Among Professors: Academic Life, Power & Survival

Transparency is a beautiful word. It appears in strategic plans, in mission statements, in evaluation forms. But in practice? It's often the first thing to disappear when it comes to matters that truly matter. When I was asked to become vice-dean for research, it seemed like a great opportunity. The dean's assistant told me I would receive teaching relief, an attractive allowance, and — the icing on the cake — a sabbatical at the end of my term. I agreed, was elected. What turned out? No sabbatical at all. It had existed only in that one conversation. The teaching relief had to be arranged separately by the incumbent dean, who did so with a cc to the entire dean's office, writing that he was doing this "albeit with considerable reluctance" — as if I had asked him for a personal favour. Meanwhile the incumbent vice-dean, the dean, and the vice-dean for teaching all received teaching relief as a matter of course. The problem was never the teaching relief itself. The...

  One afternoon, my phone rang at home. A colleague, herself a professor too, had managed to get hold of my number through HR. The message was urgent: I had to come in immediately. There was a guest lecture, and the room wasn’t tidy enough. I was to come and vacuum. That she and I held identical positions seemed, in her view, entirely irrelevant. I remember standing there with the receiver in my hand, wondering whether this was some kind of joke. This was not the only incident with her. I once visited her at home, where she proudly showed me her study: an enormous room, larger than my living room, dominated by an imposing desk. She then pointed out her husband’s study: a small, cramped closet without a window, tucked half under the stairs. The hierarchy at home followed exactly the same logic she applied at work. Academia harbours two opposite extremes: those who struggle with feeling like a fraud, and those who seem to thrive on unshakeable self-confidence. Both are fed by the nat...