Among Professors: Academic Life, Power & Survival

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...

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 ...

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...