“This wild tongue refuses to be tamed” – Xin Huang

As winter maintains its final hold into early March, leaving us with gray landscapes and heaps of dirty snow, I think that perhaps the inwardness and contemplation that often comes with remaining indoors can be a gift. Using this time to strategize with allies—to explore the particular and the general and honestly grapple with how we can impact real change—is an opportunity that doesn’t often come, given the breakneck pace of the academic calendar. 

On Friday, March 8, staff, faculty, and a smattering of graduate students gathered in Curtin 175 for a half-day symposium titled “Power and Gendered Labor in the Academy.” The symposium worked to expand discussions about sexual assault and violence—ones that so often begin with the statement #MeToo. While rape culture and patriarchy are surely to blame for the preponderance of sexual assault, these are not the only reasons that acts of sexual assault and violence are made socially permissible. The panelists and keynote speaker encouraged audience members to shift our analytical gaze to consider the intersection of gender, power, and labor—here, they suggested, is a new space for reflection and eventual change within the academy. 

The first part of the symposium, moderated by C21 Deputy Director Maureen Ryan, featured a panel of UWM faculty (Rachel Buff, Renee Calkins, Cary Costello, Xin Huang, and Joyce Latham). Each panelist gave a brief opening statement, sharing, in turn, what they thought was at stake and how they, given their identity/ies, were suited to address the topic. Naming class-based oppression, pervasive gender policing, discriminatory hiring practices, and the university as an institution increasingly positioning itself as a “brand,” the panelists explored both why and how certain structures of power keep marginalized populations fixed, or even absent, in academic spaces. Moving the conversation from the sharing of testimonials to a space for action, Ryan posed, “what can come of us talking in a room together?” Audience members engaged in resolute conversation with the panelists, acknowledging that the university is often not a safe place for students, staff, and faculty. A panelist remarked that universities as institutions are not gender inclusive or LGBTQ+-friendly, and are racist. This point seemed widely understood by all in attendance and no one attempted to refute this claim. Rather, discussion moved to sharing examples of how to resist these institutional certainties. My impression is that while all present could point to examples or individual instances when they reached out to a student or attempted to make their classroom an inclusive space (all good things!), no one could offer any suggestion for how to incite systemic change—that which is necessary if we wish to dismantle the power structures in place that allow sexual violence to persist on our campus, for example. 

After a brief break to refill tea and coffee cups, we returned to Curtin 175 to hear Carol Stabile’s keynote. Stabile, a former faculty member at UWM, argued that graduate student labor functions within a kind of double bind. Graduate students work within academic institutions simultaneously via a feudal system (as apprentices) and a capitalist system (as an exploited labor force). This position as apprentice/labor force makes graduate students particularly vulnerable, Stabile alleges, for they are dependent on their advisors for nearly every need: their good will, support, networks, and jobs. Unequal power relationships—often along lines of gender and labor status—mean that the context within which graduate students work is often shaped by toxic forms of (man-identified, tenured) privilege. Not by accident, this intersection also produces a controlling image of success and power in the academy. Using this formulation as a turning point to discuss the role of genius within academia, Stabile offered that “to be a genius is to never have to explain oneself.” A brooding, eccentric persona, traits that we link to genius, gives license—prerogative, even—for a person to behave outside the norms of conduct. This is dangerous territory. A perception of genius that permits predatory and violent behavior breeds precarity for the graduate student as well as those without security (tenure) in academia. 

Discussions on Friday afternoon traversed great scale. On the micro: there were productive discussions and comments from audience members regarding practices they incorporate in their classrooms that seek to ensure it is inclusive and that student survivors are well-supported and can access resources provided by the institutions. Broader comments called us to question how we receive knowledge, the conditions under which it is created, and how it is part of an ongoing genealogy. Stabile sharply questioned us to consider whether Freud has had his #MeToo moment. Through logistical and verbal gymnastics, Freud offers Western modes of knowledge and knowledge production a precedent that is thoroughly saturated in misogyny (and thus the grounds for justifying acts and thoughts of violence). We need to think more about the devastation that theories, ideas, and genealogies can wreak, Stabile urged audience members. Among the ranks of genius (a status that serves to legitimize bad behavior), Freud and his intellectual legacy have remained relatively untouchable. Psychoanalysis has had a lasting impact, and is seemingly inextricable from the academy. Whether building from, critically engaging with, or offering alternate paradigms, we remain in conversation with Freud’s contributions. Whether the warp or the weft, psychoanalysis is the cloth from which intellectual production in the humanities is cut. 

Momentum built as the afternoon progressed—a sense of solidarity emerged that felt intimate given the people who made the choice to attend and contribute. I was among allies: with people who felt they had a stake and who, admittedly, still have work to do to interrogate our positions and privilege. Still, the empty seats in Curtin 175 were conspicuous. I scanned the room often and thought: who couldn’t be here? Who chose not to be here—and for what reason? Who might not feel safe or felt like their voice would be silenced? Who disregarded the invitation and felt (erroneously) that attending such a half-day workshop would be a waste of their time?

The seats that were occupied held a fairly diverse group, especially in terms of gender. Stabile concluded her keynote by advising that as the professoriate becomes more diverse (as I was beginning to see in that room), we forget the ways in which being professorial is created in the image of privileged white men. Perhaps here, then, is an in-road for meaningful and systemic change: working to disrupt the controlling image that appears in our mind’s eye when we hear “professorial.” This symposium and the ensuing conversations clearly made the case for why we must disrupt this image, and along with that, put an end to a culture that permits bad behavior for a select few. How this disruption can occur is the discussion that must follow.