This sounds like an incredibly idealized perception of academia from someone outside it--sorry if I'm making wrong assumptions about you, but this just isn't true. Yes, there is protection of academic free speech. No, that doesn't mean you can do or say whatever you want in your personal life or even your professional life, and it certainly doesn't exclusively protect only certain political or social views. In other words, if a critical view of a current president is part of your scholarly work, that's protected. But you can't not work with your building's lab safety officer because he's a transphobic, Trump-supporting, covid-denying, gun-owning racist. You can't complain to someone that your fellow graduate student listens to vitriolic talk radio whenever it's his turn to pick what's playing in lab. Sure, undergrads can speak and express and experiment, but they aren't employees getting paid. Those who are, are the ones who have to listen and absorb and serve their educational needs equally regardless.
Besides which, I get your point that maybe they chose the wrong words. But sorry, words matter and I was trying to address that as well in my original response. For those of us who do hard work in this realm that was needlessly hurtful.
@runaway887 Completely agreed. Academia loves to think of itself as such a free space but if anything my experience was the complete opposite. It was downright oppressive at times.
There is so much unnecessary hierarchy, and the power advisors and departments have over students, postdocs, adjuncts and untenured professors is actually insane. The amount of protection sexual harassers got from department leaders simply because they brought in lots of big grants was highly disturbing, and title IX was impotent.
Plus you even if you’re tenured you don’t just get to work on whatever you want. You have to follow the funding.
@stonze With all due respect, as an academic, academia is a “real world of work.” Gay may be a special type of (prestigious) academic, but most of us are very familiar with work. And, considering that many women in academia are in lower paid positions (especially if they’re mothers), we can do better than to dismiss women academics as out of touch or without “real jobs.”
@lhexisneal Lots of us work way way more than 40 hours a week and have had to commit to moves across the country and deal with an insane job application process, fwiw. Like apply for 20-70 jobs get one offer. Or try again next year.
@lhexisneal Many female academics are saddled with heavier teaching loads and lower pay than male colleagues. Since when is being an educator not a real job?! OP's divisive post reads like gasoline on an imagined culture that pits women and mothers against each other. If you don't work in an industry, such as higher education, then why sling mud on those of us who do and pretend to know what it is like to be in the trenches of our profession?
@stonze But you pretty much did with this statement: “She comes from academia and has no grasp of the real world of work.” I am in academia and a lot of people work their asses off (especially marginalized people such as people of color and/or working moms). Just saying…..
@lhexisneal Thanks for saying this. As an academic who tutored several nights a week and waited tables every weekend to make ends meet for the first five years of my academic career (after waiting tables and working retail to pay for undergrad and grad school), I’m definitely not a stranger to hard or real work.
@jesuslovena I never have used Twitter. I just read one of her books a while ago and liked it. This column was my first introduction to her outside her personal story.
@logmantm Are you incredulous because it took her 1.5 years into the pandemic to say that or because you think the pandemic had ended at that point (which is still ongoing, but, for capitalistic reasons, world governments en masse have decided as a policy matter to act as if it’s not)?
@1godspace I am incredulous that she believed schools should be closed even long after vaccines were rolled out (in fact I think personally that they should never have closed but that’s obviously my own hot take). The pandemic may be ongoing to this day in some sense but I don’t think schools should be closed.
@logmantm I still wear a mask everyday and have shifted all social activities outside so I'm maybe the wrong person to be saying this to. I've had a maybe unusual number of people in my life suffer and a few die from this so I understand the caution (though I am of the mind we need way more and smaller schools with very good indoor air quality that can be more resilient to a number of problems as the solution myself - take a bunch of this unused office space and make tiny schools that are harder to shoot up and circulate fewer viruses).
@logmantm Yeah but it's improved my quality of life a lot too. I used to get a lot of colds apparently. I genuinely thought I had allergies. And I like a ton of outdoor activities anyway and it's improved my health and well being generally to bike, kayak, etc. more often.
