This is Not a Breakup Letter

Words to academia as I leave my chaired faculty position

Dear Academia,

This is not a breakup letter. You’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise. I am, after all, leaving my chaired faculty position today. And, true, I want nothing to do with your worst qualities going forward.

Your tantrums
Your decorum
Your insatiable hunger for more
Your entitled belief that we owe you whatever it takes
Your quickness to grab what's in front of you and scream, "mine!"
Your controlling temperament
Your sacred chains of command
Your authoritarian spirit 
Your secrets and retributions and ploys

It’s a vibe I will no longer abide. With all of it, I’m done. And I might have been able to set the lot of it down gently and carry on my way if it weren’t also for the fact that the picture on your dating profile is a fake.

Hello, catfish, nice to finally see you there.

It’s the lies we need to talk about. The gaslighting. The manipulation. It’s the dictionary of alternative meanings you use but do not publish.

In your vocabulary, collaboration means subordinating oneself to the highest ranking member on the team. Decolonizing the academy is a phrase that covers for taking power away from educators in service of profit. Respect means obedience. Self-care means efficiency. Timely means now (for us, of course, not you).

As is often the case in relationships gone sour, I’m looking at you now wondering how I ever could have been so naive. It’s embarrassing, really. That I believed you when you called me pretty. That I thought I meant something to you. That I expected your character in person to match the bio you put online.

It’s not all on me though. You spoke beautifully and with such depth: of thought and care and possibility; of particularity, mutuality, and social flourishing. You are the one who wrote and published your supposed values in books celebrating difference, truth, and the mess of beauty. I observed firsthand the complexity that your intellect has the capacity to sustain. I saw you call the world to a better future — one that looks nothing like your behavior in the office.

You are the one who chose your profile pic. You are the one who lied.

This does sound like a breakup letter. Am I a liar too? The metaphor has become strained.

I’m aware, though, that you got that profile pic from somewhere, and you put it up before AI had hit the scene. So the object behind the image must exist. What drew me in is real. So the task now is to find it.

Find it?
Build it?
Recognize it?
Join it?
Grow it?
Grow with it?

I’m looking for the you you said you were. I’ll be looking in faraway places as well as in and around our whole set of mutual friends. It could get awkward, but I’d prefer it if you’d just let me be. You do your thing, I’ll do mine. We’ll smile politely and make sure there are a few seats between us at dinner parties. We’re all adults here. We’ll make it.

But the better future would be the one in which you decide to quit posturing and go on this hunt with me — with me, but actually within yourself. This is the future where you come to terms with your duplicity, work on yourself, and grow authentically into the image you originally put up as a fake. It’s what Hollywood would do if you were a character they wrote, because (weirdly to the movie industry’s credit) it’s the right thing to do.

I know I can’t change you. I won’t try. But I also know that you can change if you choose.

And I think you should.