best. For a long time, I tried to fit myself into a mould of how I thought the ideal PhD student would work. I held a belief that I should work consistently and productively from 9am-5pm every weekday, no matter what was going on in my life. If I had part-time work, I tried to force myself to make up for lost time on weekends. However, that rigid work structure only induced stress and anxiety in me, to the point that I’d often find myself paralysed. One day, I came across a workshop on YouTube by Associate Professor Alexis Shotwell called “Suffering Free Academic Writing” and it fundamentally changed how I approached the PhD. I encourage all of you going through the same thing to check the workshop out.
One other strategy I use, not included in DeSalvo’s book, but which I’ve somehow developed/adapted for myself, is akin to self-reflection/self-conversation:
Written conversations with myself. I open a new document on my computer or grab a notebook and pose a question to myself when I am feeling stuck. Often, this first question will ask, “What do I want to say?” My response inevitably leads me down a rabbit-hole of simple questions and answers that allow me to get to the heart of my idea without the pressure of formally writing it in my chapter. I guess, in a way, it’s a form of free writing. I give myself the time to explore and answer the questions I generate, however, unlike the traditional free writing approach. I slow down the process, as Professors Maggie Berb and Barbara Seeber have argued in their book “The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy”.
This whole experience with attempting to generate creativity as I write my analysis chapter has made me realise that there is not much training for PhD students in “doing” creative academic work. In my own experience, there has been no training or resources provided.
I believe this is an untapped area of growth for universities and PhD programs, but what do you think? And what do you do to encourage your creativity in your own research?
Two years ago a South Australian select committee was formed to inquire into the educational experiences of students with disabilities. The committee’s remit was to determine what was working well, and what still needed improving. The final report has now been released, complete with 93 recommendations. While some recommendations were expected, others were surprising, and revealed a need for greater transparency from schools.
How schools responded to challenging behaviours was seen as a considerable concern. The report noted that students with disabilities were over-represented in both suspensions and exclusions.
‘Cage-like’ facilities
Segregation of students with disabilities was described as a “nuanced phenomenon”, occurring in playgrounds, classrooms, and individual lessons. Some students missed literacy programs with peers in order to be removed for remedial tasks. Others had been left alone for long periods in order for teachers to avoid behavioural confrontations.
Disability units within schools were described by parents as appearing “cage-like”, and even similar to correctional facilities.
Although teachers suggested fencing needed to become more “aesthetically pleasing”, fences and gates were nevertheless positioned as necessary spatial solutions to safety issues. One primary school noted:
Our enclosed areas were created with our student’s safety in mind. We do have several students that are at risk of running away and our school does not have secure boundaries. The safety of our students is paramount and we therefore made the decision to enclose the unit.
Such responses can make behavioural issues worse
Growing concerns of aversive approaches to behaviour, such as restraint and suspension, are evident.
Although suspension is actually detrimental to students, it is often justified, within policy, as being beneficial.
The select committee’s report illustrated that suspension policies were not always used as intended - as a last resort, following a full examination of what occurred. The Guardian of the Office for Children and Young People expressed concern:
The education department does have a policy for children in care that suspensions and exclusions are used only as a last resort. We don’t believe that that is the case. There is certainly evidence in individual situations where suspension and exclusion has been the first response.
It’s recommended that educational authorities engage better with their stakeholders in order to understand the ramifications of suspension, and to develop better approaches.
When parents are contacted and asked to collect their child from school, clarification is required as to whether this is being used as a method of “informal suspension”.
Number of suspensions very high
Although the South Australian public system outlined a “dramatic fall across the board” in relation to suspensions and exclusions, this was not supported by recently released data.
Suspensions remain very high, with almost 1,000 students suspended on more than one occasion within a school term in South Australia.
Increased segregation has been positioned as a potential solution, which contrasts with a recommendation put forward by the select committee, suggesting schools adopt positive behaviour approaches, such as Positive Behaviour Interventions and Supports (PBIS).
Another recommendation from the report was for systems to better audit schools’ practices in order to determine compliance and use of aversive behavioural approaches.
Information from audits would be shared externally in order to provide oversight. It has been recommended that the Equal Opportunity Commissioner (or Ombudsman) assume a role in evaluating parental complaints regarding educational access or participation.
A need for transparency was highlighted in discussions on Negotiated Education Reports (NEPs).
These planning documents are typically instrumental in supporting access, participation and student achievement. However, parents viewed them as “static” due to them not being sufficiently updated.
Schools appeared to be struggling to engage with families effectively, at times predetermining NEP outcomes for students rather than entering into genuine negotiation.
One submission highlighted concern that NEPs were used to initiate the removal of a students:
It’s sometimes documented in the NEP as if it’s an ongoing issue when it’s actually a one-off event. In each state we need to record all behaviour to justify current funding, but then this accumulative behaviour is used to justify why a child is no longer able to attend mainstream school.
It’s been recommended that parents should be able to check NEP progress online, rather than wait for formal meetings to occur with teachers.
Some recommendations echo those from last year’s Australian Senate Committee report into access to learning for students with disabilities. In particular, recommendation eight, which advocated for better data collection and publication in a wide range of areas, in order to better illustrate practices and performance of schools. And also recommendation ten, which called for an end to restrictive practices such as restraint in order to sharpen focus on preventative approaches.
Despite these registered concerns, the select committee report highlighted that good practices are indeed occurring in many South Australian schools. Examples were provided of principals who created welcoming environments, developed inclusive cultures, and strongly advocated for open enrolment policies.
However, much work still needs to be done by universities in preparing inclusive teachers, by educational authorities, and by schools.
At a time when Australia is increasingly segregating students with disabilities, it is critically important that good quality inclusive practice becomes normal business for schools.
Albert Einstein was a member of the AAUP from 1935 until his death in 1955. The following questions about academic freedom and political inquisitions were posed to Einstein in the 1950s, during the McCarthy era. They come from a document held in the Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center at the Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein’s American scholarly home, in Princeton, New Jersey. My gratitude to the Institute and to Professor Joan W. Scott for making the document available. The stunning contemporary relevance of Einstein’s responses will not, I’m sure, go unnoticed by readers of this blog.
Question 1: What is the essential nature of academic freedom and why is it necessary for the pursuit of truth?
Einstein: By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true. It is evident that any restriction of academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge among people and thereby impedes rational judgment and action.
Question 2: What threats to academic freedom do you see at this time?
Einstein: The threat to academic freedom in our time must be seen in the fact that, because of the alleged external danger to our country, freedom of teaching, mutual exchange of opinions and freedom of press and other media of communication are encroached upon or obstructed. This is done by creating a situation in which people feel their economic positions endangered. Consequently, more and more people avoid expressing their opinion freely, even in their private social life. This is a state of affairs which a democratic government cannot survive in the long run.
Question 3: What in your view are the particular responsibilities of a citizen at this time in the defense of our traditional freedoms as expressed in our Bill of Rights?
Einstein: The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure. Thus, a duty is imposed on everyone which no one must evade, notwithstanding risks and dangers for him and his family.
Question 4: What in your opinion are the special obligations of an intellectual in a democratic society?
Einstein: In principle, everybody is equally involved in defending the constitutional rights. The “intellectuals” in the widest sense of the word are, however, in a special position since they have, thanks to their special training, a particular strong influence on the formation of public opinion. This is the reason why those who are about to lead us toward an authoritarian government are particularly concerned with intimidating and muzzling that group. It is therefore, in the present situation, especially important for the intellectuals to do their duty. I see this duty in refusing to cooperate in any undertaking that violates the constitutional rights of the individual. This holds in particular for all inquisitions that are concerned with the private life and the political affiliations of the citizens. Whoever cooperates in such a case becomes an accessory to acts of violation or invalidation of the Constitution.
Question 5: What in your opinion is the best way to help the victims of political inquisitions?
Einstein: It is important for the defense of civil rights that assistance be given to the victims of this defense who in the above mentioned inquisitions have refused to testify, and beyond that to all those who through these inquisitions have suffered material loss in any way. In particular, it will be necessary to provide legal counsel and to find work for them. This requires money the collection and use of which should be put into the hands of a small organization under the supervision of persons known to be trustworthy. This organization should be in contact with all groups concerned with the preservation of civil rights. In this way, it should be possible to solve this important problem without setting up another expensive fund-raising machinery.
Every year, I try to do at least two things with my students at least once.
First, I make a point of addressing them as 'philosophers' - a bit cheesy, but hopefully it encourages active learning.
Secondly, I say something like this: “I’m sure you’ve heard the expression ‘everyone is entitled to their opinion.’ Perhaps you’ve even said it yourself, maybe to head off an argument or bring one to a close. Well, as soon as you walk into this room, it’s no longer true. You are not entitled to your opinion. You are only entitled to what you can argue for.”
A bit harsh? Perhaps, but philosophy teachers owe it to our students to teach them how to construct and defend an argument - and to recognize when a belief has become indefensible.
The problem with “I’m entitled to my opinion” is that, all too often, it’s used to shelter beliefs that should have been abandoned. It becomes shorthand for “I can say or think whatever I like” - and by extension, continuing to argue is somehow disrespectful. And this attitude feeds, I suggest, into the false equivalence between experts and non-experts that is an increasingly pernicious feature of our public discourse.
Firstly, what’s an opinion?
Plato distinguished between opinion or common belief (doxa) and certain knowledge, and that’s still a workable distinction today: unlike “1+1=2” or “there are no square circles,” an opinion has a degree of subjectivity and uncertainty to it. But “opinion” ranges from tastes or preferences, through views about questions that concern most people such as prudence or politics, to views grounded in technical expertise, such as legal or scientific opinions.
You can’t really argue about the first kind of opinion. I’d be silly to insist that you’re wrong to think strawberry ice cream is better than chocolate. The problem is that sometimes we implicitly seem to take opinions of the second and even the third sort to be unarguable in the way questions of taste are. Perhaps that’s one reason (no doubt there are others) why enthusiastic amateurs think they’re entitled to disagree with climate scientists and immunologists and have their views 'respected.'
Meryl Dorey is the leader of the Australian Vaccination Network, which despite the name is vehemently anti-vaccine. Ms. Dorey has no medical qualifications, but argues that if Bob Brown is allowed to comment on nuclear power despite not being a scientist, she should be allowed to comment on vaccines. But no-one assumes Dr. Brown is an authority on the physics of nuclear fission; his job is to comment on the policy responses to the science, not the science itself.
So what does it mean to be 'entitled' to an opinion?
If 'everyone’s entitled to their opinion' just means no-one has the right to stop people thinking and saying whatever they want, then the statement is true, but fairly trivial. No one can stop you saying that vaccines cause autism, no matter how many times that claim has been disproven. But if ‘entitled to an opinion’ means ‘entitled to have your views treated as serious candidates for the truth’ then it’s pretty clearly false. And this too is a distinction that tends to get blurred.
On Monday, the ABC’s Mediawatch program took WIN-TV Wollongong to task for running a story on a measles outbreak which included comment from - you guessed it - Meryl Dorey. In a response to a viewer complaint, WIN said that the story was “accurate, fair and balanced and presented the views of the medical practitioners and of the choice groups.” But this implies an equal right to be heard on a matter in which only one of the two parties has the relevant expertise. Again, if this was about policy responses to science, this would be reasonable. But the so-called “debate” here is about the science itself, and the “choice groups” simply don’t have a claim on air time if that’s where the disagreement is supposed to lie.
Mediawatch host Jonathan Holmes was considerably more blunt: “there’s evidence, and there’s bulldust,” and it’s not part of a reporter’s job to give bulldust equal time with serious expertise.
The response from anti-vaccination voices was predictable. On the Mediawatch site, Ms. Dorey accused the ABC of “openly calling for censorship of a scientific debate.” This response confuses not having your views taken seriously with not being allowed to hold or express those views at all – or to borrow a phrase from Andrew Brown, it “confuses losing an argument with losing the right to argue.” Again, two senses of 'entitlement' to an opinion are being conflated here.
So next time you hear someone declare they’re entitled to their opinion, ask them why they think that. Chances are, if nothing else, you’ll end up having a more enjoyable conversation that way.
I’ve heard it said on multiple occasions that a successful PhD candidate needs 10% intelligence and 90% persistence. Early on in my PhD, when I was in the grips of impostor syndrome, this little saying got me through.
If I could just be tenacious enough, dogged enough, persistent enough, that doctorate would be mine, even if I wasn’t the perfect student. While I’m not quite there yet, I’m hanging on pretty tightly and it’s within my sights.
PHD PERSISTENCE
What does persistence look like in the every day life of a PhD student? What does it actually mean to be persistent? Well, to me, persistence is resilience. And it is the key to slaying those gremlins.
Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of organising a workshop shop on resiliency for PhD students at my university campus. Facilitated by the postgraduate student counsellor, Dominique Kazan, the workshop opened with everyone sharing their worries about the PhD process.
It confirmed to me the need to encourage more sharing and discussion between PhD students about the doctoral process in order to reduce isolation, learn from each other, and find solutions together.
These worries, while too numerous to mention all of them, include that old, trusty goalpost of “being good enough” and meeting expectations, finishing on time, managing burn out, managing supervisors and personal relationships, having the patience to wait for findings/results, dealing with writers block and procrastination, and feeling alone in their worries.
BECOMING A RESILIENT RESEARCHER
A student can become a resilient researcher, however, by adopting a growth mindset. Such a mindset acknowledges that the student is a lifelong learner, and that every setback or challenge is an opportunity for improvement and further education. In building on this, the workshop dealt with the concept of internal and external locuses of control. When you have a strong internal locus of control, you acknowledge that all you can control is your perception of the event. For instance, the rejection of a paper can be viewed as opportunity to learn and improve rather than a rejection of the usefulness of the research (and therefore your time and ability to be a researcher).
I’m curious – do you see a setback in an experiment, the rejection of a paper, or the inability to meet a deadline, a condemnation of your ability to “do” the PhD, or do you see it as part of the process of learning? To me, the latter view is a much more mentally peaceful perspective to adopt, as it gives me the space to learn and grow as a researcher. In a way, such a mindset is a practice of self-compassion within the academic context.
Finally, instead of just focusing on all the worries of the PhD process, we also shared what we love about research and the PhD program, and it struck me that, just as many of the worries are universal, so is the love.
As PhD students in Australia, we appreciate the time and flexibility of the program to explore our research area and structure our hours so that it works for our personal lives. We appreciate the opportunity to deeply research a topic, to contribute to knowledge, to learn more about ourselves and how we work and want to contribute to our world. We have become more comfortable with uncertainty (a good sign of resilience), and we have developed emotionally to manage critique and expectations. These are all indicators that we are developing our “resilience muscle” as researchers.
It can take a lot of emotional energy to “persist” in a PhD program when we feel that we are alone in our thoughts of inadequacy. The key takeaway from this workshop, for me, is the need to facilitate peer mentoring to reduce isolation and learn resiliency from each other. In many ways, the PhD process is just as mentally and emotionally challenging as it is intellectually challenging (if not more), yet not enough is done to train PhD students to manage the emotional landscape of research and “persist”.
Resilience takes away the power of the gremlins, yet it’s a muscle that needs to be trained. I think this is an area where universities have a lot of potential for growth and improvement, and I look forward to taking part in this continuing conversation. What are your thoughts?
Last Friday in April, I was at a conference entitled Universities, neoliberalisation and (in)equalityat Goldsmiths, University of London. It was an one-day event featuring presentations and interventions from academics who work on understanding, and criticising, the transformation of working conditions in neoliberal academia. Besides sharing these concerns, attending such events is part of my research: I, in fact, study the critique of neoliberalism in UK higher education.
Why study critique, you may ask? At the present moment, it may appear all the more urgent to study the processes of transformation themselves, especially so that we can figure out what can be done about them. This, however, is precisely the reason: critique is essential to how we understand social processes, in part because it entails a social diagnostic – it tells us what is wrong – and, in part, because it allows us to conceptualise our own agency – what is to be done – about this. However, the link between the two is not necessarily straightforward: first you read some Marx, and then you go and start a revolution. Some would argue that the reading of Marx (what we usually think of as consciousness-raising) is essential part of the process, but there are many variables that intervene between awareness of the unfairness of certain conditions – say, knowing that part-time, low paid teaching work is exploitative – and actually doing something about those conditions, such as organising an occupation. In addition, as virtually everyone from the Frankfurt School onwards had noted, linking these two aspects is complicated by the context of mass consumerism, mass media, and – I would add – mass education. Still, the assumption of an almost direct (what Archer dubbed an ‘hydraulic’) link between knowledge and action still haunts the concept of critique, both as theory and as practice.
In the opening remarks to the conference, Vik Loveday actually zeroed in on this, asking: why is it that there seems to be a burgeoning of critique, but very little resistance? For it is a burgeoning indeed: despite it being my job, even I have issues keeping up to speed with the veritable explosion of the writing that seeks to analyse, explain, or simply mourn the seemingly inevitable capitulation of universities in the face of neoliberalism. By way of illustration, the Palgrave series in “Critical University Studies” boasts eleven new titles, all published in 2016-7; and this is but one publisher, in English language only.
What can explain the relationship between the relative proliferation of critique, and relative paucity of resistance? This question forms the crux of my thesis: less, however, as an invocation for the need to resist, and more as the querying of the relationship between knowledge – especially as forms of critique, including academic critique – and political agency (I do see political agency on a broader spectrum than the seemingly inexhaustible dichotomy between ‘compliance’ and ‘resistance’, but that is another story).
So here’s a preliminary hypothesis (H, if you wish): the link between critique and resistance is mediated by the existence of and position in of academic hierarchy. Two presentations I had the opportunity to hear at the conference were very informative in this regard: the first is Loveday’s analysis of academics’ experience of anxiety, the other was Neyland and Milyaeva’s research on the experiences of REF panelists. While there is a shared concern among academics about the neoliberalisation of higher education, what struck me was the pronounced difference in the degree to which two groups express doubts about their own worth as academics, future, and relevance (in colloquial parlance, ‘impostor syndrome’). While junior* and relatively precarious academics seem to experience high levels of anxiety in relation to their value as academics, senior* academics who sit on REF panels experience it far less. The difference? Level of seniority and position in decision-making.
Well, you may say, this is obvious – the more established academics are, the more confident they are going to be. However, what varies with levels of seniority is not just confidence and trust in one’s own judgements: it’s the sense of entitlement, the degree to which you feel you deserve to be there (Loveday writes about the classed aspects of the sense of entitlement here). I once overheard someone call it the Business Class Test: the moment you start justifying to yourself flying business class on work trips (unless you’re very old, ill, or incapacitated), is the moment when you will have convinced yourself you deserve this. The issue, however, is not how this impacts travel practices: it’s the effect that the differential sense of entitlement has on the relationship between critique and resistance.
So here’s another hypothesis (h1, if you wish). The more precarious your position, the more likely you are to perceive the working conditions as unfair – and, thus, to be critical of the structure of academic hierarchy that enables it. Yet, at the same time, the more junior you are, the more risk voicing that critique – that is, translating it into action – entails. Junior academics often point out that they have to shut up and go on ‘playing the game’: churning out publications (because REF), applying for external funding (because grant capture), and teaching ever-growing numbers of students (because students generate income for the institution). Thus, junior academics may well know everything that is wrong with the academia, but will go on conforming to it in ways that reproduce exactly the conditions they are critical of.
What happens once one ascends to the coveted castle of permanent employment/tenure and membership in research evaluation panels and appointment committees? Well, I’ve only ever been tenure track for a relatively short period of time (having left the job before I found myself justifying flying business class) but here’s an assumption based on anecdotal evidence and other people’s data (h2): you still grin and bear it. You do not, under any circumstances, stop participating in the academic ‘game’ – with the added catch that now you actually believe you deserved your position in it. I’m not saying senior academics are blind to the biases and social inequalities reflected in the academic hierarchy: what I am saying is that it is difficult, if not altogether impossible, to simultaneously be aware of it and continue participating in it (there’s a nod to Sartre’s notion of ‘bad faith‘ here, but I unfortunately do not have the time to get into that now). Ever encounter a professor stand up at a public lecture or committee meeting and say “I recognize that I owe my being here to the combined fortunes of inherited social capital, [white] male privilege, and the fact English is my native language”? I didn’t either. If anything, there are disavowals of social privilege (“I come from a working class background”), which, admirable as they may be, unfortunately only serve to justify the hierarchical nature of academia and its selection procedures (“I definitely deserve to be here, because look at all the odds I had to beat in order to get here in the first place”).
In practice, this leads to the following. Senior academics stay inside the system, and, if they are critical, believe to work against the system – for instance, by fighting for their discipline, or protecting junior colleagues, or aiming to make academia that little bit more diverse. In the longer run, however, their participation keeps the system going – the equivalent of carbon offsetting your business class flight; sure, it may help plant trees in Guinea Bissau, but it does not obfuscate the fact you are flying in the first place. Junior academics, on the other hand, contribute through their competition for positions inside the system – believing that if only they teach enough (perform low-paid work), publish enough (contribute to abundance), or are visible enough (perform unpaid labour of networking on social media, through conferences etc.) – they will get away from precarity, and then they can really be critical (there’s a nod to Berlant’s cruel optimism here that I also unfortunately cannot expand on). Except that, of course, they end up in the position of senior academics, with an added layer of entitlement (because they fought so hard) and an added layer of fear (because no job is really safe in neoliberalism). Thus, while everyone knows everything is wrong, everyone still plays along. This ‘gamification’ of research, which seems to be the new mot du jour in the academia, becomes a stand-in term for the moral economy of justifying one’s own position while participating in the reproduction of the conditions that contribute to its instability.
Cui bono critique, in this regard? It depends. If critique is divorced from its capacity to incite political action, there is no reason why it cannot be appropriated – and, correspondingly, commodified – in the broader framework of neoliberal capitalism. It’s already been pointed out that critique sells – and, perhaps less obviously, the critique of neoliberal academia does too. Even if the ever-expanding number of publications on the crisis of the university do not ‘sell’ in the narrow sense of the term, they still contribute to the symbolic economy via accruing prestige (and citation counts!) for their authors. In other words: the critique of neoliberalism in the academia can become part and parcel of the very processes it sets out to criticise. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in the content, act, or performance of critique itself that renders it automatically subversive or dangerous to ‘the system’. Sorry. (If you want to blame me for being a killjoy, note that Boltanski and Chiapello have noted a long time ago in “The New Spirit of Capitalism” that contemporary capitalism grew through the appropriation of the 1968 artistic critique).
Does this mean critique has, as Latour famously suggested, ‘run out of steam’? If we take the steam engine as a metaphor for the industrial revolution, then the answer may well be yes, and good riddance. Along with other Messianic visions, this may speed up the departure of the Enlightenment’s legacy of pastoral power, reflected – imperfectly, yet unmistakably – in the figure of (organic or avant-guarde) ‘public’ intellectual, destined, as he is (for it is always a he) to lead the ‘masses’ to their ultimate salvation. What we may want to do instead is to examine what promise critique (with a small c) holds – especially in the age of post-truth, post-facts, Donald Trump, and so on. In this, I am fully in agreement with Latour that it is important to keep tabs on the difference between matters of fact, and maters of concern; and, perhaps most disturbingly, think about whether we want to stake out the claim for defining the latter on the monopoly on producing the former.
For getting rid of the veneer of entitlement to critique does not in any way mean abandoning the project of critical examination altogether – but it does, very much so, mean reexamining the positions and perspectives from which it is made. This is the reason why I believe it is so important to focus on the foundations of epistemic authority, including that predicated on the assumption of difference between ‘lay’ and academic forms of reflexivity (I’m writing up a paper on this – meanwhile, my presentation on the topic from this year’s BSA conference is here). In other words, in addition to the analysis of threats to critical scholarship that are unequivocally positioned as coming from ‘the outside’, we need to examine what it is about ‘the inside’ – and, particularly, about the boundaries between ‘out’ and ‘in’ – that helps perpetuate the status quo. Often, this is the most difficult task of all.
Here’s a comic for the end. In case you don’t know it already, it’s Pearls Before Swine, by the brilliant Stephan Pastis. This should at least brighten your day.
P.S. People often ask me what my recommendations would be. I’m reluctant to give any – the academia is broken, and I am not sure whether fixing it in this form makes any sense. But here’s a few preliminary thoughts:
(a) Stop fetishising the difference between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. ‘Leaving’ the academia is still framed like some epic sort of failure, which amplifies both the readiness of precarious workforce to sustain truly abominable working conditions just in order to stay “in”, and the anxiety and other mental health issues arising from the possibility of falling “out”. Most people with higher education should be able to do well and thrive in all sorts of jobs; if we didn’t frame tenure as a life-or-death achievement, perhaps fewer would agree to suffer for years in hope of its attainment.
(b) Fight for decent working conditions for contingent faculty. Not everyone needs to have tenure if working part-time (or going in and out) are acceptable career choices that offer a liveable income and a level of social support. This would also help those who want to have children or, godforbid, engage in activities other than the rat race for academic positions.
(c) This doesn’t get emphasised enough, but one of the reasons why people vie for positions in the academia is because at least it offers a degree of intellectual satisfaction, in opposition to what Graeber has termed the ever-growing number of ‘bullshit jobs’. So, one of the ways of making working conditions in the academia more decent is by making working conditions outside of academia more decent – and, perhaps, by decentralising a bit the monopoly on knowledge work that the academia holds. Not, however, in the neoliberal outsourcing/’creative hubs’ model, which unfortunately mostly serves to generate value for existing centres while further depleting the peripheries.
* By ”junior” and “senior” I obviously do not mean biological age, but rather status – I am intentionally avoiding denominators such as ‘ECRs’ etc. since I think someone can be in a precarious position whilst not being exactly at the start of their career, and, conversely, someone can be a very early career researcher but have a type of social capital, security, and recognition that are normally associated with ‘later’ career stages.
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