It’s January 2023. I’m at only my second live, in-person conference since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. And, it’s the Modern Language Association annual convention – the behemoth where I get to bump into my old pals and serendipity prevails. The convention hallways are rife with mask-covered faces that I’ve really, really missed these past 3 years. Other than the masks, the biggest change is that most everyone has moved off of Twitter, where we usually had very engaging intellectual conversations across panels that made it feel like the academic universe wasn’t so gargantuan and cold-hearted. And, this year, it’s in San Francisco – just a 45-min drive from San Jose where I’ve been stationed for the last 18 years. Giving everything I have. Volunteering for more service than I could handle. Killing myself every year to “do good.”
Despite having been in the same institution for all of my professional career, I still carry a vast curiosity for everything. I race triathlons in order to meet people from all walks of life. I attend conferences in far flung places to ensure that my scholarship isn’t myopic, white, colonial. During the pandemic, when I couldn’t travel to a triathlon to race with my endurance community and partner that travel with giving a talk at some super cool audience of colleagues (mostly self-funded), I resorted to outright traveling with a run adventure company that included cultural learning along with running through unimaginably beautiful vistas to hear bells tolling in a small town up in some far-away mountains. It was exquisite. And the first vacation that I ever took since starting into academia.
But, here I am back at the MLA and not having such a great day. That lasted all of 2 panels until I bumped into a beloved friend who I haven’t seen in a very long time. And, she immediately reminded me why I’m in this game of academia despite the overwhelmingly disappointing news that I received this morning. News that directly relates to the advancement of my career. That would have been a reward for all of my loyalty to my institution. All I’ve been thinking since receiving that news is how the University has betrayed me. That administrators don’t care.
She reminded me that they don’t.
She’s right.
I know this. All too well. From two decades of swimming around, under, past, and through institutional morass. I should know better.
In an effort to advance my understanding of the institution, I had an opportunity to shape my leadership vision recently.
In thinking about how I wanted to articulate what I’ve been doing through Digital Humanities, Digital Pedagogy, and more recently, Public Humanities, I bumped into Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s draft of her latest project, Leading Generously. I’ve long been a fan of Kathleen’s work and used Generous Thinking in conjunction with the HumetricsHSS values-based initiative to create the mission for the initiative that I have created and lead as Director of Public Programming for the College of Humanities & the Arts, H&A in Action.
There’s a learning curve to be where I am (and undeniably in a position of privilege at this point). I’ve spent a lot of time making space for other people but have found that my position as a full professor means that often people don’t reciprocate that, thinking instead that my privilege is already enough space. This has resulted in, for instance, being pulled from edited collections in favor of making space for other voices or failure to provide peer review feedback on an article submission because editors thought I would be insulted.
I realized that others don’t know to make space for me – that I need this generosity, too. So, I’ve been more specific of late. But, I’ve made a small error – in this new position, I’ve been using “we” instead of “me” to articulate and claim credit. My thought was that “I’m doing it for the college, the university, the public good” and that collaboration makes us much more powerful as a community in what we want to accomplish.
This is the error that I’m really coming to grips with right now:
“Our institutions will not, cannot, love us back. However much we sacrifice for them, they will never sacrifice for us.
(Draft, Preface – Leading Generously)
If I don’t stand up to articulate the invisible labor to create a college-wide initiative, no one else will. If I keep volunteering for extra intensive service because no one else is volunteering, the University will keep inviting me to the table. If I don’t insist on resources to help me do my job, the University is happy to let me self-consume. If I don’t speak up about ethical breaches by other units on campus, the University is happy for my silence. If I don’t push for better conditions so that other faculty don’t fear for their futures, the University is thrilled to have me as an automaton.
If I take the University at its word to empower and train anyone who’s ready for administrative roles, I should look at the broken promises over the last 20 years.
I’ve survived the University in spite of its dangling carrot that never comes close enough to grasp.
After all, I’m only an employee of a large, urban public university that just doesn’t love me.
Get over it.
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See: Agate, Nicky, Rebecca Kennison, Stacy Konkiel, Christopher P. Long, Jason Rhody, Simone Sacchi, and Penelope Weber. “The Transformative Power of Values-Enacted Scholarship.” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications vol. 7, no. 1, December 7, 2020, pp. 1–12.
See: Mark Sample’s remarks re intellectual leadership and professional development from a panel at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention 2023.
triproftri 