university

On conditional and absolute needs

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In the comment thread of a presentation on slideshare, I read the following: “Thank you Grainne. It is very interesting, but I need to know where it has been published? Conference, journal, etc? Many thanks.” This message was sent from an English University two years ago, and never received a reply.

Academic institutions impose a number of constraints on scholars. Career progress depends on published research, and the process of peer-assessment includes strict referencing guidelines. These and other requirements certainly constitute a hassle. They slow down the production and dissemination of knowledge. Yet this does not suffice to make them evil. Setting structures to moderate haste may count as a form of wisdom.

More concerning is academics representing these arbitrary constraints as absolute. Not ‘I would like to acknowledge your work, make you part of the conversation, and for that, I need to gather the details required by the process.’ Just – ‘I need to know’.

Yesterday, I was talking with two colleagues about a potential joint project, which involved practical applications. The conversation then lingered on publication opportunities in a peer-reviewed paper – ‘it’s part of what we’re supposed to do’, said a colleague. ‘It’s not part of my KPIs’, I replied. ‘I’m not in a tenure track, nor am I interested in one. I don’t have to do it.’

We live surrounded by many demands, most of them conditional, but presented as absolute and universal. Let’s clarify the difference, always. Articulating a clear if-then may be the first step on our path to freedom.

Core beliefs: there’s more to the ‘real’ world than you think

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One of the most important lessons I learnt was during a French lesson in preparatory class. Our teacher, a wise and erudite man, proposed that we should never listen to the statement that opposes ‘literature’ and ‘reality’. ‘Literature is real’, he said, ‘there’s forty five of us in this room together on its account, libraries are full of heavy books, taking up space, in valuable locations, people spend considerable amounts of time engaging with literature, there is a whole economy based on literature, and teachers are getting paid and recognised for helping understand it.’

Since then, every time anybody simplistically opposed ** insert context here ** and ‘the real world’, I remember the wise words of this teacher, and smile to myself.

Recently, at an Asialink function, I stumbled on one of these conversations. Three ‘project manager’ type leader-women were talking about academics, and how their teaching would not last students long in ‘the real world’.

One of them was working within a university, and heavily critical of academics around her. ‘They have no concept of reality. They just say, ‘we’ll do this project, funding won’t be a problem’, and they do, and they find the funding. But I’m here to help them clarify all this.’ In other words, a system that works perfectly – according to a logic different from hers – was about to be wrecked by her conception of how reality should operate. Surprising from a person who just completed a course on cross-cultural intelligence.

The world is a diverse place, and includes both corporate institutions, and universities; project managers and academics. Reality is polyphonic, and includes a broad range of attitudes and sets of values. Let’s not be deluded by this fake talk of ‘reality’. Culture, the arts, universities, are ‘real’. Real transactions, real emotions, real weight. If anything should be thought of as unreal, it is the strange dealings corporations recognised as persons by a legal fiction. But who will say that this is unreal?