Academia

This past weekend I attended the Midwest Popular Culture Association conference in Kansas City. It was fun. For the whole weekend, I was able to walk around talking to interesting, thinking people about ideas and pop culture. There I felt like a functioning member of the academic community. Grad student and faculty mostly blend together, and since this was my fourth year there, I was comfortable in my skin. My panel was canceled because the two other presenters had deaths in their families, and my paper was moved to another panel that didn't fit as well. Most of the audience wanted to talk about comic books, rather than globalization issues and Bollywood musicals. Oh, well. I did have one woman come up to me afterwards and tell me that she was probably going to teach Bride and Prejudice as a result of my paper, which I found flattering. I ever so slightly affected academia! Huzzah!

In a more depressing turn, I was reading an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education about the dwindling numbers of conservatives in faculty. It claimed that the majority of faculty are not far-leftists though, that moderates are the growing number. Not surprising to me was the report that the smallest percentage of conservatives in humanities departments in PhD granting institutions. I would probably consider myself a moderate conservative, but definitely on the right side of the center line, and I often feel as though I cannot voice my views and values in my academic community.

The article provides an interesting reason that might be underlying my fears: the [lack of a] job market. I quote at length:

"Mr. Menand's impression is that dissertation topics in English have changed little since 1990. "Placement and tenure anxiety doesn't exactly encourage iconoclasm," he said. The last great period of ferment in literary theory, he argued, came in the 1970s and early 1980s, at a time when people commonly earned degrees within five years and easily found jobs. With lower personal risks and sacrifices, he suggested, young scholars could afford to offend their elders and to shake up their disciplines.

Today, by contrast, humanities students are sacrificing a decade of their lives with no guarantee of a job at the end of the line. "Who would venture on such a career who did not share, or believe that he or she shared, most of the views of those institutions and gatekeepers?" Mr. Menand asked."

Indeed the professors and the university are the 'gatekeepers' to both my future and my past. If I was to offend (read: present a conservative viewpoint on an issue) those in power (read: my professors, some other graduate students, the department secretaries), I could easily become persona non gratis, which can effect my opportunities, which effects my CV, which effects my viability and connections on the job market, for which is what I've spent the last five year of my life preparing. It's a sad thought knowing that the University, so often encouraging of rebelling against the Man, has got me over a barrel.