I’m just back from the gigantic annual conference of the American Historical Association, where all the men wear brown corduroy and all the women wear navy and/or black polyester. (I must at least question the “and.”) Even beyond that, it has to be the least sexy conference there is. That must be because of the sheer size of it, along with the fact that so many talented, deserving people are wandering around looking for jobs. I’m sure it isn’t because we’re historians. Hey, historians can be sexy! Heavens, I remember one time at the History of Science Society meeting where an activist colleague I brought along ended up hooking up for the night with an academic I had just introduced her to at dinner–a dinner that, as I recall, followed my most embarrassing elevator moment ever: introducing one colleague to another in the elevator, not realizing she was having an extramarital affair with him. Apparently everyone else in the elevator knew, because they were looking at me like I had pigeon droppings on my nose. I’m not saying we can compete with sex researchers or anything, but hey.
Wait, that wasn’t what I meant to write about. This was:
At the meeting, hanging out, I got into a discussion with some colleagues about academic fist fights. One of us shared a story about taking on a powerful administrator who had made a racist and sexist slur about a job candidate. What happened to him, I asked? Why, he got an endowed chair and relieved of his administrative duties! Wow, who can I slur? I mean, no administrative duties and an endowed chair! What a deal!
This story reminded me of a situation I ran into in grad school, where a fellow student found herself being sexually harassed–and I mean stalked–by a downright creepy emeritus. We found out he had a prodigious history of this. In fact, years before, he had been given a golden parachute with early retirement specifically to keep him away from more female grad students, so the university wouldn’t face lots of lawsuits from his victims. (So of course, as an emeritus, some clueless soul gave him an office to share with grad students….Brilliant.)
And it reminded me also of one fiasco I watched in horror, where a woman faculty member accused a man faculty member of sexual harassment. She was basically making it up; the evidence was clear she was trying to worm her way into a nicer job. (I learned later she had apparently tried same at an earlier university.) What did she get out of it? Mais naturellement, she got a course release, to give her some relief from the stress of the long investigation! Poor dear! I went into my chair and informed her I had every intention of filing false sexual harassment charges if it meant I could get paid off with a course release.
Only in academia can you be such a shit and get rewarded for it. And why is that? Because universities have turned into big, giant anti-liability machines. I see this also with Institutional Review Boards, originally designed to protect people who were research subjects. Nowadays they seem to be chiefly concerned with liability protection for universities (first) and for faculty (second). And in doing so, they drive us crazy.
It’s kind of yucky, really. And I guess it is one of those things that happens when you get into big bucks and lots of heavy relationships, which universities now have. Still. I mean, I know academia has always had its fair share of dramas and disputes. OK, more than our fair share, since we academics are all about ideas and tend to be so pig-headed. But still, it makes you wonder–if university administrations feel so hamstrung by legal concerns that they can’t do what’s right, how is it we’re supposed to think of ourselves as a fundamentally rational profession? Don’t we lose our claim to being first and foremost about ideas and moral principles?
Oh well, we’ve still got our brown corduroy and navy polyester. Apparently that will never change.