Always Be Nice...
It never ceases to amaze me how often people forget how small our little world is. Two brief stories to illustrate my point.*
Sometime within the past year, a certain person made some very snarky, I'd even say rude, comments on my blog. (I erased the comments, so don't bother going to look for them). Shortly thereafter, I received a letter from this person's department asking me for an external evaluation of the person's work for tenure and promotion.** Yikes!
Second, at an ASA meeting one year, my graduate student was giving her first presentation ever at a conference. Obviously extremely nervous, and obviously a student, she had a pretty rough time getting through the presentation and almost froze up in the Q&A. The situation was not helped by two senior "colleagues" in the audience who snickered through the presentation and asked downright rude questions at the end--laughing at her answers. Not two weeks later, I received a proposal to review for an NSF grant and guess who the author was?
Did I take the opportunity to punished them for their misdeeds? Of course not. Did they know me well enough to know that I wouldn't? They did not! My point--be nice, academics. Even if you can't drum up the humanity to do it, use your own self-interest. You never know who is going to be on the other end of that review/decision process. Particularly when dealing with younger colleagues, there is a tendency to be dismissive and condescending. I remember quite well such behavior of several unnamed people when I was a graduate student and assistant professor. It wasn't long after when I was evaluating their work, making decisions about their grant proposals and manuscripts, contributing to their promotion decisions, and even deciding what their raises were going to be. That's the way our field works. The hierarchy exists, but it is neither rigid nor impermeable.
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* I've changed some details to protect the guilty. I'm not sure why I feel compelled to point this out in a footnote since I have never promised even a modicum of honesty on this blog!
** This kind of story probably encourages people to comment anonymously. They'll worry that any critical comment they make will be construed as rude. That's a fair concern, but there is a difference between speaking your mind and being a jerk about it, and I think most of us can tell the difference if we're being honest about it.
Categories:
Academic Life
10 comments:
> * I've changed some details to protect the guilty. I'm not sure why I feel compelled to point this out in a footnote since I have never promised even a modicum of honesty on this blog!
:) i think we just assume that when you're talking about academic life you're not going to lie. although i think it would be hugely entertaining to have a blog of fake academic stories while using your true identity...
Com'mon Dan, not even a *hint* at who the first person was? You know your anonymous readers love a good puzzle.
How sad for your grad student..sounds like a very bad scene! One would think that an educated person would have learned civility and manners somewhere along the line ~ sigh ~ appears society is experiencing a manners meltdown.
Dr. Forni's “Choosing Civility: The 25 Rules of Considerate Conduct.” ( http://web.jhu.edu/civility) is a very good read.
Anon: Here's your hint: The person was successfully promoted.
SSS: Thanks for the link. Our dean was considering making this book required reading for faculty! I never actually bought it, but I think I will now as I'm sure it will provide some good blog material.
Dan, it's loaded with great blog material!
I agree with you that people should be nice, but I disagree with your logic on the self-interest part, except as far as the living with yourself kind of self-interest. In fact, I think considerations of self-interest within existing power structures can lead people to look the other way in the face of unacceptable behavior. In much of academia, you are rewarded for distinguishing your own ideas above those of others, generally by whatever means--superior arguments but also belittling others into silence, for example. The reason that you were unable to punish your mean-spirited colleagues when given the opportunity to review them is that these things are not considered important for advancement or funding. Unless there are direct incentives for nice behavior and/or disincentives for mean behavior, people will continue to be jerks and will not be punished for doing so (as the miscreants in your story weren’t). Further, I could imagine that fear of retaliation from jerks could lead people to avoid saying anything. After all, I’m sure the jerks are asked for input on proposals and promotion decisions as well, and they’ve already shown a capacity for meanness.
Ah, but how do you know that the person didn’t insult you in purpose, knowing that your honorable nature and desire to regard yourself as fairminded would make you give a better evaluation of them that you would otherwise have done? There is a story by Borges with this premise.
The professor who was mean enough to drive me out of grad school applies to the grant program I run for research grants now. I recuse myself. It is the best I can do.
Well, I don't really feel anyone has appointed me to be the punisher of jerk-like behavior in academia. Punishment that isn't apparently connected to the crime is basically useless anyhow. How would one of these people even know they were being punished, much less knowing why they were being punished. I figure what comes around goes around anyhow. If people aren't savvy enough to control themselves in these environments, they probably aren't in other settings either--and they are probably bearing some serious costs for that.
Alejandro--you've got a point, but I don't think that would have been operative in either of these cases because these people could hardly have known I would be selected to evaluate them. Furthermore, I honestly don't think I have a reputation for being particularly concerned about my fairmindedness. Rather, I probably have a reputation for going off half-cocked when I get mad about something! I know that's hard for some of you to believe given how I've mellowed with age, but it's true (back me up Rory!)!
Hmmm....I am not sure that I can back you up on that one. Instead I have frequently noticed a crazed look in your eyes which I have attributed to you continuously suppressing a strong urge to go off half cocked.
Rory
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