The following is from The Angry Arab, via Xymphora. What Professor AbuKhalil says about academia applies equally to government, corporate America, the media, big religion, and all other bureaucracies in which the idealism of the individual worker bee is likely to come into conflict with the perceived needs of the hive.
Which leads us to one of the iron rules of life: where you stand depends on where you sit, or you won’t sit there long.
If I were not a tenured professor now, and if I were on the job market … there is no way on earth that I would have obtained a job anywhere in the US — not even at a small community college in Alaska —not that there is anything wrong in small community colleges in Alaska.
I have certainly noticed that untenured professors are today far more cautious and nervous about political advocacy (in comparison to 20 years ago or more). I often hear people say to me: I will become outspoken on Palestine AFTER I obtain tenure. I always tell them: no, you will not.
If you condition yourself to be silent and passive during the tenure process, you will be changed once you obtain tenure. And some after tenure, aim higher: they harbor ambitions to move to a more “prestigious” college or university, and on and on.
What people don’t understand is that the tenure process is a conditioning process in which one learns how to dissimulate and how to stifle moral outrage. If you succumb to it, you reach tenure damaged…
"Education is a system of learned ignorance." — Chomsky.
Posted by: Chuck Dupree on January 25, 2008 11:03 PM