18 Comments

I never worked in academia, fortunately, but I did work in high tech. During that, I developed the following maxim, related to business decisions when uncertainty is involved:

There's very little penalty for being wrong. There's often a large penalty for being right.

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THIS IS SO TRUE. Sadly true.

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Thank you for introducing me to the deer as horses analogy.

I am an elected member of our local council. The Emperor's New Clothes analogy has lately been on my mind with respect to decision-making.

Along with two other EMs I was called a ‘pariah’ (in public) by a former councillor (old, white male) because we disagreed on the Budget for 2024/25.

I mean, what the? That man is president of a local lobby group that presents deer as horses, and the majority of councillors go quietly along.

No option for me but to keep turning up, speaking out, and voting.

That kind of sledging and manipulationis on him (and them by their tacit agreement), not me.

I also appreciate the deer analogy, as I am a horse owner.

Come back and fight, you cowards!

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Good on you - but take care of yourself. It is exhausting, having to call a deer a deer.

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One of the knock-on effects of the lack of courage in academia is that the next generation of younger academics are increasingly careerist (who would absolutely be unemployable elsewhere) rather than genuinely free-thinking scholars. Being a younger academic on probation is already difficult in today’s university environment, but it’s even more disheartening to see senior professors engaging in ideological doublespeak or manufacturing grievances instead of calling a spade a spade. The relentless paper-publication mill has only added fuel to the fire, incentivising some sort of performative scholarship over genuine intellectual inquiry. The system rewards those who play it safe—curating their research to fit prevailing narratives, chasing citations, and padding CVs for the next promotion round. When senior academics tell me you have to think boldly about your career, I sometimes tell them, boldness may negatively impact me at this stage of my career as even Heterodox thinking is for some and not all.

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I never chased citations or fitted with the prevailing theoretical thought… it didn’t even occur to me. I’m just a strange cat wandering along on my own little path. It was only in 2018, when I decided to compile my application for prof that I thought - GOSH this is a game, I didn’t realise it was, and I’ve been playing it all wrong - and I had a bit of a freak out. I still made professor which astonishes me. Anyway, now I am a prof, I can help support people like you, and write what I want, and try to speak out.

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Thanks Katy. People like you are rare. This is why I subscribe to your blogs. I am learning and growing through your blogs and taking inspiration to teach better and attempting to do some research as I grow. The fact that you still made prof is testament to your abilities! Looking forward to your next post eagerly.

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One could take the view that dishonesty and cowardice are survival techniques, but there are other ways to survive while maintaining integrity. I'm incapable of calling a horse a deer, so I would have feigned ignorance or grabbed a backpack and gone into hiding as soon as I smelled a rat. There's too much of this cowardice in institutions across the USA and unless we reverse course, we will devolve.

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Oh they’re definitely survival techniques. I am constitutionally incapable of calling a deer a horse as well. I cannot lie for a crumpet. Something about institutions at the moment is incentivising this kind of conduct.

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While I see your point, describing them as "managerialist behemoths, which operate more like a mega-corporation" is unfair to corporations and private sector Managers. As someone who has worked their entire career in management roles in the private sector, for large corporations, I would never have got away with the behavior I see in academia.

And I think the problem the "3 Ivy's" had was that they tried to suddenly start calling a deer a deer, when everyone knew, and had seen them, and they were on the public record as, for years, calling deer horses.

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So my husband (who got out of academia two decades ago and works in a corporation) has made this point - he says the kinds of unprofessional behaviour I tell him about would not be tolerated in any corporation…

As for the Ivies - on one level you’re right - they cited principles of freedom of speech when they hadn’t cared about that on all kinds of other issues or minority groups for years. So in that sense, they were finally recalling principles which should have applied across the board.

But to my mind they were not honest that they were treating Jews differently to other minority groups, or able to identify antisemitism. In that sense they were calling a deer a horse.

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In an even more ancient reference, they had a "steamed hams" problem...

https://youtu.be/4jXEuIHY9ic?si=lY2P41sADlvZqCjn

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Thank you Katy. You've brought up some very important points that warrant a discussion.

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Your voice is equally refreshing and inspiring, Katy. I learned a new acronym this week: POSIWID. "The purpose of something is what it does." WCC bureaucracy, and many others, comes to mind.

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So much this. When I was a litigator I had a sign on my door which said, “What is it all about, really?” which was a reminder to ask myself what the parties’ true aims were, and not to get lost in the fight.

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There's a mantra for the ages.

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Great post. Sounds like the ‘party of the institution’ - i.e. those who advocate for the core principles and purpose of the institution - has been sorely subverted.

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Because substack won't let me put meme images in comments

https://substack.com/@francisturner/note/c-84511595

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