Austere Thought

Some personal notes on the decline of the university and my decision to leave it. 1/

I've been employed as a tenure-track assistant professor of art for the last three years at a public university in NY, and decided at the beginning of the semester (before the pandemic) that I would be voluntarily leaving my position. 2/

On the occasion of my departure, I wanted to share some notes from my experience that I hope will be useful for others who continue to teach, work, and study in public universities in the U.S. 3/

My entire time teaching in the SUNY system was characterized by extreme forms of austerity, manifest as staff and faculty hiring freezes, funding cuts and restrictions, and the axing of several humanities departments. 4/

The austerity itself was unsurprising, as I had already lived through the implementation of similar policies in the UC system while I was an undergraduate, and then a doctoral student. What did surprise me, however, was how many faculty in the university acted in this context. 5/

It seems to me that there are two divergent strategies for surviving austerity. The first is to organize in solidarity with all who are threatened, and the second is to fight only for your own position. In my university, it seems the majority of the faculty chose the latter. 6/

Choosing to fight only for yourself in the context of broad assaults on public universities takes form as atomized careerism, as the undermining and sabotage of other (often junior) faculty, and as the egotistical fantasy of becoming a "star" scholar in your field. 7/

The inevitable consequence of such practices are that departments are largely dysfunctional, able to operate only as arenas for conflict, competition, and coercion as individuals try to sustain their own sense of self-importance at the expense of everyone else. 8/

Most sad of all is that students are often reduced to lines on balance sheets in such contexts, either seen as barriers to academic success or simply as a means of securing funding for the department. Teaching itself, as a practice, comes to be only an afterthought. 9/

Even though most faculty will tell you they despise austerity, the way they act individually not only facilitates the implementation of austerity policies but actually determines their thinking and scholarship, driving them to produce only what advances their position. 10/

Collaboration, experimental ideas, unconventional pedagogy, dedication to students, and political commitments all come to be elided when careerist survival becomes the primary concern not only of scholarly work, but in service and department work as well. 11/

As faculty decide to act only in their own interest, they ultimately undermine their own positions and the positions of all other faculty as well. Individual success itself is not a good defense against cuts, and in undermining others collective struggle becomes impossible. 12/

Individual success is no protection against deans and administrations who demand you teach ever larger classes, develop ever more online courses, and produce ever larger sources of revenue, all with the implicit threat that your department will be cut if you don't. 13/

The only way to meaningfully fight against such measures and threats is through collective struggle with tenured, tenure-track, adjunct, and graduate faculty, as well as with students and workers, something which individualized and atomized careerism precludes. 14/

Given all of the above, I made the decision to search for and pursue projects outside of the context of the university in places where solidarity, generosity, and collaboration were not only still possible, but collectively desired, defended, and fought for. 15/

I'm certainly disheartened to leave a tenure-track job, something I worked quite hard for and that so few ever obtain, but in the end it was not a place that supported the kind of intellectual, political, and creative practices that brought me to academia in the first place. 16/

With the pandemic and the rush to move everything online, I genuinely worry about the future of the university as a place of learning and teaching, of critique, and of solidarity. In its place, we may have to invent new forms that will be able to support these practices. 17/

I hope at the very least that faculty (particularly tenured and tenure-track) rediscover the necessity of fighting alongside all who study, work, and teach in the university, and refuse to participate in the individuating, precaritizing, and depoliticizing logic of austerity. 18/

All of this is my way of saying goodbye to this particular period of my life, but I continue to remain invested in education as a liberatory and emancipatory practice that has the potential to make us all, students and teachers alike, more free. 19/

If solidarity is able to overtake the logic of austerity, the university may well continue to be a place worth defending. If the logic of austerity effectively precludes solidarity, we must undertake the task of constituting new places/modes of learning beyond the university. 20/