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Interesting. I work (proudly) with a State agency, but since we provide a specific professional service this culture of fear hasn’t hit us yet. However, your essay highlights the fragility - one bad administrator and it could all go awry....but crossing my fingers so far.

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Thank you Justus. Yeah, I've been in fearful offices and non-fearful offices. Very often it just seems to be about the tone of whoever is in charge. But it truly is awful being in a fearful office.

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This, sadly, is now the state of higher ed. To speak this truth, usually, you must leave the profession: "The refusal of the adults in the room to speak the truth, their refusal to say no to efforts to undermine the mission of their institutions, their fear of being called a bad name and that fear trumping their responsibility — that is how we got here."

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I know you write on these themes a lot, but I'd love to know what you attribute it to. Part of me is wondering if peer review is, ultimately, the culprit in academic conformity? Probably much blame to go around.

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I'm not sure peer review is it, though I guess everyone kind of lives in fear of *not* publishing peer-reviewed articles (and therefore perishing in the tenure process). Two drivers, IMO:

1. Tenure review itself. Your institutional colleagues will sit on the Personnel Committee or whatever equivalent body and review your applications for tenure. This will happen in Year 2, Year 4, and Year 6, typically. And then after that, you'll have post-tenure reviews (typically formalities) and at least one more big promotion application to full professor. People are afraid of pissing someone off who will then find excuses to derail their tenure or promotion bid.

2. Fear of admin. When we were asked, at my former institution, to cut an unspecified number of majors, presumably to alleviate a budget shortfall, and also told that if we didn't, the admin would be forced to use other "blunt instruments," then people were afraid of being too controversial and therefore ending up on the chopping block. This is one thing that "Lucky Hank" nails exactly. Anyone in a position of authority -- a chair, an associate dean, a dean, or a president -- can make faculty fear for their jobs in a climate of financial uncertainty.

And of course I'm talking only about tenure-track folks. The incentives for staff or adjunct faculty to silence themselves are even larger.

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When I was in a quite different profession in corporate America, my idealism and my ethics were consistently threatened to the point that I stood up against the lies and said privately this: "Life without dignity is not worth living" -- It's a story, but, know this: I got out with my heart and spirit in tact.

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Love that Mary. Impressed that you did that. These are not easy choices to make. It's very hard to keep dignity intact.

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