In response to my post asking readers to recount their experiences of academic shaming, one reader wrote the following:

I count myself among the shamed. I failed one of my comprehensive exams the first time around. My advisor at the time suggested that I write a paper that would more completely flesh out my response to one overarching question in my major field. I thought this was a good idea as I could complete the paper without the time constraints and stress of the exam. I spent every minute of every day of the next week (my deadline) working on that paper. When he read it, my advisor had only one thing to say...."I can't believe you got even further away from the correct answer; how can you be so stupid?" I was humiliated. He had voiced one of my private concerns that I was not smart enough to do this PhD thing and now it was out in the open (I'm sure that was his intention as well). I spoke with the department chair who called a meeting between the three of us. During the entire meeting my advisor would not look at me; he looked at the ground or at the dept. chair. He apologized for the use of the word "stupid", but not really for the intention. I ended up retaking the exam the following semester and passed without any problems. I passed because fellow students told me what I needed to write in the exam. Not the answers, but the strategy; for example, pick one theory and defend it to the death even though you don't agree with that theory. As they correctly pointed out, who cares, the exam itself is not a part of your record, just whether you passed. Lesson 1 learned in actually trying to synthesize information gained in grad school.

This same advisor (he was the only one in my particular field), during the dissertation writing phase, repeatedly failed to read my chapters, continued with questions (more carefully worded) regarding my intelligence level, and then in the end, announced that since he took another job ... he was dropping all his dissertation committee work and I would have to find a new committee chair and a new committee member. As far as I know, I'm the only one he completely dropped. This little adventure added a year to my dissertation. In the end, I finished up the damn thing under the "I'll show the bastard" banner. My second chair, who had been on the committee originally, was sympathetic and actually gave me good feedback. However, to this day, I seriously doubt my writing ability, do not like to submit articles to journals, and HATE to have other people read my work. I still think I'm too stupid to handle this career, despite the fact that I finally landed a tenure-track position, and despite the fact that colleagues other than my husband have commented very favorably on my work.

I'm still not sure why he behaved toward me as he did. Given the information I've gathered from others, I am the only one he treated this way.

Brad asks for his students' love, and he gets it. We felt the knife when he had surgery one semester, winced along with him when his fittingly Tudor gout flared up. We listen sympathetically, trying not to let our reactions give anything away, when he wonders aloud whether he's too old for his students to find him attractive.

But I wish Brad would spend a bit less time in the English Renaissance with Elizabeth and a bit more in the Italian Renaissance with Machiavelli, who wrote that it was better to be feared than to be loved. Because whatever Brad thinks, it's fear, not love, that he wants.

[...]

Last semester, after waiting three years for Brad to read a chapter draft, I asked for more feedback in a tone that wasn't exactly courtly. And I implied --Ýin public --Ýthat one of Brad's suggestions for my dissertation might not work. Those were fatal errors.

Today I can no longer call Brad my director at all. He resigned from my committee with a curt note, and though he had approved my dissertation prospectus and passed me for my comps, he refused to sign the paperwork that would get me into doctoral candidacy --Ýand didn't bother telling me.

... I sure do feel eviscerated. The department hasn't quite kicked me out. I've found a new dissertation director, recently tenured. Brad seems to head every important committee, though, and I'm not too optimistic about my career.

As every graduate student knows, the best way to maximize your chances of getting fairly prompt and reasonable guidance and advice from thesis advisors is to stay in their good graces. The price of doing so is--not always, but often--tolerating a lot of crap. That's a high price to pay, but for many it is preferable to the price of complaining. The trouble arises when professors impose on their students in truly extreme ways--when they do things like sit on dissertation chapters for months or even years at a time (and while Brad is an extreme example, the phenomenon of the prof who can't be bothered to read his students' work is extraordinarily common). No one in a position to hold professors accountable for such behavior does; the students who are at the professor's mercy are left to try to reform him without antagonizing him. It's a tried and true recipe for a depressingly common disaster, one where the person who suffers, the person who is both shamed and blamed, is the person who should have been most protected from fallout.

I can't overemphasize the value of having sane committee members. I managed one such issue at proposal time, I told my department chair I didn't want X on my committee becuase I thought X was unpredictable and I didn't want X to steal an extra year of my life for my dissertation. And my chair was great about it, X was not on my committee, my department chair took the job himself, and I'm grateful for it. Such up-front planning can save a lot of heartache donwn the line.

Perhaps part of the problem is this: When a professor is supervising someone's dissertation work, he is in essence performing a management function...but he almost certainly doesn't think about it that way; moreover, he has probably never had a class in managing people, never studied any of the literature in management and leadership, and never thought about the subject for five minutes.

Maybe grad schools should require everyone to take one class in management and supervision, to be taught with the co-operation of the business school. This might help reduce vicious behavior on the part of future generations of professors, and at the same time would help today's grad students to understand how decent people treat their subordinates, so that they would recognize if the treatment they are getting is out of line...and understand that it is not their fault.

What he said. Choosing a committee (we're talking humanities here, of course; in the sciences, they might have chosen you before you even arrived on campus) is the grad-school exam that counts most of all -- passing means a good committee and is an indication of good sense and an understanding of priorities.

Moreover, I don't think this is a bad thing. Modulo a few quirks, collegiality is fundamentally the same in the academy as in the business world, at least in my experience (14 years in each, now). If you can't socialize well -- which means recognizing and coping with nutjobs, to be darn sure -- you've got a tough row to hoe, no matter the field.

It's funny to see your (Erin's) interest in shaming, as my impression is that you are rather to the right of the folks I see decrying shame. For them, shame is a tool the deadwhitemale administrators use to persecute the subaltern.

I say high standards of scholarship (& teaching!) should be matched by high standards of behavior. In other words, cull ethically.

Welcome to the real world. Go to work in industry and you will find a load of bosses who operate the same way. Your options in many cases are to get another job, transfer, or grin and bear it. I was in a meeting with a bunch of big wigs and the topic of discussion was a set of programs that had a lot of problems because they were very badly written to start with and my job was to come up with ways to fix them. I had done the analysis and was ready to get support for the fixing and my boss (I really did not like him much - he was a perfect example of the Peter principle at work) and I were to present what was wrong and how to fix it. The boss decided he would make the presentation even though he really didn't understand the problem. Just about every description of the problems he made was wrong and the fixes he described were also wrong. I could sit there and let him make the mistakes and hope they gave permission to fix the problems or I could tell them what was really wrong and get their support that way. I told them what was really wrong and got their support and almost got fired. I got another job a couple of months later after I fixed the programs. Did I do things the right way? Would I ever work for this schmuck again? Guess.

I can't agree with Meg's comments that collegiality in business and academia are the same.

In the large majority of business settings, a jerk boss can be quickly navigated around. IN the worst case scenario, you just print out a resume, interview, and move on. That's one of the real beauties of the market-driven world. (Is it that easy in academia?) That's one reason that so much of a manager's success is tied to his or her track record in developing and nurturing subordinates.

And the standards for success and promotion in the business world are more objective and measurable than in academia.

The upside of working in non-market environments like academia is that you're supposed to be free from the iron fist of the market. But, based upon Erin's blogging, one wonders if that's true today, as administrators turn to adjuncts to hold down labor costs.

I guess my experience in Bizworld has been harsher than yours, Reader; certainly no "large majority" of settings were functional in the way you describe. I watched wankoff bosses go unrestrained in a number of settings, from a factory to a hospital and a few venues in between. I learned to duck and dodge and teflon-coat my ass, and sometimes I got to be a boss. And it sure came in handy when choosing a committee!

And there *is* a print-out-your-resume-and-move-on option for academia, one I've seen grad students use successfully several times: Jump programs. It's a bigger deal than jumping jobs is, but people do it.

While the private sector may not be a bed of roses, there are several factors which imply that extreme mismanagement and abusive behavior there will be less common than in universities:

1)In general, it's probably easier to change jobs in the private sector.
2)Extremely dysfunctional business organizations tend to fail in their missions, leading either to their disappearance or to the wholesale replacement of management. In universities, dysfunctional organizations can just keep on truckin'.
3)As I mentioned above, most private-sector managers have at least *thought* consciously about issues of management and leadership; I doubt that this is the case in academia.
4)People going into business ausually aren't *expecting* a conflict-free environment, and hence are in general better able to protect themselves than those who think they are joining a community of benign and disinterested scholars.

David --

1) Yeah.
2) I'm not so sure. I've worked for really upgefuckt companies that still flourish, and I've witnessed two departments going into receivership. I would *like* to think you're right, at least about the first part.
3) You're talking about a certain level of manager, and sure, for them, yeah. But There are a lot of ways in which a dissertation director is like a factory foreman, and none of the ones I ever worked under had given a minute of thought to effective leadership. Or if they did, they concluded the reverie with, "Aw, to hell with that."
4) Absolutely true. And that was kinda my point, if indirectly: successful (by which I mean in part *happy*) scholars are not blinded by Ivory Tower idealism.

I'm not in the humanities, but in business (the social science end). And I've heard many horror stories, so I thought I'd note that I had a great chair and committee. Admittedly, there was a bit of "incest" on the committee as two members were married and one other member had been the chair of my chair (at another University). My chair was fresh out of graduate school, but she was (as has proven to be) exceptionally high potential.

If anything, my biggest career problem since graduate school has been my inability to live up to being the kind of faculty member she is -- I can't manage to publish great stuff with a variety of people, have a family (two babies pre-tenure and still ran through the tenure finish line ahead of the game), and be an excellent teacher (not to mention exec education and consulting, and directing a center). (Unfortunately, I'm way too human and not a superwoman!). I'd love to hate her for being so successful (and happy), but she's too nice.

So that's my "horror" story with my committee.

Urg. Do I even want to go on to my Ph.D.? I'm not sure now...

Ha! These "incidents" of academic shaming are considered troublesome? It seems to me that professors such as these are concerned (in my opinion, rightfully) with the quality of the product (i.e. the PhD candidate) that will be attached to their good names. Call it "shaming" or what you will, but the apprentice can only become an artisan with the artisan's consent. Providing the "right" response to a comp exam demonstrates that the candidate speaks the language and can perform at a level that would be expected of a particular professor's (artisan's) school.

I laugh at the "outrages" noted by Ms. O'Connor based on my previous careers as an investment banker and then as a consultant. Between managers yelling at me and my cohorts for being incompetent (and then promoting us!) and being "shamed" by my consulting clients into giving the "right answer," I would say that the world outside of the academy is not much different. Indeed, my friends who teach tell horror stories about parents and principles "shaming" them into passing weak students. My partner works at a white-shoe law firm in Manhattan and regales me with the fun and games partners play on associates (and on one another). It appears that everyone is shamed! The working world, at least where there is power to be had, turns good men either into Flashman or Arthur. Crush or tremble.

In any case, I have given up on the business world. I am one year into my career in the academy and I love it. My only complaint so far is that the director of my department once told me that my writing was "too colorful" and "distracted from the argument." Anyone who wants to put a knife in my back will have to have a powerful thrust--my wounds from corporate are thick and they are tough!

"turns good men either into Flashman or Arthur..." an interesting phrase that I don't quite understand. Flashman, of course, is a coward and a bully; what is so negative about Arthur? (I assume the reference is to the legendary Arthur?)

A little war story that leads to the subject of shaming. It did not happen to me because if it had the boss would have had a broken nose or been talking to air.

I worked for the biggest and most prestigious hospital in New York City (a teaching hospital as well for an Ivy League college). My job was to assist in the payroll/personnel/benefits system as one of the lead programmers.

My first week I was called into a conference with my boss, the comptroller of the hospital and the head of the payroll department. I had never met either the comptroller or the head of payroll before. As soon as we sat down the comptroller started telling the payroll head what a f*ckup he was, he never did anything right, he didn't know how the f*ck the manage the department, etc and in those words. The payroll manager sat there and took it without saying a word. Following this the comptroller then ran the rest of the meeting. As I left my boss and I agreed that we would never ever ever take that kind of stuff from a boss. The upshot was that the payroll manager had worked for comptroller for 12 years and put up with this for 12 years.

I find the stories about academic shaming rather mild compared to this. And don't forget that this hospital was the teaching hospital for an Ivy League college as well as the medical school for that college and was also the largest hospital in New York City.

There are situations you really can't do anything about out there except resolve that you will never put up with them if you are doing your best. Even if you are not, there is no reason to put up with that kind of stuff - ever.

I agree that there are times when you may have to swallow your pride or butter up somebody to get your end result, but you will just have to set your limits and stick to them.

I guess the main differences in academia are (1) that the professors have the power to have you blacklisted and (2) the criteria for what constitutes good work are completely arbitrary.

I had a discussion with a friend in tech support the other night in which I was asked exactly what it was we were *supposed* to be doing in English classes, and I told him that the problem was that there was no real understanding of what the job entailed anymore.

I think that for me at least, it's not so much that this academic shaming is necessarily unique to academic, but that in an environment where the very concept of common sense has been problematized out of existence, it can be impossible to figure out the rules of the game.

Wow, just, wow. (re: that first story Erin told).

I reiterate the person who said that there's a lot of wisdom in choosing sane committee members.

I am in the sciences, and I was permitted to choose my committee. I was very fortunate in that the person I chose as my chair (without knowing him very well) was a most honorable and upstanding sort. Sometimes he could be a bit tactless, I'll admit (I would argue that in the sciences, social skills are not at their best; I know I'm lacking in a lot of areas). But he never berated me in front of a fellow student or another faculty member. He never questioned my ability.

He did guide me in committee selection, and by the time I chose the rest of my doctoral committee, I was well aware of who detested whom in the department, and who was a terminal nitpicker, so I was able to avoid them. (I did wind up with someone from another university on my committee; part of my avoid-the-troublesome-ones strategy).

This all came after I had been asked to leave a grad school previously (the school I was asked to leave was a top-tier research school; the stated reason was that I wasn't making sufficient progress but I was as far along as anyone else: I think the real reason was that I asked more questions and wanted more time from my (departmentally-chosen) committee than they were willing to give). That was one of the most destroying experiences of my life. Shame wasn't involved so much; there were several of us in the same boat that year and no one called me stupid or unprepared to my face. But it did considerably shred my selfconfidence to the point where I questioned my own ability. (I still do, even a dozen years on, when I'm under stress).

One thing I will say on behalf of my second advisor: when I was completing my Master's degree (my plan was to go and get a Master's, at this point I thought that was the maximum I was capable of) I realized that I needed a Ph.D. if I was going to teach at the college level.

So I nervously approached my advisor, trying to figure out the best way to frame the question of "do you think I'm capable of doing a Ph.D.?" I didn't even get to that point; I just mentioned the idea of a Ph.D. and he nodded and said "Yes, I thought that you should consider doing one, I was going to bring that up to you some time."

For all the times he was picky and difficult, for all the times he was "too" direct with me in his criticisms, I still respect him and like him for that statement.

So maybe that's a little antidote to the tales of shaming, I don't know. There are good folks out there. Like I said, my advisor could be prickly and difficult at times, but he was never shaming.

Why would a sane person wish for a life in academia? If you carry your talents into the business world there is immensely less likelihood of encountering dysfunctional situations, because those business situations cannot last. The correlary of "survival of the fittest" is "demise of the dysfunctional."

In addition, this talk about academia "helping mankind" or "contributing to society" is self-serving. Those in the business world are contributing, otherwise the companies would not have income via voluntary transactions in the market place. How many colleges and universities go out of business or even endure a disciplining reduction or reorganization? The Ivory Tower is largely the Sheltered Crapola Tower.

My engineering professors were not prone to pontificate, a point readily apparent as we WITNESSED the extraordinary difference in our humanities courses. Consequently, the REQUIREMENT of needing so many arts-and-humanities credit hours was an exceedingly valuable experience - - we could witness the appalling mindset that dominates higher education.

LarryH
BSChE 1970