(B)othered by Academia

As a progressive scholar, I am always interested in how we can break down the hierarchical approach to education and knowledge that is at the foundation of how universities work, in favour of something more collaborative and inclusive. I am deeply skeptical of ideas about “authority” and the power relations that they create between student and teacher, or even colleagues. I value a feminist ethic of collaborative teaching and learning. And so from my very first days as a university teacher, when I dipped my toes into the water as a graduate student, I felt committed not to buy into the seductive trappings of authority; I would try to lessen the distance between myself and my students, rather than allowing myself to seem like someone to be feared.

It is now hilarious to me that I imagined I had to worry about being feared to begin with. But I’ll get to that in a moment.

I translated this initial approach to my position as a professor into various self-conscious attempts to downplay my authority as a scholar and teacher such as: wearing jeans to teach; telling students to call me by my given name; and using colloquial language freely in the classroom. At the same time, I worked hard to implement these values in more profound ways, such as by deemphasizing straight lecturing in favor of more interactive ways of sharing knowledge, and by taking great pains to present myself as someone flexible and approachable. I have always prioritized trying to build a space in which students never fear the idea of giving the “wrong” answer or letting me know that they are struggling or unhappy. None of this is new, or revolutionary, I know. That’s kind of my point.

With some students, this approach has proven incredibly successful. I am still in very good touch with some of my very first students, and they have reflected back to me how they felt validated and listened to when I was their professor, in such a way that encouraged them to explore their interests and blossom intellectually. But lest you should think that I am bragging, the point that I want to raise here is that the flipside of these heartwarming stories were the students who, within this non-hierarchical context, have walked all over me.

I was not stupid; trying to be collaborative did not mean that I did not have boundaries or that I let anything go in the classroom. But what I did not realize was that as a very young-looking woman, my starting position in the classroom was one in which I had very little authority at all, and so I was trying to “solve” a problem that in many ways, I could only wish would have existed. I did not need to lessen the distance; I needed to convince students that there was a distance at all. Students, and even in one case a teaching assistant of mine, were disrespectful, treated the often progressive approach I took to our material as the ravings of a crazy lefty with no credibility, and refused to take me seriously. They did not see me as a professor, or as someone who could help them learn anything. When I set down rules or boundaries they tested them to their limits. And if I want to be honest, these students have almost always been young, white, and male.  Having talked with many young-looking female professors, I have also learned that this is a phenomenon that exists beyond my personal experiences; we all have stories about  wrestling for respect in the classroom, and for some women I’ve spoken with, these experiences have even gone so far as resulting in very real threats of violence.

And so this fall, as I began my first ever semester of full-time teaching, I reflected on these initial experiences and asked myself what I could do this time to make it work. How could I not totally give up on my beliefs about how best to foster a productive learning environment in the classroom, while at the same time not getting treated like shit by them? The conventional wisdom among my peer group has always been, “be tough at first. Only once they’re a little bit intimidated by you, can you loosen up and show them that you’re actually nice.”

So I bought myself a couple of blazers. And I learned not to see lecturing as the worst thing in the world. And my syllabus was full of rules. And what I’ve discovered is that all of the blazers in the world will not make me a hardass, because I’m just not one. I am too stuck on the importance of building trust as a way of facilitating the educational process that I cannot even play the role of the mean professor for a little while. What I have been trying to do instead has been to set very clear boundaries that do assert my authority as a professor without affecting the nitty gritty of my pedagogy, because I think that in my position, I sadly need to get them to think I’m more authoritative, rather than less so. I now would not be caught dead wearing jeans on campus. I am learning to insist that students call me “professor”. This would mortify my young grad student self. I see these small things as necessary tools for survival.

What makes me furious, now, is when I hear my fellow progressively inclined colleagues sneering at those of us who opt for greater formality with our students, as though we are scabs. It seems obvious now, but it took me a long time to realize that the professors who are most likely to go by their first names and wear jeans (to keep using the same examples, but there are of course many more), are professors who already have that authority to begin with. They are often older, often male, often white. They are so stereotypically “professorial” to our students that they can “just call me Bob” themselves to death and they will just be seen as “that super cool professor who’s like, an activist and stuff, and talks to us like he’s our friend!!()!(!”  My attempts at cultivating a similar ethic instead result in “that flaky bitch who tries to push her beliefs on us and doesn’t know anything, anyway.” Basically, the professors who can get away with rejecting their authority are the ones for whom their authority is so entrenched already that they’re not really giving much up when they put on a pair of jeans; they are participating more in a sort of “PR” exercise wherein they make it look like they’re giving it up. That is an important/impactful thing to do in and of itself, but the hierarchy is still happily intact at the end of the day.

That female professors live with the above double standards is nothing new. But my recent reflections on my conflicted approach to how I present myself as a professor have left me with a few conclusions: first, I hate the smugness with which my “just call me Bob” colleagues tout their non-hierarchical approaches, and condescend to my clinging to formality, because it clearly takes tremendous amounts of privilege to begin with to be able to reject any of it; or, again, to be giving the illusion that you are doing so. Second, I worry that professors with feminist values around teaching are put in awkward positions of having to choose between these values and getting by in our jobs. With some classes, the hierarchy is all I’ve got going for me in terms of earning any respect from my students, and so it is not such a thrilling prospect to think about working to undo it. As it is, I am in this strange in between place with my black pants and blazers, my rules and my titles, which I balance out with my focus on interactive classroom experiences and approachability. I will not even consider wearing jeans until my hair goes gray. What I have learned is that I basically have to try and work the hierarchy to my advantage before I can even think about undoing it. This is a worrying contradiction, and one that I wish the self-proclaimed men of the people that “don’t even own a tie, man” at the top of the pyramid would acknowledge existed. Progressive, collaborative models of classroom learning seem very trendy right now, but I’m not sure there is always space to discuss how many of us who really subscribe to those values find ourselves struggling to implement them as profoundly as we wish we could.