{"id":499,"date":"2019-04-26T16:51:36","date_gmt":"2019-04-26T20:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/hell-spring2019\/?page_id=499"},"modified":"2019-04-26T17:15:50","modified_gmt":"2019-04-26T21:15:50","slug":"why-i-remain-hopeful","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/hell-spring2019\/why-i-remain-hopeful\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Remain Hopeful"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Full<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n

Kelly J. Baker<\/p>\n<\/header>\n

Chronicle of Higher Education, <\/em>July 5, 2016<\/header>\n
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Image:<\/a>\u00a0Shawshank Redemption (1994)<\/em><\/p>\n

I write\u00a0depressing essays<\/a>\u00a0about higher education. Or so I\u2019ve been told via Twitter, Facebook, email, phone, and real-time conversations. \u201cAnother depressing essay by\u00a0@kelly_j_baker<\/a>,\u201d reads one tweet after another. My writing on academia bums people out. That reaction still surprises and startles me because I never set out to write depressing essays. (Really, I don\u2019t). My goal is not to make readers despair or gnash their teeth, but I somehow manage to do that, anyway.<\/p>\n

I write about the realities of sexism, racism, and labor in academia. Those are not happy-go-lucky topics, I know. But anyone invested in higher education should be engaging the bias and structural constraints that make academia an unsafe space for women and people of color and that often force scholars into low-paying, low-prestige work \u2014 or out of academia altogether.<\/p>\n

I imagine myself to be a realist, a straight-shooter who tells it like it is. What I eventually realized is that my straight-shooting appeared to readers as anger, bitterness, and fatalism. I\u2019m none of those things. (OK, OK, I\u2019m still furious about the injustice of academic labor and will be for awhile). Yet I\u2019m not some freelance version of a doomsday prophet, and I would never stylize myself as such. I\u2019m not foretelling tragic ends to the modern university, but assessing the landscape as it stands right now. I write about current conditions, not projected futures.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, higher-ed writing can lend itself to the melodramatic \u2014 pivoting between technocratic optimism (MOOCs! Online education! Virtual universities unbounded by brick and mortar! Everyone can be a college student but who knows if they\u2019ll finish a degree program!<\/em>) and routine pessimism (The modern university is crumbling! There\u2019s nothing we can do! Academia is a sinking ship! All is lost!<\/em>). Technocratic optimism assures us the future is bright if only we allow tech to save us. Routine pessimism convinces us that nothing we really do matters, so why try to change the system we operate under.<\/p>\n

The optimists get on my nerves because they refuse to acknowledge structure, issues of access, and the privilege of opportunity. While the optimists might annoy me, the pessimists break my heart. Their unwillingness to imagine different futures for institutions and all the people who inhabit them makes me profoundly sad and frustrated. I hear their voices often. These pessimists explain that they cannot do anything to change academia. They can\u2019t fix the working conditions for contingent academics because \u201cit\u2019s bad all around.\u201d They claim to lack control of hiring and departmental decisions. They place the blame on the administration but refuse to recognize their own agency. The structure is broken, they tell me over and over, all the while abdicating any responsibility for making things better.<\/p>\n

Fatalism absolves our responsibility for the world around us. Fatalism leads us to accept the inequalities of academia as normative and unfixable. I can\u2019t bear it anymore; you shouldn\u2019t bear it anymore, either.<\/p>\n

And yet, I remain hopeful.<\/p>\n

A friend sent me a copy of Rebecca Solnit\u2019s recent\u00a0Harper\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0essay, \u201cThe Habits of Highly Cynical People<\/a>,\u201d because he thought I would like it. I do. Solnit takes aim at what she calls \u201cna\u00efve cynicism\u201d \u2014 the tendency \u201cto pronounce with great certainty on future inevitabilities, present impossibilities, and past failures.\u201d That form of cynicism attempts to simplify the world around us by creating certainty and clarity while the world only offers up complexity, nuance, and unpredictability. What concerns Solnit is that na\u00efve cynicism \u201cflattens the past and the future\u201d by ignoring what we\u2019ve gained but always accounting for all that failed. It \u201cshoots down possibilities.\u201d Most disturbingly, na\u00efve cynicism convinces us\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0to act.<\/p>\n

Academics are a particular breed of na\u00efve cynics, often trained to comprehend that critical thinking is most effective when it (a) involves critique and (b) minimizes an appreciation for what\u2019s already been accomplished. I first encountered na\u00efve cynicism in graduate seminars. Professors praised students who offered up the harshest criticisms of other scholar\u2019s works and scoffed at those who wanted to appreciate what a scholar managed to accomplish. Academics like to think that critique is hard, but I\u2019ve come to believe the opposite. Criticism is easy because of its reliance on a defensive posture. Imagining new possibilities is much harder work.<\/p>\n

In Solnit\u2019s view, it\u2019s important to hope that the world can change. Hope is open to possibilities. Cynicism is not. She looks to the successes of recent political movements \u2014 no matter how small, temporary, or incomplete \u2014 to remind us that we can\u2019t foretell the future. Small and incomplete victories can become the foundation for larger cultural movements. To have hope is to believe that the future is uncertain and full of possibilities. She chooses to hope.<\/p>\n

What readers miss in my depressing essays about higher ed is that I have hope that academia can change. Nothing is certain, which means there are other possibilities than what we have now.<\/p>\n

I have hope for the future of higher education because I see people fighting for new possibilities. I have hope because of the student-led movements against racism and sexual assault on campus. Protests\u00a0at Mizzou<\/a>\u00a0gave me hope. Student activists brought media attention to racism on the campus and demanded change from university leaders. Sexual assault survivors are suing their universities for violations of Title IX. The Office of Civil Rights\u00a0opened up investigations<\/a>\u00a0of mismanaged sexual assault cases at\u00a0161 universities and colleges<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These victories are often temporary and incomplete, but students made conversations about racism and sexual assault on campus happen. Their efforts removed silence and brought both issues to the attention of the media and general public. At the University of Tennessee, some of my former students have been protesting against the state legislature\u2019s attempts to\u00a0remove funding<\/a>\u00a0from diversity initiatives, particularly the campus Office of Diversity and Inclusion. These students want to show lawmakers that they are making wrong and harmful decisions. The funding removal became\u00a0law in May<\/a>, but students are still organizing around this issue. I\u2019m so very proud of their willingness to speak up, protest, and organize.<\/p>\n

I have hope because contingent laborers refuse to be silent about the exploitative nature of the two-tier employment system. Adjuncts speak up. They tell us their stories about the conditions under which they labor. They refuse to let us look away. Starting in 2013, contingent labor emerged in the national media as a pressing problem for Ph.D.s and academia. Sure,\u00a0The Chronicle<\/em>\u00a0started<\/a>\u00a0publishing<\/a>\u00a0articles<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0adjunct<\/a>labor<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0activism<\/a>\u00a0well over 10 years ago, but now labor in higher ed was a\u00a0mainstream topic<\/a>\u00a0of discussion. Scholars (like\u00a0Sarah<\/a>\u00a0Kendzior<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Tressie McMillan Cottom<\/a>) broke the silence that surrounded academic labor in the news media. Articles still appear now.\u00a0The Atlantic<\/em>\u00a0covers academic labor because contingency can\u2019t be ignored. Contingent workers continue to fight for better contracts and attempt to unionize, and even joined other low-wage workers in the\u00a0Fight for $15<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m well aware that the campaigns I\u2019ve mentioned have had mixed success. Some started and fizzled out. The victories appear partial and, perhaps, even compromised. Movements got co-opted. Infighting and competing interests can dwindle their support.<\/p>\n

Still, I have hope. These movements have shown us better possibilities. I have hope for what happens next \u2014 both with these movements and any new ones that might arise. The future is uncertain, but full of possibilities. That is why I refuse fatalism. It\u00a0is<\/em>possible for academia to become better.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we do,\u201d Solnit writes, \u201cbegins with what we believe we can do.\u201d We need to believe that we can effect change. I believe we can. Do you?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Kelly<\/p>\n

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Kelly J. Baker<\/a>\u00a0is the editor of Women in Higher Education. She has a Ph.D. in Religion and regularly writes about gender in higher ed, contingent labor, religious studies, and post-academic life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kelly J. Baker Chronicle of Higher Education, July 5, 2016 Image:\u00a0Shawshank Redemption (1994) I write\u00a0depressing essays\u00a0about higher education. Or so I\u2019ve been told via Twitter, Facebook, email, phone, and real-time conversations. \u201cAnother depressing essay by\u00a0@kelly_j_baker,\u201d reads one tweet after another. My writing on academia bums people out. That reaction still surprises and startles me because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-499","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/hell-spring2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/hell-spring2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/hell-spring2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/hell-spring2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/114"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/hell-spring2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/hell-spring2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":502,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/hell-spring2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/499\/revisions\/502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/hell-spring2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}