Academia sucks

On standards, belonging and exile.

This post is about the attacks on Jason Arday, how academia is a crucible for the best and worst of human traits, and how we can perhaps try to do so much better, in academia and outside.

I am an academic, daughter of academics, but I have never hidden the fact that my journey was quite bumpy. My PhD in particular sucked terribly (more details here, if you care).

Academia is a terrible and wondrous place. On the terrible side, it is filled with the pettiest, most overblown egos, staggering hierarchy and bureaucracies, competitive and ever-more-impossible performance criteria, and archaic disciplinary and funding structures that stifle not just creativity but scientific usefulness in our time of planetary and social crises. On the wondrous side, it is (still, somewhat) a space of immense freedom, where one can endlessly learn and create new knowledge, with wonderful colleagues and students. The values of science, of transparent theory-building, inquiry and robust testing of ideas with empirical evidence, are still genuinely exciting to me.

The job of the academic or scientist is often difficult to describe. With some friends, doing science outreach during our graduate school, we tried to come up with a definition: the job of a scientist is to make mistakes. Interesting mistakes, new mistakes, systematic mistakes. You wake up in the morning, test some ideas in the most interesting ways you can, try to learn something about reality, document your findings. But making mistakes, not getting things right right away, is at the core of the work of digging away at the frontiers of ideas and knowledge. And it takes certain kind of values to do this: in theory at least, we have to be willing to be wrong, even happy to be wrong. We can’t let our egos and our preferences get in the way of our scientific work, we have to care most of all about reality. As in the X-files, but for real, we have to believe that “the truth is out there” and that our scrambling through mistake after mistake, trial, error, refining, rethinking, helps us uncover what the contours of that truth might be. That’s the theory.

In reality, of course, the truth of academia itself is very different. Clannishness, prejudice and conservatism abound. Incrementalism and playing it safe is often rewarded, true innovation is often punished. Just ask Giordano Bruno, or Ludwig Boltzmann, or any number of thinkers ahead of their time. The popular imagination of genius rewarded by instant recognition is very far from the norm, where innovation is usually punished severely before it is grudgingly accepted, then triumphantly coopted (why yes, I do speak from experience as well as observation, thank you for noticing).

But academia is terrible in other ways too. It is an elitist and unforgiving environment. The quick, clever and superficially brilliant are elevated. The plodding, hesitant and diffident are discarded. All too often, these categories align with the class, race, gender, migration, disability categories of our societies: the posh white dude speaks with a birthright of confidence. The working class black woman can never quite know what will sound right. Meritocracy? Like heck.

The very standards of scientific integrity, against fabrication, plagiarism, unfounded statements, can and will be turned against individuals at any time. The risk to the community of keeping a known deviant, a known transgressor of the rules, in our midst, is too great. Because there is public trust in our community of scientists and academics: we are trusted precisely because of our professional code of transparency, honesty in making mistakes while uncovering what we can of reality. All we have to bolster this trust is our good name, i.e. our individual reputation, and our collective standards, i.e. our determination to hold each other accountable.

But again, these standards are not enforced fairly. Some skate by despite quite serious accusations. Others are scrutinised, under constant suspicion, because of their identity, appearance, politics. None of this is fair. But you knew that already.

In Naomi Klein’s brilliant book Doppelganger, a pivotal moment is where her troublesome doppelganger Naomi Wolf is expelled, violently and irrevocably, from academia. During a live BBC interview, still easy to find and heard-watched millions of times on Youtube, the interviewer exposes a fundamental mistake in Naomi Wolf’s historical research. The mistake is real, the interviewer is correct. It’s sloppy research, and deserves to be corrected. But the consequences were immense. Naomi Wolf became the public laughing stock of academia, everyone agreeing to cast her out. Instead of being corrected and given a chance to go fix her research, she was simply ejected. Banished. Exiled. The community expelled her, with no return possible, no redemption possible, forever. And as Doppelganger explains, the outcome for all of us is reasonably dire: Naomi Wolf found a warm welcome in the open arms of Steve Bannon’s MAGA far-right, even co-hosting his podcast.

This trajectory from accepted member of the liberal academic world, to disgraced outcast, to frontline far-right propagandist might be disturbing, but it is far from rare. And if we think about it, it shouldn’t even be surprising. People need community. We are all social animals - yes, even academics. The act of being denounced, shamed and exiled by our community is one of the biggest traumas that can ever befall someone, whether the punishment is justified or not. Members of the liberal elite, if they are expelled by their liberal circle, will seek community, self-worth and self-justification elsewhere, and Steve Bannon’s far-right will give them that (if their demographic suits him, ahem), for a price of political loyalty. For Jason Arday, there was no new community, no welcome, no arc of redemption. The harshness of the attacks, from media and colleagues, right and left, was overwhelming. With nowhere to go, he killed himself.

[A personal aside: when the Guardian first published its investigation of Jason Arday, I wondered what they thought they were doing, playing along with the far-right, attacking an individual rather than exposing systemic or structural factors. In retrospect I wish I had voiced my uneasiness. It would not have changed anything, of course, but my own conscience. Ironically, I am suffering from what I now understand to be a form of ‘autistic inertia,’ the inability to respond immediately, or even in a reasonably timely fashion, due to emotional difficulty in finding the right tone, as well as anticipating hostile responses. I was only recently diagnosed and am still far from understanding what autism means for me. I looked up Jason Arday’s publication record and found some very thoughtful and useful writings on autism in academia. And then, so fast, the attacks, investigation, resignation, suicide. None of this is ok.]

So this is where things get uncomfortable: how much are we willing to change ourselves and our community behaviour? Some crimes against the community are so bad they are deserving of exile: harming of others, undermining of our collective ability to manage ourselves. Following Christopher Boehm and other anthropologists studying egalitarian societies, the ability of the collective to expel a dangerous individual is vital for the maintenance of conditions of equality and freedom. Exile is an extreme punishment, but sometimes justified. Sometimes necessary.

But in academia (and in some other rather-too-pure organisations), we expel very easily, very quickly. One strike and you’re out, with no way back in. No understanding, no discussion, no corrective, restorative or reparative action possible. That’s harsh. That’s violent. Can’t we have other ways of being and acting? Couldn’t we for instance denounce the activity of transgression, without attacking the person themselves so violently? Couldn’t we ask them to explain themselves, their goals and reasoning, and how they would want to act differently? Can’t we accept confession, with the potential of personal learning and transformation that comes with transparency and accountability? Couldn’t we give some space, some understanding, to the very real, flesh & blood, fallible, suffering human being at the centre of the accusations?

Even if the outcome is incompatibility with a specific community (and let’s face it, academia is not for everyone, thank god), can’t we recognise that incompatibility alongside the strengths and worth of the individual? Alongside their dignity? Messing up, even badly, dishonestly or destructively in one domain, at one time, should not be a life sentence, a condemnation to permanent uselessness by one’s peers. Surely there are other ways to hold each other accountable while pointing towards positive future activities - and to be clear, co-hosting Steve Bannon’s MAGA podcast is NOT a feelgood happy ending to any story.

In academia as in politics, as in any community, we long for belonging, for recognition from our social circle. Sometimes, some people take unacceptable shortcuts to achieve that belonging and recognition, lying, fabricating, plagiarising. Sometimes they think that’s what everyone else is doing, so they are justified in doing it too (and indeed, quite plausibly, some people are doing it, and getting away with it splendidly to boot). Sometimes, people betray the trust of their community, harming its members and its functioning. Sometimes, people expect belonging and recognition without any work of community care and reciprocity, and turn to toxic domination when they are disappointed (and that’s how you get the manosphere, folks). The very real human need for social belonging and recognition can twist and turn us in strange and sometimes unpleasant ways. But similarly, the desire to purify our social circle, and cast out the transgressor, can make us complicit in a punishment that outweighs the original crime. Perhaps there is some other way to be human, to be academics, to be community members upholding standards. Perhaps we should care about finding that other way.