When I was a young person, we lived in an academic world of peaks & valleys.
Some academics lived at the peak - at elite schools - having superior access to libraries, coursework, & research support - their students also possessed greater career opportunities and research advantages than those at other schools.
Some academics lived in the valleys - at public schools - working with limited libraries, classes, & research support -and their students (like me) fighting for opportunities.
When I was a young person, it never occurred to me, that students at elite schools were any better than me, a kid at a public, they just had more resources, so I persisted.
Serendipity created opportunities. The World Wide Web let more academics bypass the perils of the valley - granting access to journals, software, and data - and aspire to climb the peaks.
Working hard let me take advantage of these opportunities. Early publications granted legitimacy, which opened access to social networks, leading to editorial board appointments and election as an Association president.
Today, Some would say I'm no longer in the valley and am at the peak. I won't lie. The acknowledgment felt pretty good.
COVID-19 changed that. Sitting at home, I looked around, had calls with friends, and watched how the pandemic changed lives. I witnessed inequities in access and treatment of faculty across my community, rooted in whom you know and how rich your school was.
Against this backdrop, I asked myself, is this the world I want to leave my students? My colleagues? My daughter? One with such an uneven landscape?
No. It is not.
Merit should drive success. Not where you happened to take your degree.
So what to do? I am chasing three logics.
Logic One: Unlock information. Grant access to every student to ideas, tools, & mentoring afforded to students at elite institutions. Start small, host international Ph.D. students at your school.
Logic Two: Disrupt academic class & caste. Be it by race, gender, or institutional affiliation, we must define intersectionality in ways that reflect the realities of academic life to change it. Participate in the conversation unfolding around us about the social topography of academe.
Logic Three: Empower communities to chart their own paths. Because academics' impact cuts across society, we need more advocates for valuing impact and publicarion.
So the hard part. We all need to speak up. Unless faculty stand up and demand change, we will remain locked into a tired academic system that limits opportunity and restricts us to the Ivory Tower.
For my part, I'm giving more talks and speaking out on issues tied to academic class and caste. It's time use my social capital to speak truth to power.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jason-thatcher-0329764_ivorytower-research-academiclife-activity-6873372761117528064-DLTr?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web
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