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...

While I was finishing a paper at home, a colleague from the administrative staff posted a photo on the internal network: an empty corridor, with the caption, “The summer silence on campus… where is everyone?” The reactions were predictable:  😊   🏖️   😎 Light-hearted, no doubt. And yet beneath the jokes ran something more persistent: a quiet undercurrent of suspicion. “You must be at the pool every day, right?” Or, to my students: “You must be left to fend for yourself, your supervisor is never around.” It made me wonder: when did being present become the ultimate proof of working? If I really had spent all that time by the pool, I would probably have an Olympic medal by now – not a pile of unfinished articles, reviewer comments, and looming deadlines. In academia, two worlds quietly coexist. For support staff, the campus is the workplace. Work has fixed hours, fixed locations, and above all: visibility. If you are there, you are working. If you are not, apparently you ...

For a long time, I assumed that universities put students first. That seems self-evident: without students, a university has no reason to exist. In many places this is fortunately still the case, especially at younger universities and in countries where the traditional authority of professors has largely eroded. That is precisely why I was surprised by how things worked at one of the universities I was employed at. I was used to lengthy discussions about curricula, careful analyses of student evaluations, consultations with student representatives. Everything revolved around one question: how can we improve the educational experience? Not here. The first question I was asked was not what students need, but: “What would   you   like to teach?” I genuinely thought:  Really? I get to decide that myself? At first glance, that sounds appealing. A dream scenario for any professor. But once I saw which courses my colleagues were offering, my surprise turned into discomfort. Litt...

“You always apply for those small projects — they’re much easier.” The euphoria of my research grant had lasted exactly one walk to the coffee corner. I’d rushed out to share the news, and before the first congratulations faded, a colleague offered his verdict. The message was clear:  your achievement is not really an achievement. In those moments, the joy of achievement is quickly replaced by self-doubt. You start to wonder: Did I really deserve this? Should I have worked harder? Was it just luck? Later, when the practical consequence was discussed — a modest teaching reduction, as is customary — the apparent cheerfulness turned to open irritation. Two colleagues were annoyed. Why didn’t   they   get teaching relief to make time to write a proposal? Wasn’t that unfair? The implication was unmistakable: I must have had   so few   other responsibilities that I had ample time to work on a proposal. The months of sacrificed weekends were irrelevant. My investment w...

The moment you say yes once, you will be asked again. You have landed that new, highly coveted permanent position. You naturally want to show your best side: to be available, collegial, reliable. My warning is simple: don’t. Or if you must, only in moderation.  In academic environments, helpfulness is rarely rewarded explicitly, but it is quietly exploited. Women, in particular, tend to say yes more readily to tasks that “just need to be done”. Men, in my experience, often do so far less.  What I have noticed over the years is this: if a male academic does end up with an undesirable task, he often ensures that he is never asked again. By doing it badly, by delaying endlessly, or by “forgetting” it altogether. The outcome is predictable. The task disappears, and so does the request. The system, in other words, rewards exactly the behaviour it officially discourages. My advice, then, is straightforward but not easy: learn to say no. That is harder than it sounds, especially if y...

For some, becoming head of department is an honour. They probably assume it comes with status or power. For most academics, it is something to be avoided at all costs — or at least postponed for as long as possible. That was certainly true at my department at the time. A new head of department needed to be appointed. The dean called us in for a meeting: two candidates were under consideration. I had just secured a prestigious research grant, so I didn’t have time. A perfectly reasonable argument, I thought. The dean barely listened. My male colleague took a different approach. He began by chatting warmly with the dean about what a wonderful job the dean was doing. Since his appointment, so much had improved — and all this despite the heaviness of the role. The dean was suddenly all ears. My colleague then described his own situation: he, too, was under great pressure, but for a good cause. He went on at length about a grant proposal he was preparing. It would be so good for the univers...

On permanent positions and the informal rules of academic life Congratulations on your permanent position. The marathon is over — or so I thought.  Welcome to the triathlon. That was my first thought the first time I found myself second marking.  Reading every student essay reviewed by colleagues, writing a report: was their assessment fair and accurate? I didn’t take shortcuts. I read everything carefully and wrote a thorough, honest report. My colleagues were  not amused. There I went again. I had once more missed an unwritten rule.  It wasn’t about the quality of the feedback or genuine checking. It was about ticking a box.  Colleagues would do it like this: "Well done. Perhaps tweak this one up a bit, that one down a bit. Sorted." Everyone knew it was just for show. Except me. And this wasn’t the exception. It was the rule. Again and again, the formal purpose was quality control; the informal purpose was managing impressions. Take student questionnaires. You...

After your PhD comes the job search. And there, too, the unwritten agenda quietly governs what happens. My first position was a temporary teaching contract at another university. The job description was vague. They were looking for someone to replace one of two senior lecturers, in two completely different fields. At the interview, both lecturers were present. It quickly became clear that this was less about my suitability than about an internal power struggle. The question was who would get to offload a teaching responsibility. Of the three shortlisted candidates, two had a PhD in field A. The third had only a master’s degree, but in field B. The next day I received a call. The job was mine, but only if I agreed to teach field B. My expertise was in field A. The message was unmistakable. The lecturer from field B had won the internal battle, but his preferred candidate was not credible. So the position was offered to me, with the quiet expectation that I would decline. That way, they ...

One of the routine challenges of a PhD is presenting your work. As a poster. Or as a talk. That alone is nerve-racking, but the questions are the worst. What if you don’t know the answer? What if a single question exposes that your entire project is fundamentally flawed? Sleepless nights before a conference come with the territory. So does the fear of failure. My supervisor gave the classic, well-meant advice: listen carefully to questions. They can help you refine your experiment. It sounded logical. So I tried to do that. At a major international conference, I got a question from someone I immediately recognised as  the  expert in my field. She started by asking whether I knew one of her papers. I did. What followed was a long, dull monologue that grew increasingly technical and drifted further and further from my research topic. Halfway through, I had already lost the thread. Then came the punchline: “ Would you like to comment on that?” On what?  I thought. What came ...

If you spend long enough in academia, you come to know them: the colleague whose behaviour everyone whispers about in the corridors, yet whose name never appears on any agenda. I still remember the first time a senior professor made me cry during a lab meeting. I was the PhD candidate. The room froze. Afterwards, a well-meaning colleague pulled me aside and whispered, “Just avoid him. That’s just how he is.” The lesson was clear: the problem wasn’t his behaviour. It was my proximity to it. My survival depended on learning one of academia’s oldest rules: some transgressions aren’t offences to report, but pitfalls you need to learn to navigate. Back then, after months of harassment from that same professor, I was naive enough to consider filing a formal complaint. The head of the department strongly advised against it: the consequences would hit me long before they hit him. I wasn’t the only one to hear this. Many PhD candidates have left academia because of situations like this. Even la...

Some time after that first, painful conference — where I had been interrupted in public and yet was still offered a position — I received the description of the research project I would be working on. It lay in front of me, full of jargon and technical terms: the kind of text meant to impress funders and peer reviewers. I felt uncertain, seeking reassurance and hoping my doubts would be dispelled. I walked into the office of one of my own professors. I showed him the document and said, “It all sounds very technical.” He took it, read a few paragraphs, looked up, and asked, without a flicker of emotion, the question that floored me: “Don’t you think this might be a little beyond you?” No genuine concern. No inquiry into my motivation. No, “Let’s see how we can prepare you for this.” It was a verdict. An academic way of saying:   Stick to your lane. Was he protecting his own status? Or that of the field? Or was I really as incapable as I feared? Years passed. I became a professor my...