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The Unbalanced Semester

In Liminal Thinking on 2012/05/20 at 00:42

Denise Horn, writing from Boston, Massachusetts in the US.

Here at University of Venus, we talk a great deal about work/life balance — how to maintain the balance between family, private life and the demands of academia, which are many. Looking back at some of my remarks or answers about the issue, I sound fairly confident in my abilities to enjoy my life and get my work finished.

But this semester, I’ve been terribly unbalanced and that unbalance was unhealthy and detrimental to my well-being. Even though my personal life is great — I have a wonderful and supportive partner, a close-knit group of friends, a loving family, an adoring dog and a pretty healthy social life, I became depressed. I gained weight, I stopped going to my yoga classes, I slept late whenever I could, and my writer’s block became overwhelming (so much so that I haven’t kept up with my UofV posts!). How did that happen?

Well, panic.

Panic because I can see the “finish” line — tenure — and yet to get there, I put a great deal of pressure on myself to make certainthat I could get there. We all know that publish or perish trope about academia — it’s been tattooed on our brains since we were little baby graduate students, and the pressure never stops. My third year review letter, for example, gave me faint praise for getting my first book out as I came up for review, but then extolled me to “ramp it up” before coming up for tenure: to write a second book, get some articles out, and generally over-perform. I took that to heart, did more field research, got a book contract, sent out two more journal articles, and created a fairly ambitious research plan.  And taught, a lot.

On top of that, I took on even more service commitments. I served on numerous committees. I said yes to every guest lecture. I played nice with the admissions office. I spoke with student groups, and I had lots of coffees with colleagues.

Getting that second book finished (the conclusion is still evading completion), teaching, and serving, as well as trying to keep a semblance of a personal life, have taken their tolls. The real issue with trying to impress so many people is that you never feel as though you  can impress them, that nothing you do will be good enough, because that finish line called “tenure” often looks like a bar set so high that you can’t possiblybe that good. And the system is also set up to make you believe there are enemies where there are none, so I spent far too much time worrying about comments, sidelong looks and imagined slights.

Instead of going out for a good long walks or to a favorite yoga class, I sat at my desk, forcing myself to churn out work. I ate a lot of licorice (my secret addiction) and my favorite comfort foods. I threw out most of what I wrote, and started again, then again, every time berating myself for not being a writing machine, unlike “everyone else.” I took no joy in the compliments and praise I was getting on my work and instead focused on criticisms, most of which were my own. I had weekly anxiety attacks, and found myself complaining bitterly about my work.

But the end of the semester is a time to reflect. I didn’t finish everything I meant to finish this semester. The book is almost there. I’m still waiting on a revise and resubmit decision on an article.  But—but…I did get an article accepted for publication. I was nominated for a teaching award. I got to know my colleagues in a different way because of all those committee assignments and coffees. I realized the dean actually  likesmy work. I went to a conference and met interesting people who also liked my work…

I took a good long look at myself last week, and took a big long breath. All those pressures and deadlines that made me panicky and anxious were pressures I had put on myself. I was the one who didn’t make time to breathe and I was the one who punished myself. I got on a plane to Indonesia the other day, and I’ll be meeting students here on Tuesday to begin a great program on social entrepreneurship. I took some time out for myself today, to remember why I like doing what I do.  I went to a yoga class by a rice paddy and reveled in my standing balance poses.

I took a big breath and thought, I really do like what I do. I just have to remember not to forget to balance.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed

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How Journals Put Us Behind the Times

In Liminal Thinking on 2012/02/16 at 01:44

Denise Horn, writing from Boston, Massachusetts in the US.

I’ve written before about conversations that count — those written artifacts that will count toward tenure or promotion — and I’ve complained that non-traditional writing (e.g. blog posts) doesn’t count for much (or for anything, according to the latest TRIP report on the state of my field). But of course, I still have to play by the rules, such as they are, and I continue to work toward submitting articles to journals and hope for publication.

And then I prepare to wait. And to wait a painfully long time as my work gets stale.

For a journal article to “count,” it must be peer-reviewed. Our academic standards hold that an academic work should and must be subject to scrutiny by our peers, improved by their input and ultimately add to the academic conversation. I agree with that whole-heartedly. The pursuit of knowledge is a social affair and should be respected as such.

But what happens in practice leads to quite different results. The bulk of what we read in journals was written long ago. I am a political scientist (and a news junkie), so I am interested in theory, history and current applications. I want to understand my “now” world within the vast context of the literature. I want to write that way, as well, and have my work be applicable to others’ “now” worlds. Most of all, academics want to be relevant. But that is impossible in the current structure of academic journals.

Let’s talk about the mechanisms of journal publication.

You work on an article for a few months (and if your work is dependent upon field work, as mine is, one article might be the result of several months of work in the field before writing even begins). You send it to a few friends or colleagues, you present it at a conference and perhaps you sit on it for a week or two. So you’re already a year into the initial problem/issue you hoped to address.

You send it to a journal. The journal’s editorial board may take a few weeks to decide whether or not to send it to the reviewers. If they do, that may take another three months. Then, if your article hasn’t been roundly rejected—but needs work—you might get a “revise and resubmit” based on the reviewers’ comments. (I personally enjoy that part, because it’s a refreshing way to look at your work, once you get past your ego.) You have other work to do, so perhaps you don’t return revisions for another 3-4 weeks. The editorial board then sends it out again for the reviewers’ comments. You wait another three months.

During this entire process, you must agree that you will not send the article anywhere else. You are trapped by one journal’s editorial process, without the benefit of “shopping it around,” thus, they have no incentive to move more quickly on reviewing your work. “Under Review” remains on your CV for months.

If you are unlucky, the extra work and time you put into a piece will still not merit its publication. You’ve just lost a year trying to get the piece out. However, if you responded well to the reviewers’ comments and made the required revisions, the editors may decide to publish your piece. Great news! It will come out in the fall edition! The fall of next year.

By this point, the information in the article is well over a year old, perhaps two. The article itself was written a year ago. By the time it will be published, it may be two or three years old.

The “top journals” are the worst in this regard. They tend to be quite conservative when it comes to new literature, and, in the case of my field (International Relations), very little outside the mainstream is considered or published. Many of the articles in these journals are rehashed debates of articles originally written ten years ago. If you were to peruse only those journals, you’d think my field was quite narrow, when, in fact, there is a wide variety of interesting, lively, engaging work being done. But it’s not being published in the places that have the high “impact factors” (which is based on how often a journal or article is cited—of course, if those are the only journals we turn to, there’s a bit of a selection bias, but no matter…)

I rarely look at the top journals these days. I canceled my subscriptions to all but the most relevant—Foreign Policy, for example, is one I will continue to read. Why? I read it because it comes out every month, and it’s timely and interesting. When I want to read what my esteemed colleagues have to say about theory or current events, I turn to the Foreign Policy website, which includes some of the best blogs by the top names in my field. They are talking to each other, and others are leaving important and interesting comments—in effect, “peer reviewing” is happening in real time, and in a transparent way. Intellectual discourse is moving forward at a rapid pace, not in the glacial quarterly publishing of journals.

I still read books when I want deep, thoughtful engagement with a topic. But the process of publishing journal articles is archaic, and provides a false sense of “weightiness” to our work. As long as publishing in the “top journals” is a requirement for tenure or promotion, we will be trapped in this cycle. Our approach to our work will be vastly improved when we can share the immediacy and the excitement of fresh thinking—and recognize that this is a legitimate way of sharing knowledge.
This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed.

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Writing For Myself

In Liminal Thinking on 2012/01/12 at 07:43

Denise Horn, writing from Boston, Massachusetts in the US.

My first book was the result of years of graduate work and was born of my dissertation. It had gone through multiple iterations and critiques from my adviser and dissertation committee. In the end, I felt as though the whole project was out of my hands, and I was simply responding to the demands of others. Of course, that is the point — as a graduate student, you are being shaped to join the ranks of academics who speak the same (metaphoric) language and share similar expectations for academic work.

I am writing my second book now and feel the results of that training. It’s almost strangulating. I can’t help feeling that my old advisers are waiting in the wings and I’ll have to respond to their critiques, shape my writing to their style and demands. Coming up for tenure is the added pressure — in some sense this second book feels like a second dissertation being written for my senior colleagues. At forty, that’s a frustrating feeling, to be sure.

I ran into a fellow junior colleague today and shared some of this frustration. We both joked about the kind of book we want to write when we do get tenure — maybe not an academic book at all, maybe a travel book or a novel — anything to feel free of the academic “regulations” that have been imposed on us for so long.

Afterwards, I sat down in a cafe to work on a chapter and re-read the introduction. The language was replete with academese. So stultifying! So dull! So I decided to just write as though telling a story, in the clearest most direct way that I could. The words started to come, fast and easy. I thought, who told me I would have to write that way forever? If it isn’t interesting to me, why would it be to anyone else? Would I want to discuss this in class someday? Why am I not just writing for myself?

I thought then of the academics that I have truly enjoyed reading over the years. Cynthia Enloe, author of numerous books on women and International Relations (indeed, I consider her the Grandmother of Feminist IR), writes in an easy, snappy, funny style that is at once approachable and deep. James C. Scott, author of such classics as Weapons of the Weak and Seeing Like a State, is a joy to read, particularly when he isn’t afraid to add a bit of self-deprecation in his approach. These are authors I want to emulate, not the stilted jargon-laden stuff of “mainstream” political science or theory.

I wonder when this change happens — when do we gain the confidence of finding our own voices, or feel free to write this way? I think it must happen — it’s the only way we as academics can be relevant. We have to stop writing for our advisers and our colleagues. The opaque language and tortured rhetoric of the academy should no longer be the norm.

So I will begin consciously writing for myself. Maybe I’ll stop having those dreams where my adviser keeps sending back my dissertation for corrections. And maybe I’ll enjoy the work more. After all, if it’s not fun, why bother?

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed.

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When He Trumps She

In Liminal Thinking on 2011/11/17 at 09:49

Denise Horn, writing from Boston, Massachusetts in the US.

I spent the day grading my midterms, never a fun task. Usually I get into a vague kind of automaton state; as I read for key phrases, look for definitions and the critical use of concepts, and references to key authors and guest speakers. Check, check, check, grade. But this time, I noticed a pattern that I’m sure I’ve seen before but just ignored. It is the gendered attribution that says so much about how students view “authority” (in the author sense) in academia.

My class covers a broad range of literature regarding globalization. We look at global inequalities, economic theories, human rights issues, women’s rights, international trafficking, and many other topics of global concern. The readings I assign are meant to give contending viewpoints, give more detail to my lectures and to teach students how to read academic writing. Importantly, I have intentionally assigned readings that are written by both male and female scholars — almost a 50/50 split.

And yet, in essay after essay, students refer to authors whom they have cited as “he.” With one exception: those authors that wrote specifically about women’s issues or discussed gender are always referred to as “she,” even when the author was male.

On the one hand, this is just sheer sloppiness, and I recognize that. But on the other, I think it speaks to how students perceive the authority of female writers in academia and in the classroom more generally. Are women only capable of writing from the perspective of gender, and male authors cover everything else?  Do students face a mental disconnect when they confront a woman writer or teacher who writes and teaches on “hard” issues, like traditional security and foreign policy?

In my own life as an academic, I have confronted these subtle prejudices time and again, and try to point them out to students as they occur. As a graduate student and a professor, I’ve taught both American Foreign Policy and Introduction to International Relations. American Foreign Policy tends to skew male in terms of class make-up. ROTC guys, particularly, love taking that class. What I noticed over the years was that the male students constantly challenged my lectures — usually after class, and usually when they were standing. I am five feet tall, on a good day, so it doesn’t take much to tower over me — and that was intentional.

The challenges were always of a technical sort, or on a point of historical record. But always, I noticed, with the presumed notion that I couldn’t possibly know what I was talking about (how in the world could I know anything the long and storied history of the V-22 Osprey, for example?). Even when I had revealed that I had grown up on military bases, gone to military schools, studied the military, lived the military, one student wrote in his evaluation “she claims to be from a military family, but she clearly doesn’t understand the military.” (My dad, a Marine vet of 24 years, got a chuckle out of that one.)

But this is not just an issue among male students — it is a deeply embedded bias. In the case of the essay writing, it wasn’t just the male students who automatically referred to authors by the “he” pronoun — both men and women made this slip into the “gender-neutral he.” They had clearly memorized last names and ideas, but not once questioned this slippage in their heads.

Is it important that students (or anyone, for that matter) know the sex of a writer? Perhaps not. But I think this is indicative of something larger and deserves a bit of attention.  Male scholars have, for too long, have been allowed to stand over their female peers, and I’m tired of watching it happen. Maybe in the next essay I’ll require they know first names as well.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed.

 

Occupied

In Liminal Thinking on 2011/10/21 at 11:29

Denise Horn, writing from Boston, Massachusetts in the US.

The ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests have spread to Boston, and most notably to our university. International Affairs students particularly seem drawn to social activism of this sort and the opportunity to participate in a nationwide protest movement has brought a new sense of excitement to campus.

I spend a great deal of time advising progressive student groups, bringing civil society actors to speak to my class and creating programs meant to engage students in civil society development, democratic processes and social entrepreneurship. I try to teach students to fight for their rights and the rights of others, to be engaged, enlightened citizens, and to realize that small efforts can lead to big results. I eat and breathe this stuff, and, frankly, I am finding myself reinvigorated by the hope that monumental changes may be around the corner.

But during the Occupy Campus walkout last week, when the student organizers asked me to speak to the crowd, I balked. I knew that some of the student activists planned to lodge their complaints directly at the administration, on the high cost of their education and lack of job opportunities. My first instinct, sadly, was self-preservation, not social change. Why? Because I wanted to avoid scrutiny lest it might affect my chances at tenure.

A friend pointed out (rightfully, I think) that the protest was for the students, not the faculty, and if I truly wanted them to learn leadership, they had to do it themselves. She noted that my gripes are not with the university, per se, but with larger systemic inequalities that affect me in similar yet different ways (an unemployed partner, for example). And so, she counseled, better to let the students know that I support their efforts, but can’t be their Noam Chomsky.

Still, the hypocrisy of my fear bothered me, no matter how much I tried to justify it. I stood at the edges of the student crowd to hear what they had to say, and later that day, I joined the crowds in Boston’s Dewey Square to listen to Cornel West, someone who hasn’t been afraid to loudly stand up for what’s right. I was happy to be with the crowd, but still felt the sting of not being fully with my students.

But suddenly I was in the midst of a group of my students who had decided to join the march through downtown. They were thrilled to be there, and it was contagious. Just marching through the streets with them was enough. Through the crowd I watched a former student (who is now one of the protest organizers in Boston) introduce himself to Cornel West, and they shared a hug. What a great moment for him! But here’s the best part of my day—that same student then made a beeline to where I stood and hugged me. He said, “I just met Cornel West! And all of this happened because of your class!”

I didn’t incite my students to protest. And I didn’t give them a message to follow. But I’ve done what I could to give them the tools to speak for themselves. I am not happy with the reason for my original cowardice, but there are times we, as faculty, are better off on the sidelines, watching what they can do. And then doing for ourselves, in our own way.

This post was also published at Inside Higher Ed.

When do you stop being cool?

In Liminal Thinking on 2011/09/20 at 00:12

Denise Horn, writing from Boston, Massachusetts in the US.

I just turned forty and began worrying about catching a terrible disease from my students.

A good friend once clued me in to a self-image disease suffered by many college professors. Let’s call it the Cool Envy Disease. Every day, he said, we are surrounded by people who are impossibly cool. These people dress well. They are super fit and look great in skinny jeans and miniskirts. They know all the good bands. They are politically progressive. And they can text with one hand, under a desk, without looking.

And they are twenty years old.

Yes. This is the danger of being a college professor that they never warn you of when you begin. Your students will infect you with it. It is insidious. It is Cool Envy.

You will begin your career teaching at the tender age of 28 or so. You will be the nerdy grad student who impresses your undergrad charges by quoting obscure political theorists (it’s not as sexy as you think). You still know how to dress like a kid, if you dress up at all (although I think I spent my entire year studying for comps wearing overalls). Then you’re a freshly minted PhD and you can finally focus on losing the ten pounds you put on while writing the dissertation. You get a job, you have an income. You’re still hip and cool and now have better clothes. You’re 33 or 34 and still have street cred.

You become a rockstar in the classroom. You play interesting YouTube videos in your lectures and are occasionally spotted at shows by your students. A mythology grows up around your sightings about town. Students want to follow you on Twitter.

And then…one day you ask a question that begins with something like “Okay, who here can tell me what happened in 1989 that was so monumental?” Blank stares. A timid hand. “Professor? We weren’t born until 1992 (93, 94!)” The room spins. You look around and think “Oh my God. I could be her mother.”

It’s a sobering thought. Suddenly you begin to question your fashion choices. Are you wearing that because all the girls are doing it? (But you’re not one of the “girls”!) What right have you to sport those cool boots? Those skinny jeans? To be seen at the gym wearing spandex? What did that kid actually mean by MILF?

So, I turned forty the last month and had a self-image crisis: the onset of Cool Envy. I almost threw out all of my clothes; I started flipping through a catalog full of tweed and ankle length skirts. I listened to some Joan Baez. I contemplated switching my drink of choice to white wine spritzers and going to dinners at 6:30.

Then I got a card from a former student whom I’ve always thought to be impossibly cool. “Happy birthday,” she wrote, “to the most wonderful professor turned friend I could ask for. Watching you be an impressive grown-up while still being the most enjoyable chef/wine lover/advice giver is always a pleasure…thanks for being so awesome.”

At that moment I realized my friend who had diagnosed the Cool Envy Disease had it backwards. By forty, we’ve got our acts together–we know our stuff, we are self-assured and confident. We can empathize with students while still providing guidance they respect. They envy our ability to move about the world with ease, and they envy our comfort with ourselves and our abilities. We are cool because we no longer have to work so hard at it.

Forty is hot. And forty-something professors are very, very cool indeed.

I just turned forty and began worrying about catching a terrible disease from my students.

A good friend once clued me in to a self-image disease suffered by many college professors. Let’s call it the Cool Envy Disease. Every day, he said, we are surrounded by people who are impossibly cool. These people dress well. They are super fit and look great in skinny jeans and miniskirts. They know all the good bands. They are politically progressive. And they can text with one hand, under a desk, without looking.

And they are twenty years old.

Yes. This is the danger of being a college professor that they never warn you of when you begin. Your students will infect you with it. It is insidious. It is Cool Envy.

You will begin your career teaching at the tender age of 28 or so. You will be the nerdy grad student who impresses your undergrad charges by quoting obscure political theorists (it’s not as sexy as you think). You still know how to dress like a kid, if you dress up at all (although I think I spent my entire year studying for comps wearing overalls). Then you’re a freshly minted PhD and you can finally focus on losing the ten pounds you put on while writing the dissertation. You get a job, you have an income. You’re still hip and cool and now have better clothes. You’re 33 or 34 and still have street cred.

You become a rockstar in the classroom. You play interesting YouTube videos in your lectures and are occasionally spotted at shows by your students. A mythology grows up around your sightings about town. Students want to follow you on Twitter.

And then…one day you ask a question that begins with something like “Okay, who here can tell me what happened in 1989 that was so monumental?” Blank stares. A timid hand. “Professor? We weren’t born until 1992 (93, 94!)” The room spins. You look around and think “Oh my God. I could be her mother.”

It’s a sobering thought. Suddenly you begin to question your fashion choices. Are you wearing that because all the girls are doing it? (But you’re not one of the “girls”!) What right have you to sport those cool boots? Those skinny jeans? To be seen at the gym wearing spandex? What did that kid actually mean by MILF?

So, I turned forty the last month and had a self-image crisis: the onset of Cool Envy. I almost threw out all of my clothes; I started flipping through a catalog full of tweed and ankle length skirts. I listened to some Joan Baez. I contemplated switching my drink of choice to white wine spritzers and going to dinners at 6:30.

Then I got a card from a former student whom I’ve always thought to be impossibly cool. “Happy birthday,” she wrote, “to the most wonderful professor turned friend I could ask for. Watching you be an impressive grown-up while still being the most enjoyable chef/wine lover/advice giver is always a pleasure…thanks for being so awesome.”

At that moment I realized my friend who had diagnosed the Cool Envy Disease had it backwards. By forty, we’ve got our acts together–we know our stuff, we are self-assured and confident. We can empathize with students while still providing guidance they respect. They envy our ability to move about the world with ease, and they envy our comfort with ourselves and our abilities. We are cool because we no longer have to work so hard at it.

Forty is hot. And forty-something professors are very, very cool indeed.

This post was also published at Inside Higher Ed.

They Shoot the Intellectuals First

In Liminal Thinking on 2011/07/16 at 00:00

Denise Horn, writing from Boston, Massachusetts in the US.

What happens when your scholarship is considered a crime? When the state tries to stop you? What do you do when you know what you must write could potentially land you in jail? Do we have a responsibility to write, or is this purely a selfish endeavor?

I’m working on a book project that has consumed me for some time. One of the chapters is an article that I’ve been hanging on to and thinking about for the past three years, reluctant to publish it or speak about it in a public forum, or have it mentioned on-line. I have friends that have asked me not to work on it, suggesting that I work on something less dangerous.

In other posts I’ve discussed my love of Southeast Asia, and specifically Thailand. Thailand intrigues me on so many levels, and speaks to something deep within me that I can’t quite articulate. But the Land of Smiles is also deeply flawed and dangerous. Thai politics are contentious, in constant upheaval and often deadly. Thai elections occurred in early July, electing the party of one of the mostcorrupt players in Thai politics; his sister will be Thailand’s first female Prime Minister. More ominous may be the impending death of the world’s longest reigning monarch and Thailand’s beloved paternal figure, King Bhumibol. Both events represent a critical turning point in the political life of Thailand.

The Thai monarchy has managed to maintain Thai national identity through a well-crafted and deeply institutionalized cult of personality surrounding the King and the royal family. At the heart of maintaining this order are the world’s strictest lese majeste laws, which make any insult towards the royal family a crime punishable by up to fifteen years in prison. Anyone can bring an accusation forward, and anything can be perceived as an insult.

This has had a stultifying effect on scholarship on Thailand, a country that has important strategic ties to the United States and within Asia. Books that delve too deeply into the lives of the royals are banned in Thailand and their authors are persona non grata. Blog authors have been arrested for violating the lese majeste and computer crime laws that forbid posting links to material deemed insulting to the royal family or threaten the security of the state. Those who wish to be critical must quietly conduct research while in the country; after publishing, they know that they may never return to the country. This is a choice I’m now facing, and will have to make.

Others have put themselves on the line for far more important reasons than my academic interest in Thai politics. My work doesn’t necessarily seek to right a wrong in the activist sense, simply to point to the mechanisms of control exerted over civil society; thus I could put myself in danger for no reason other than my own intellectual curiosity. But I also hope my work will make a difference. I believe that I have a right—and a duty—to continue.

Whatever the personal reasons we each have for studying what we do, I believe that we write because we suspect that answering the questions that drive us will benefit others. That takes courage. Whether we write about the role of women in academia, about glass ceilings, discrimination, human trafficking or critique US foreign policy, we must accept that we’ll face some kind of consequences if we’ve told the truth and told it well. It may not land us in a Thai prison, but there are plenty of other risks to speaking truth to power.

Good scholarship may require that we put ourselves on the line. But we cannot allow fear of reprisals—from our peers, university systems and other officials—to foreclose the pursuit of communicating ideals and ideas. If we allow ourselves to be censored and silenced, does our work have any real meaning?

The Joy of Being an Intellectual Kid Again

In Liminal Thinking on 2011/06/29 at 12:52

Denise Horn, writing from Boston, Massachusetts in the US.

I’m rejuvenated, revived and relaxed. I feel smart again. Why? I’ve spent the week being an intellectual kid again.

 

I recently returned from a trip to Israel, my first visit to the country. I had the good fortune to be invited on an academic study tour, joining nine other political science and law professors from several Boston universities and academic centers. We spent each day meeting Israeli and Palestinian officials, NGO leaders and human rights activists, former and present members of the Israeli army, supreme court judges, political scientists, economists, hydrologists, environmental activists and social entrepreneurs. We were taken to historical sites as well as security sites—the wall that separates the West Bank from Israel, the borders with Lebanon and Syria, and East Jerusalem. We had no other agenda than to learn as much as we could about complicated and contentious Israeli politics and society. In a week we consumed more eggplant with tahini sauce and information on Israeli politics than I thought humanly possible.

Politics are experienced in a very real and visceral way in Israel. I expected this, and I expected to learn about politics through a specific narrative. Indeed, one theme that emerged throughout the week-long trip was this use of “narrative” in Israeli/Palestinian relations. What we learned, however, was that the narratives were rich and varied, some undeniably biased, while others were nuanced and more inclusive. Those you expected to be the most strident were often the most thoughtful and sensitive to the other side, while others were surprisingly single-minded.

But I don’t want to write a blog post about Israeli politics—that’s a discussion for another forum. What made this trip so exhilarating for me was the level of intellectual discussion that occurred among my fellow academics. We were of varying backgrounds, rank, age and experience. Most of us were experienced in working on human rights issues, international law, civil society and security, but none of us were Middle East specialists or dealt directly with Israeli politics. I admit that my own knowledge was rather cursory and I would never claim to speak authoritatively on the topic of Israeli-Palestinian relations.

So, what we were learning was interesting and important in the sense that it grew our knowledge. Just that. We were engaged in actively learning something new; having the space and time to devote to learning it proved to be the most satisfying part of the trip. I had almost forgotten that feeling of encountering something for the first time with a group of people and relishing the opportunity to just talk about it. We all do our own research, of course, and hopefully we all spend time learning new things. Individual research, however, is not quite the same thing as having a prolonged, intense conversation with other academics that isn’t mediated by university politics, every day life and classroom duties. To be a student simply for the sake of being a student—I realize that is what I’ve been missing.

When I daydreamed of being a full-time faculty member, I imagined faculty meetings in wood-paneled rooms where we shared our research, ideas, and had good-natured debates and thoughtful conversations. I thought I would experience being a faculty member as an extension of graduate school, where I would share my intellectual journey with others doing the same. Occasionally, I might have a brief discussion about my work with a colleague in the hallway or a long dinner with a friend talking about ideas, but the kind of daily intellectual exploration I had grown accustomed to in grad school just isn’t there. I miss it.

So, this trip was enormously refreshing: I was a student again, released from my professorial duties. It reminded me of why I’m in this business in the first place, and how much I actually enjoy being around other academics. We all need these reminders, and I’m calling for more of them. (Not a conference—conferences, as we all know, are more often about politicking.) What I want, and I think should be more common, is the opportunity to participate in week-long seminars for professors. Give us a topic we know nothing about, expose us to new ideas, let us battle it out in discussions, give us nothing else to do or worry about. Let us be intellectual kids again, learning simply for the supreme joy of it.

We will be better teachers and researchers for it, when we come back to our day jobs as academic grown ups.

I Quit

In Liminal Thinking on 2011/05/25 at 11:24

Denise Horn, writing from Boston, Massachusetts in the USA

I Quit.

Or, at least, I wish I could. Returning from my program in India and travels in Thailand this spring, I was faced with the worst bout of insecurity I’ve experienced in years. I sat down to a desk of uncompleted work, half-baked manuscripts, unanswered emails and unreturned phone calls. A grant I had applied for (and rather counted on) didn’t come through. My teaching evaluations consisted of a single student evaluation (yes, one), from the student who refused to listen to any advice I tried to give her as she struggled–and blamed me for it. A senior colleague continues to ignore me for some imagined snub or insult (or maybe he just doesn’t like me). The oil bill was overdue. On top of that, I am facing terrible writer’s block. And I’m really tired of hearing myself whine about it.

All of this is panic inducing: I am keenly aware that I must produce an article and a book manuscript in the next few months to beat the tenure clock next year, and to prove wrong some of my most ardent critics.

The tenure process is harsh. It’s pretty lonely. Academics are sensitive people, and I know I’m not the only one wracked by insecurities. But I’m finding it more difficult to get past them: I’m the type who can’t (and won’t) put something out in the world until it’s ready (often trapping myself on the “perish” side rather than the “publish” side of the Law of Academia); I don’t have the talent for self-promotion that others seem to practice so well; I find it impossible to stroke the egos of those who seek to “break-in” junior faculty rather than truly mentoring them.

Lately, instead of just fighting through it, I’ve been entertaining fantasies of quitting academia altogether. Surely, I think, there must be some other career that would pay more money and cause less stress. There must be some job I could perform that wouldn’t depend on constant scrutiny by my colleagues and bitter battles with administrations. There must be some service I could provide that wouldn’t be critiqued due to my lack of warmth or empathy towards irresponsible, complaining post-adolescents. There must be some profession that wouldn’t require working nights, weekends, or holidays—or cause me to feel guilty when I don’t.

Academic burnout is a real phenomenon, and I’m interested in knowing how others deal with it, while I also wonder if there is a way that academia could be structured to be more supportive of faculty to prevent it. I’m not talking about coddling over-inflated egos (which doesn’t hurt); rather, I’d like to find ways to mitigate the effects of sour relationships among the faculty that could result in personal vendettas, or to institute clear guidelines for promotion that are stringent, yet attainable, and promote healthy life balances. The irony of academia is that we value our independence, yet our professional lives are fraught with restrictions, expectations, and often self-destructive professional ethos that serve to polish our gilded towers rather than promote the cause of knowledge and creativity. Something, surely, must be done to change this.

I say all of these things to myself when I’m at my most frustrated (which, lately, is often). I then take a step back and look around. Yes, I work at odd hours. But they are my hours, and often those hours are at home, in my own office, and no one cares when I check in or not. I face the scrutiny of peers, yes, but the projects I choose are those suited to my own interests, not theirs. Some of my closest friends are also academics and I bask in the glory of long dinners discussing big (and small) ideas. While I agonize for hours over a disparaging comment made on an evaluation, I can look anywhere in my office for thank you cards from former students and pictures of those who stay in touch long after graduation.

Something must be done, it is true. But today what must be done is what I have to do in order to become someone who can change the system. So, I won’t quit my job; I’ll just quit complaining.

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Fear and Loathing in Academia

In Liminal Thinking on 2011/04/11 at 11:02

Denise Horn, writing from Boston, Massachusetts in the USA.

This month’s question regarding life balance—how we deal with writer’s block—started me thinking about how I feel about writing. It’s always been an important part of my life, but in my career as an academic, writing has become my biggest source of anxiety.

I wrote my first short story in a writing class in the third grade. I loved creating that story. From then on I wrote short stories constantly, on every subject I could imagine. I sent them to teen magazines in the hopes they’d be published (my first taste of publishing rejection). At fourteen, I spent the summer vacation writing a novel. It was overly serious, trite in some ways, and full of inaccuracies (having set it in place I’d never been, in circumstances I’d never actually encountered). But I loved every minute of sitting down and thinking about the story, no matter how fanciful. It was a joyful experience.

College saw me writing still, although mainly deep, reflective journal writings. I wrote about the Gulf War, my love affairs, my professors…volumes of stuff.

So when did my love affair with writing end? When did it become an insurmountable peak rather than an enjoyable journey?

Graduate school.

Graduate school does two things: it prepares you for your professional life in the discipline. And it disciplines you. It tells you what’s appropriate and what’s not. It tells you, this far in your thinking is acceptable, and no more. I remember thinking that I would revel in pushing the boundaries of the discipline through my writing.

But time and again, I was told differently; indeed, a well-known political theorist once told me, in response to an essay I had written on Burke, “Ms. Horn, graduate school is not the time to be creative.” I believed him. I was disciplined into fearing my writing rather than loving it. I feared that I would write something that would be unacceptable to the “gatekeepers:” my professors, my peers and others out there who would judge me.

And that fear continues, although it’s getting better. It’s the constant judgment—whether real or imaginary– that makes it so terrifying, of course. It’s the fear of writing the wrong thing, the bad thing, the thing that is not well considered, the thing that doesn’t meet academic standards, the thing that will never be taken seriously. It’s the fear of failing to express ideas that are important. It’s also the fear of never writing enough when you are too afraid to write at all.

 

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