If you live in the real world, you would have encountered jerks at some point in your life. (If you don’t think you have… you might just be the jerk.) Jerks exist everywhere and academia is no exception. However, I think that academics are especially reluctant to call-out rude behaviours. Some of this might be because academia is a small, tightly-knit social circle with conflicts of interest running in all possible directions. Some of this is also, I think, because academics are very good at convincing themselves that no harm is “actually done” by someone who rudely brushes off a junior person or makes arrogant remarks about others behind their backs. This post argues why that’s false. This post further argues that not only do jerks do active harm, but also do people who tolerate their behaviours.
Jerks do no “actual” harm (they do imaginary ones)
To be clear, by jerks I don’t mean people who sexually harass others or plagiarize their graduate students. These are terrible people who clearly do harm. I mean people who don’t “clearly do harm”: the arrogant guy who cuts others off mid-sentence only to say the same thing because he didn’t listen; the person who only wants to talk about their idea but never wants to listen to yours; the person who tells you that your misfortune is clearly caused by your incompetence because things work out just fine for them; the person who never helps with any service but every so often stops by to share the credit.
They make you think “Jesus Christ did they just say that? What an ass!” But they also make you think “I suppose they never did any actual harm.”
The second half of that sentiment also manifests in nontrivial ways when it comes to academic engagement: people can have very good reasons to not invite someone who has plagiarized others but, when it comes to jerks, people often think “but it’s just a personal disliking on my part; it’s not fair to not include them on this basis.”
I’ve always wondered: what do people mean by “actual” harm? Do they have to have beaten someone to the hospital to count as “actual” harm? Many philosophers now readily accept that, say, making belittling remarks against women in public is doing “actual” harm, which seems to suggest that “actual” harm does not just mean physical harm.
But when someone says “I’d have a much easier time in academia if I worked on something as trivial as [your topic X]” or “skype me into the talk; it’s not like you can understand it anyway”, you’d feel angry, upset. If you’re a junior person, you learn that the field is not friendly. You watch as this person makes rude demands and never gets called out, and you learn that the field does not care if it’s friendly.
Worse still, you tell this to your friend or colleague, and they say “well, it’s not like they really did anything terrible; also, you really shouldn’t piss someone as important as them off.” Now you learn to doubt yourself and that your friend doesn’t really care about your wellbeing. You learn that someone who ruins other people’s days can still be “important” and you are not allowed to “piss them off”.
Tell me: in which sense is this not “actual” harm?
The No Asshole Rule
There is apparently a theory of assholes in management. One of the profs in our school, Aaron James, wrote a book called Assholes: a theory (which I have not had the chance to read, but it’s also coming out as a documentary). As I was searching for that book, I came across the business best-seller The No Asshole Rule. I have only read its Wikipedia page. The book is about how “bullying behaviour in the workplace worsens morale and productivity”.
One British study of more than seven hundred employees in the public sector found “73 percent of the witnesses to bullying incidents experienced increased stress and 44 percent worried about becoming targets themselves”. This shows assholes can harm and lessen the productivity of not only their victims but everyone in the workplace.
— (yes, I’m citing Wikipedia now. Don’t judge.)
Academia is a special place where everyone is a unique snowflake and no one really replaces anyone else. This makes it easy to make arguments in the form of “but they’re brilliant!” Even sexual assaulters who do “actual” harm are sometimes excused on this basis, let alone jerks who do not do “actual” harm.
There seems to be a lot of collective anxiety associated with the potential of losing someone who is “brilliant” such that all the great ideas about solving world hunger would be lost if that person is not included in a discussion because they’re an asshole. I share that anxiety. I think it’s terribly unfortunate that Feynman was misogynistic and Spearman was racist.
But as you mourn over the potential loss of intellectual breakthroughs associated with not including the jerk in the seminar/panel/networking event you are organizing, consider also the talent lost from people who, upon meeting this jerk, decide to not go into academia.
I have been quite honest about not wanting to do philosophy as an undergrad. Here is why: I went to our “major’s club meet&greet” to try to meet other students. I walked in and a group of students, who were all clearly friends with each other, were hanging out, chatting and eating snacks. I stood around for a solid 10 minutes and no one greeted me. I tried to talk to a couple of them and was brushed off. So I left. I never made a single acquaintance in philosophy during my years as a philosophy major.
(Why did I end up applying? Because a prof of mine remarked to me, completely unprompted, that she thought my term paper was very good.)
Let me tell you more. Here’s why I didn’t go into metaethics: I attended a seminar where I was constantly talked over and brushed off. A friend of mine did not go into mathematics because they visited a math department and decided there were too many jerks. I have friends who do not go to conferences because they witnessed terrible things happening at conferences where senior people humiliate junior people.
Why else do you think the leaky pipeline exist?
“But it really wasn’t a big deal.”
What pisses me off the most (which might be wrong priorities on my part) is not the jerks themselves but the friends who gaslight me by saying that wasn’t a big deal and I shouldn’t be so upset.
They are the people who tell me that the field does not care about me. Worse still, these people get the best of all worlds: they’re “allies” with me for having comforted me; they’re friends with the jerks because they are still willing; they’re being rational and objective for pointing out my neurotic accusations; they’re kind and forgiving because they do not mind the jerkish behaviours.
Here’s what they also do: they enable awful behaviours; they contribute to the continuous marginalization of minorities; they gaslight victims into self-doubt; they take positive credit while doing active harm.
In cases like these, I often hear people say, “it’s not fair if they are not included just because you don’t like them”.
To which I often want to reply, “I don’t dislike them. They are jerks. It’s not fair to everyone else that they get to enjoy as much resource as others while being jerks.” But, more often than not, I don’t say this. I’m too busy doubting myself — am I overreacting? Am I being unfair by putting personal grudges in front of moral principles? Maybe the fairest option of all is for people like me to not participate. Then everyone would be happy.
Here’s my rant for today.
(And– no, I won’t just quit without fighting. I’ll continue to fight until enough people are annoyed at me for pointing out the obvious and decide it’s easier to throw me out than change the system, in which case I’ll be able to name names too.)
(Next week I’ll post something about philosophy of science I promise)
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