Saber Rattling

[rynling]

I’m starting to think the lack of respect given to a professor who takes pains to be “kind” and “accessible” might be a cultural matter.

In cultures where social hierarchy is understood and valued, like Southern culture and Japanese culture, a calm and relaxed demeanor is generally perceived as a clear sign of authority, and the act of being generous is an obvious power play. Conversely, people who always seem to be neurotic or busy are perceived as having low status, and being unnecessarily strict is the mark of someone who has no real power or authority.

In my mind, saying something along the lines of “Yes, I can grant you a deadline extension” is a concrete indicator that I have absolute authority over a student’s life. If I can arbitrarily grant them a favor, I can just as arbitrarily use my power to make them suffer if I so choose. The implication is that there are no rules other than my own, as I am the highest and final arbitrator.

This happens to be true, by the way. At the moment I have no other “boss” or “supervisor” than the Commonwealth of Virginia. As indicated by my formal rank and title, I can essentially do whatever I want.

(To be extremely grim for a moment, I understand that many people were confused by how Larry Nassar, who sexually assaulted hundreds of students, was able to get away with it for so many decades despite so many formal reports. This isn’t a great mystery of human psychology; that’s just how the American university system works. If you called this system “medieval,” you would not be wrong.)

When I grew up in the South and lived in France and Japan, I never had any trouble with anyone understanding my generally chill attitude as anything less than a firm indication that I was in control. Even though I was younger then than I am now, I never had a problem with anyone mistaking me as “not taking things seriously enough” or “not being worth their time.”

To me, an overt display of dominance is the last resort of a weak and insecure person, but I’m starting to understand that this is what most Americans expect from authority. This seems absurd and inelegant, and I find the prospect distasteful, but I suppose I can teach myself to treat my students (and colleagues) like animals who constantly need to smell the testosterone in each other’s urine.

Being evil doesn’t come naturally to me, but I’m sure I can figure it out.

Comments

[lassarina]

I'm Southern (well, Marylander, but it's south of the line) and overt dominance is absolutely weakness and insecurity. Kindness isn't so much a sign of authority, but it is a sign that you don't need to show me anything, it's just a sign that you know who you are and you're chill with it, regardless of where that falls relative to me.

[rynling]

Exactly! Thank you for backing me up on this.

As far as I'm concerned, anywhere you can get sweet tea without people looking at you like you're crazy is "the South."

Since you're from the area, you'll probably understand what I mean when I say I was surprised by how much Washington DC is a Southern city. I've never had any trouble getting along with anyone living or working here, but my university is its own weird microcosm, mostly because it has a lot of transplants from other regions of the country. I probably won't think about my shitty school after I've gotten my last paycheck, but I'm going to miss DC a lot.

[lassarina]

What's interesting is I moved from the DC suburbs (you could drive 10 minutes from the house in which I grew up, crest a hill, and look down into the lap of DC and the Washington Monument) to Chicago, which--Midwestern sensibilities are in a lot of ways very Southern, in that you get a sort of basic expectation of sharing and generosity. (Potlucks are wild. There is so much food.) And yet it's more restrained up here. But there's still that Southern feeling where the default interaction is at least polite rather than brusque, where people try (because it's a habit held over from when if you didn't at least try to get along, you'd freeze to death alone maybe?)

[runicmagitek]

I've been thinking a bunch about all you've mentioned here, considering my life experience has been the polar opposite (born and raised in Massachusetts and everyone in my family is from New York). In college, a lot of my peers (myself included) sought out the professors who were hardasses, fearing we wouldn't receive "genuine" critiques of our work when with a "nice" professor. People who were nice were always deemed as "easy" in terms of getting a grade. Some of my favorite professors were the more neurotic ones, but then again that's art school in a nutshell (did I ever tell you the story of my painting professor who told us about the bread knife he stole from a restaurant so he could paint with it? and then proceeded to encourage us to do similar things for painting implements? yeah....).

But even outside of academia, being nice in public in New England is really weird. If you say hi to someone on the streets you don't know, you get looks. If you try to chat someone up in line at a store, there's a high chance that someone's going to ignore you. This can vary depending on how deep into the countrysides you are, like western MA or anything outside of Rich Ass White Town, Maine, where people tend to be more personable. But oh my god, not nearly as much as it is in the South.

And I mention all this, because I remember the multiple times I've been to Alabama and Georgia and how deeply unsettling it was for me due to strangers being nice to me. It really is a different type of culture and it didn't occur to me that things like work and academia would also be that much different. I also just eat this kind of shit up, so thanks for sharing these experiences.

That said, I'm also sorry these experiences haven't been amazing. I hope your new place is more accepting of your teaching style. Or that you at least not get shitty students/coworkers/bosses/people.

[rynling]

In college, a lot of my peers (myself included) sought out the professors who were hardasses, fearing we wouldn't receive "genuine" critiques of our work when with a "nice" professor. People who were nice were always deemed as "easy" in terms of getting a grade.

When I talk about being "evil," I don't mean "evil" in the sense of "giving appropriate critical feedback on student work," which is my job. (Albeit only to a certain extent, but the intersecting lines of privilege involved would take a lot of time to untangle and map.)

What I mean is that I would engage in de facto discrimination against students in marginalized positions.

Let's say, for example, that a student has a chronic health condition and is also struggling with a mental illness. What I would prefer to do would be to give a student like this a bit of breathing room so that they can feel comfortable doing the coursework without having to conform to arbitrary standards. It would be nice if such students were registered with the Office of Disability Services, but many students aren't, especially because "disability" has historically been a backdoor for discrimination against nonwhite communities in the United States. If I were being a "hardass," however, I would not grant any extra help to the students who need it, citing the necessity of "rules" and "standards," which - again - are completely arbitrary and completely under my control.

The sole reason I would set students in marginalized positions up for failure (while the more privileged among them succeed) would be to stage a superficial demonstration of my authority for my own benefit. In other words, I would allow people to suffer so that an unjust hierarchy of power can be upheld.

That's what I mean by "evil."

I hope your new place is more accepting of your teaching style.

The University of Pennsylvania is the academic equivalent of Game of Thrones. The expectations are different, but the quality of the students is as well. Since there's no pretense of "accessibility," I can evaluate work according to meaningful real-world standards, which isn't possible at a regional public school. Elite students can be treated like intelligent adults who can handle critical feedback specifically because no one who needs "kindness" would make it that far in the first place.

Like I said earlier, the lines of privilege are complicated.

[runicmagitek]

That's 100% what I meant by my hardass professors, because a vast majority of them did exactly what you described. On top of that, I said "genuine" previously because they would scoff at a student's work in class, say "this isn't worth my time", and move onto the next one. That was the "genuine critique" and no one was given any breathing room for the sake of equality or whatever and us students were conditioned to desire that "feedback" :(