I think any time we believe something should be “sustainable”, or sustained, we have an aspiration that it continue with some intact core into the indeterminate future. That seems to me to require something like security and stability within the institutions, communities or situations where that “core” resides.

I really am convinced that rethinking how organizations work is one of the key human challenges of this century. The inside of organizational cultures has got to match the mission of organizations in the world in ways that no one has previously achieved.

I think that I can imagine exactly what you’re talking about and I see it in my classroom too. One of my goals as I grow into my role as a teacher is to better understand how I can intervene in those moments. At times it feels clear, and at others less so, and often it’s so subtle that I’m afraid that if I call attention to it and it is denied I’ll be left looking crazy, but I know I saw the peer deflate, I know that that haughty tone, the way that question was phrased, was calculated precisely to deflate the hearer.

I believe deeply that we can do more, that I personally must do more. I think that we can raise our voices and make trouble. It’s not how I was raised, and it’s scary, and I don’t mean a call-out counter punch. I mean an honest “why are you saying that” an honest “what are you talking about? X does A and B and is an utterly competent researcher?” A refusal to understand what is not true and to go with what is not right.

Administration here can lead by example with their own transparency.

Yeah, I definitely don’t want it to be niceness. I actually like sharp-edged arguments, I like vivid language–passion is as much what I want as anything else.

I think what I want is a notion that when it comes to local colleagues–the people with whom you work with–that you are in some sense cheering for them all. I’m not going to be unrealistic or pollyannish here–sometimes someone is just not going to be your kind of person, or they’re not going to be doing the kind of work you think highly of. But I learned from my graduate advisor that there’s usually a way to appreciate or sympathetically connect to even that kind of scholarship that you don’t think that highly of.

Another way to put it is that if you’re going to venture a criticism towards someone you work with, make it count. Make it be about something real that really matters in a consistent way to you. That’s what bothered me about the colleague I mention above: that colleague was attacking someone else about scholarly productivity in a way that was completely nonsensical, because that colleague doesn’t care about the work of the person being attacked and that colleague isn’t a highly productive person in those terms either. If you want to see someone produce even more work because you really like and appreciate their work, that’s great–but then you likely wouldn’t be griping to a colleague you don’t even know that well about it, you’d be working in a friendly and encouraging way with the person you appreciate. If you’re just demanding more because you think that’s what everyone should do, you’re being the whip hand of something. (Notably some of the people in academia who spend time trying to ratchet up pressure on others to work harder are folks who otherwise profess to be leftists…) There should be fights in academia about things that matter, carried on by people who are genuinely invested in those issues. If that ends up having a personal component to it, that’s ok, it happens. In a sense, what bothers me is that this small fraction of people in most colleges and universities who are ‘bullies’ or something like it are that way about almost everything, and often without particular rhyme or reason except that they generally avoid picking any fights that might actually be dangerous to themselves.

“Your coworker or even your intern might end up your boss….” In the annals of “there really is such a thing as justice,” that kind of happened to me once. After I got my MA, I took a job at an outbound call center for a bank. About a year into the job, I learned that one of my former students (I had been her TA) had been hired as a bank officer for the same bank. She wasn’t technically my boss (I worked at the call center while she worked at a branch), but she was definitely my superior.

To Tim:

I work in an academic support position, and my workplace probably resembles a government bureaucracy more than an academic department, although I am technically faculty (non-tenure track) and my department is technically an academic department. As a junior and non-tenured person, I actually feel pretty well-treated and well-respected, probably more than I deserve. I will say that what you describe is a reminder for me to be nicer to people. I can think of times when I’ve said things in the guise of “venting” that I shouldn’t have said.

I do wonder if there’s a better way to frame it than “niceness.” I realize that’s nit-picking, but maybe framing it as respect for others’ dignity? At any rate, I’m not sure I have the proper framing, either.

YES, absolutely. Security is an important precondition of building long-lasting institutions and sustainable cultures.