Not my prettiest thought
In the month before I left academia, there was a thought circling in my brain: if executives in neoliberal academia go to their grave thinking they are good people who made a positive impact in the world, it will be the grandest self-delusion they failed to burst. I know, not pretty.
Yet this thought did not just visit me for a day or two. It circled for some time. And while my days are now filled with more peace and joy than they have in the last 10 years as a mother-academic, it still pays an occasional visit. It is for this reason I am taking the time to commemorate and time-capsule it despite how it may come off.
Brittney Cooper says, “eloquent rage is not elegant rage; it is not pretty, it is precise”. Rage is the natural response to injustice but because the emotion is vilified it vilifies the victim, keeping the perpetrator’s power in place - above and free from accountability.
The un-pretty sentiment I felt extends to every business, because it is actually about the income disparity between the CEO and everyone else. When their pay exceeds a reasonable ratio of say three or four times, people will question whether their intellect and work ethic is really worth that much more than anyone else’s. I can’t see it. There aren’t enough hours in the day for that to be mathematically possible.
Their birds-eye financial prowess and strategising will be recognised and rewarded with public commendations, and their pay will remain essentially intact as material reward for it. The number of wounded staff grieving an illustrious career that barely got noticed as they left the building after decades of service on a lowly title or salary, and the number who got sick with cancer as they flogged themselves in the hope it would pay off one day but didn’t is too great to ignore.
I believe in the power of benevolence. Many don’t - their anger/injustice is just that great. Any university executive who looks like they want to burst the bubble around them so they really can do what they think they already are has an open door from me waiting for them.
(Though it’s no secret what I’ll tell them: appreciate your people with more than just token words).