the tyranny of niceness

My department is the only one on campus that has a DEI staff person. Most departments can't afford them, so they typically work in school-level offices and central administrative units. Alas, my department is the biggest on campus so we have our very own assistant director of DEI. 

There have been DEI staff at every job I've had since I left grad school, and they've mostly been very nice — good ambassadors for their mandate of belonging. One has a Ph.D. in psychology and was previously a therapist, which fits well since DEI on campus is a deeply therapeutic exercise. They want people to feel included, they want people to feel they belong. Kumbaya.

Personally, I think DEI practices are antithetical to the actual business of a university, where we exclude people by design based on the quality of their academic work. Should we give everyone who does excellent work an equal shot? Yes! Does that mean we can discriminate based on race or gender? No! Discrimination is distasteful and, you know, illegal.

But I try and get along with my colleagues and I know most people here don't agree me about DEI. In all my previous jobs, I have worked very well with the DEI staff. They are nice people who need to pay their mortgages and I don't get any say in what they do so we all muddle along. 

The exception is my current job, where the DEI person — let's call her Tina — is, frankly, scary. 

Tina has a doctorate in education, and she will tell you she has a doctorate in education during every interaction she has with you. It's also in her email signature. (As far as I know, she's not aware that I have a Ph.D.) 

She is belligerent in emails but will be very sweet to your face. Every compliment is somehow also a backhanded criticism. ("The website looks good. Wasn't it supposed to be ready a year ago?"). I had a virtual meeting with her and the chair of the department in which some minor issue was decided in my favor and she exited the meeting immediately without saying goodbye. 

Were she given the power to do so, I'm certain she would fire me. 

I just had to sit through an hour-long DEI session led by her, where she first told us about her Ed.D. and then told us the department needs to admit more Black and Latinx students. Then she went through all the DEI initiatives supported by the department, before asking us to chat with each other about how we can support diversity in our roles. "What power to do we have," she asked, "to make others feel as though they belong? What's our sphere of influence?" 

Everyone of course fell over themselves to agree with Tina, to point out how great her work is, to come up with innovative ideas about how they can be nice and kind to everyone who they cross paths with. To be a safe space for anyone who needs it.

I'll admit, I was fascinated by this performance. Why exactly do we have any responsibility to fix people's feelings? Tina, for example, is never satisfied — is this somehow my responsibility? Are anyone's feelings my problem at work? I am not a therapist. If a graduate student isn't getting along with their adviser, isn't that something they should talk about with their adviser? Apparently, this is not inclusive. 

And of course there was no mention of other views. The legality of the assertion that we need to admit more Black and Latinx students was never questioned. The fact that most people in the department are not white, but Asian, was also conveniently not mentioned. Everyone agreed that we need to support each other, to be kind, to belong. Welcome to a world of endless meetings, where everyone's voice is heard, no decisions are made, but lots of cookies are served. 

I understand many people do not enjoy being the visible outlier in a classroom. I have been in lots of classrooms where I was the only woman. But I have never felt more uncomfortable at work or in school than I did at this DEI training. 

Notes on the election

I am not pleased about the outcome of the election, but it is what is and I am not surprised. My post from four years ago still rings entirely true.

I am surprised by how much other people are surprised, though. A friend I haven't seen in ages wrote to me to ask if I was doing ok despite the obvious and overwhelming racism and sexism now running rampant. I was somewhat stumped on how to reply. 

If I were being honest, I'd tell her that I'm doing amazing. This is the best time to be alive in the whole history of the planet, and this is one of the best countries to live in! It's definitely the best time and place to be a woman, the best time and place to be a (quasi) Jew, the best time and place to be someone who likes to read indoors with central heating. So, yeah, I'm doing ok, thanks.  

Do I like Trump? Absolutely not. I am as Democratic as you can get — I've never voted for a Republican in my life. And yet, unlike most people who have never voted for a Republican, I know lots of people who have. I know people who voted for Trump. And I understand why they did it! I know they aren't racist or sexist. 

But if, like my friend, you don't know any conservatives and only read the New York Times, it would be very hard to know what Trump voters are talking about. It might even be easy to dismiss them all as fascists. 

I'm trying to be sympathetic to this view of the world, but honestly I find it very tedious. How can you be so uninterested in why millions of your fellow citizens freely voted for a man you think is a demagogue? Why aren't you curious about their decision, considering it will determine the future of the country you profess to care so much about? Why don't you want to take their opinions seriously, so you can win them over next time? 

Really, how is it that Democrats are so uninterested in winning elections? If you want to win an election you always need to convince people who don't already agree with you. You need to make a case that speaks to people outside your party. If you insist that anyone who disagrees with you is a racist, sexist, and fascist, how exactly does that help?? 

Again, I'm very much not a fan! Trump is a raving nincompoop and I dislike him intensely. But telling everyone who doesn't like Democratic policies that they have to vote for a Democratic candidate because otherwise they are racist, sexist and fascist is pretty much the worst campaign strategy ever. 

Is no one in the Democratic Party friends with a Republican? Do they not talk to anyone who disagrees with them? They should probably look into that before 2028. 

The news cycle

Sometime around 2018, I stopped reading the news. This was kind of a big deal, because I was raised in a family where not reading the news is a kind of heresy. Being informed was our version of being godly. I am amazed to remember that not very long ago I had the Sunday New York Times delivered in print (!) to my house. 

My father always told me that his father, who is credited with getting the family out of Germany, read the newspaper every day. Being informed about the Nazis gave him insight others didn't have, I was told. Reading the newspaper could save your life.

This is not true, of course. No amount of newspaper reading could have saved my grandfather's life, especially since newspapers in Germany in the late 1930s were not reporting the news. What saved my grandfather's life was that he married my grandmother, and she had a distant cousin living in Ohio. That cousin talked the Fleischmann family (of margarine riches) into sponsoring my grandparents. They left Germany in August 1939, less than a month before the invasion of Poland. No one else on either side of the family survived. 

I have no doubt my grandfather enjoyed reading the paper — he had three kids and got up at 4am every day to bake bread. Thirty minutes of quiet reading time every day was probably lovely. (I'm guessing. He died many years before I was born.)

Anyway, while my Opa John may have disapproved, I've been a lot happier since I stopped reading the news. It's been very freeing. The best part is when anyone tries to engage me on some topic of current events or policy, I can quite honestly say that I don't know much about it. People sometimes bloviate past this statement but in general my sheer ignorance on, say, the rate of immigration, takes the wind out of their sails.

I'm surprised at how much I haven't missed, honestly. I read articles people occasionally send me and Josh tells me breaking news, like when Trump got shot. I've never felt embarrassingly uninformed in polite company, though I did only recently learn who was running for Senate in my state. 

Though, come to think of it, I do now read the hyper parochial news religiously. I am extremely well informed on the 10th anniversary of a nearby crepe restaurant and the contentious local effort to turn a caution sign at a busy crosswalk into a traffic signal (the township wants it, the borough does not!). I find this kind of news extremely useful. I knew that a Cava was opening near me at least 2 months before anyone else. This is the kind of news I can use. 

in which i am old

I had a favorite teacher in college. I took a class with him winter of my sophomore year where we read Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. It was awesome. Then I took his class on Machiavelli, then his class on the Roman Republic, and then he "advised" a thesis I wrote on the Florentine Histories.  Advised is in quotes there because he didn't really give me any feedback — a wonderful grad student patiently did that — but he was still technically my adviser. 

I did not exactly like this professor. In order to like him I would have had to overcome my fear of speaking to him. (I was shy.) But I was definitely a fangirl. I never wanted to email him but I also really wanted an excuse to email him, if you know what I mean. 

I was 19 when I took a class with him the first time and he was a distinguished older guy, which is how I still think of him. He wore nice suits to class and had gray mixed in to his hair. I considered him entirely middle aged, and I still think of him as being middle aged.

It was today when I realized that he was 38 when I took that class with him. And I am now 39. 

the baby turns one!

The baby is turning one on Wednesday. I don't feel like this year was short, but the days (and nights) were definitely long. 

Two kids has been a much higher degree of difficulty than one. I'm still not quite used to it. Maybe it's because my second one arrived just as my first was turning into a feral three year old? The house is just so loud now, and there so many butts to wipe! And it feels like someone is always crying. (I really hate the crying.)

The baby is seriously adorable, though — way cuter now than he was as a newborn. Big blue eyes, sandy colored hair, and he makes the cutest babbling sounds. He's very expressive. When someone he likes walks in the room he will kick his feet and wave his arms and yell something that sounds like, "hi!" He absolutely loves the dog and his big brother and is constantly laughing at them, but hasn't figured out how to play with them yet.  

In the past month he's become easily scared by things, which is not something I remember from the last time I had a one year old. He has decided, for example, that he is absolutely terrified of the bath. He used to love it, but now screams his head off if I try to put him in there. To wash his hair (which often has food in it now) I have to hold him like a football and put his head under the sink faucet. He also hates this, but less than going in the bath. He has serious stranger danger, too, and will scream his head off if you try and hand him over to someone he doesn't know. 

He is crawling everywhere and can move quite fast. He's standing and cruising along furniture but isn't quite walking yet — I'm guessing he'll walk in a couple months. It's amazing how much they change in a year! 

And now that I know how annoying two and three year olds are, I'm trying to fully appreciate how how sweet and happy one year olds can be. I guess I should take this approach to my almost four year old as well! I just don't know yet how annoying five and six year olds are.

10 years, doctorally

Next Tuesday marks the 10th anniversary of my dissertation defense. I find myself uncharacteristically verklempt about this. I think it's because, contrary to popular experience, grad school was one of the happiest periods of my life. 

It sounds super cheesy, but grad school was really fun. Not all of it (not the paycheck!) but intellectually I really miss having half a dozen people around all the time who want to talk to me very intensely about super esoteric stuff. I miss being able to mention Plato in casual conversation. Turns out, most people don't appreciate a casual Plato mention. 

I think part of me is also sad because I didn't expect to never work in political theory again. It's not that my academic training hasn't been useful — it has, both personally and professionally — but I thought I'd be able to do something for work that was at least adjacent to political theory. Looking back now that was a very silly expectation! Work that is adjacent to political theory is political (even at a university) and I don't like politics. 

And on the other hand, I have no regrets about leaving academia. And no regrets about getting a PhD. So I'll try to be grateful for the lack of regrets. I would also say that I'll attempt to find more friends who want to talk to me about Plato, but that seems like it would severely limit my options and I don't have many friends as it is. 

partnership

"Is there any word more anaphrodisiac than partner? ...There is nothing that makes me want to have sex less than calling someone my partner. Partner evokes filing cabinets, Excel spreadsheets, and the kind of people who despite procreating together, owning property together, and constantly swapping bodily fluids still will not get married because they’re “enlightened” — a “modern” family.

...Now, before gay couples had the ability to get married, their use of partner was completely understandable. A less infantile version of boyfriend/girlfriend was necessary, something that would show seriousness of commitment. But must this term now balloon out to be used by everyone, and replace terms that denote romance or some inkling of sexuality, rather than corporate-speak? I don’t want a corporate relationship. I’d rather have desires than goals."

 

Against Partnership — Emma Collins