Alas, this essay is behind the paywall: “How Academe Breeds Resentment” (The Chronicle of Higher Education). Change a few words, and what Douglas Dowland says could apply to any workplace:
Resentment is essentially the feeling of being wronged by someone with more power than you. In academe, such feelings come with the job: associate professors can feel resentful toward full professors; small departments toward larger; a newcomer to a discipline at a teaching-intensive institution toward a well-regarded scholar at a research-intensive institution. Every striation of academe spurs resentment: the hierarchies of administration, the nebulous work of committees, the new hire whose salary may be higher than yours. Surrounding each step in academic life — graduation, employment, publication, promotion — is a labyrinth that draws out our vulnerability and makes us feel powerless. And with this powerlessness comes the idea that power is something others have — perhaps the tenured, or those in administration. Someone benefits from your hard work — and that person is not you. Thus academe plants the seeds of our resentment. . . .Yep. I learned long ago not to live by making comparisons. It’s better to laugh.
It may resemble thinking, but resentment ultimately has little intelligence. And it never comes with a solution. It just keeps going and going, broadening the scope of its toxicity and finding new circumstances to blame for some perceived wrong.
See also this advice: “Grin broadly at the water cooler, and go home to where you live.”
[A clarification: Sexual harassment or racial discrimination or inequities of all sorts aren’t matters to laugh off. Not at all. But the constant comparison-making that academic life seems to encourage (who got what) guarantees unhappiness. There will always be someone with a better job offer or a more prestigious place of publication. And there will always be far smaller occasions for resentment: how someone voted on a proposal, who got what course, and so on. There’s no end to making comparisons.]
comments: 5
Hm---is the writer saying resentment is only a "feeling" about "perceived" wrongs by people with more power,
not something that arises in reaction to *actual* wrongs you experience as someone with less power?
Of course some workplace annoyances are inevitable and indeed, and the best strategy is to be laugh them off---keep them in perspective.
But if you're sexually harassed by your boss, laughing it off at the water cooler might not be the most effective strategy to dealing with resentment.
I've been thinking about this again just recently because as I prepare enter a new workplace (volunteer), I don't want to fall into resentment I've felt before.
I read a helpful article about how to deal with workplace annoyances (or even real injustices) in Forbes--it suggests ways to speak up politely but clearly. I want to practice that!
But I do also see the point that the culture of academia breeds resentment simply by its structures---invites resentment even if real wrongs aren't being done.
I need to blog this out myself... Thanks for posting!
I think his point is that academia breeds feelings of powerlessness and suspicion of others’ motives. There’s always someone doing better. Here’s a further passage I should have quoted (and will add to the post): “Surrounding each step in academic life — graduation, employment, publication, promotion — is a labyrinth that draws out our vulnerability and makes us feel powerless. And with this powerlessness comes the idea that power is something others have — perhaps the tenured, or those in administration. Someone benefits from your hard work — and that person is not you. Thus academe plants the seeds of our resentment.”
Sexual harassment or racial slights or inequities of all sorts aren’t matters to laugh off — hell no. But the constant comparison-making that academic life seems to encourage (who got what) guarantees misery. There’ll always be someone with a better job offer, a more prestigious journal or press, whatever it might be. And smaller matters: grudges about how someone voted on something, who got what course, and so on. John Williams’s novel Stoner is a good resource for all of this.
Ah, thanks for clarifying---that makes total sense---a system that cultivates of a sense of powerlessness---yes! That's key.
I've seen this in academia too---once I was walking down the hall with a professor and we encountered the chair, and my professor sort of... bowed in a way that reminded me of a spaniel!
You know spaniels? They are maybe the only dogs I don't like--they fawn--bow and scrape--to people. We humans BREED them to be like that, like academia breeds subservience and resentment.
Shudder.
Again, I appreciate you adding the further passage--glad I asked!
The powerlessness seeps into those supposedly funny self-characterizations: “lowly graduate student,” “starving graduate student.” I hate that stuff.
I just remembered an old joke. A professor is in the hospital and gets a card: “The department wishes you a speedy recovery. Ten for, five opposed, three abstaining.”
PS: I’m glad you asked too.
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