‘How are you, Phil?’ asked a colleague on the morning of November 6, as I made my way into work at the English department of my university in Tokyo. I was a little taken aback, as it was someone I didn’t normally interact with, especially on first name terms, and had been said with what seemed like genuine concern.
‘Absolutely fine,’ I breezily replied.
‘Really?’ he countered. ‘Despite the election result?’
Ahh, now I understood. This wasn’t a mundane pleasantry, but a genuine enquiry about my mental health, in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory in the US election the day before. The assumption was that, as an academic, and therefore naturally a Kamala Harris supporter, that I must be on the verge of emotional collapse.
Welcome to the academy: where everyone hates Trump, views his very existence as an offence to humanity and where even to hazard doubts about this orthodoxy places you not just outside the tribe, but beyond the pale. It is, as we academics somewhat pompously say, a matter of epistemic closure (not up for discussion).
I exaggerate, but only a bit. I do have colleagues who simply cannot process the idea that one of their number might be on the other team (Brexit was very similar). Here’s a vivid example: I remember in 2016 a professor boasting in a faculty meeting of how he had brought in beans for his students to throw at a picture of President Trump that he had hung on the wall of his class. It was an alternative version of the Japanese festival of setsubun where beans are hurled at devils to banish them. I think he expected a round of applause for his efforts.
In truth, I, a Trump supporter/sympathiser (his policies more than the individual but good luck making that argument with an academic), am not entirely alone, but am one of a very small band. According to research before the recent US election, only 8% of US professors supported Trump. The report also found that most keep their allegiances secret out of ‘fear of retaliation and reprisals’.
Things aren’t quite as bad in Japan, but even here we dissenters are discreet. My group (five or six university lecturers) gather occasionally at an ex-pat pub run by a sympathetic landlord in downtown Tokyo where, tucked away in a corner, we give vent to our pent-up heresies. Our meetings have a clandestine feel, a bit like a modern version of the non-conformists of the 17th century.
Is that fanciful? Perhaps not. There are striking parallels between today’s enforced academic doctrine and the effects of the Uniformity Act of 1662, which made it difficult for anyone not a practising and orthodox Christian to gain Oxbridge degrees. A strict test of one’s religious thinking was required for admission to Oxford at that time.
St. Andrews University has such a test for students now, requiring them to affirm their progressive (environment, diversity) beliefs before being allowed to matriculate. For the faculty, the Government’s recent ‘putting on hold’ of the Conservatives’ Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act ought to keep most but the truly brave in line, as well as excluding any outside dissenters from spreading their dangerous views on campus.
My own experiences of working in the UK were chastening and I wonder if a group of dissenters could even muster a pub table’s worth of members these days. When I was at Cardiff University in 2018 with the Brexit battle still raging, professors wore their allegiance on their sleeves – or more accurately on their lapels (EU badges were de rigueur). I was told by a well-connected colleague that only one member of faculty (of the entire university) was openly pro-Brexit (‘and she’s Canadian so she doesn’t count’). I kept quiet.
But the shopworn religious analogies don’t quite satisfy when it comes to the academy. There is something more, something about the job of teaching and the self-perception of the faculty that lends itself to a defensive, leftist groupthink.
It is telling that my Trump-loathing colleagues are rarely concerned with the arguments but more the character, and especially educational qualifications of their ideological foes. Ask them to specify which of Trump’s policies they disagree with and they are usually stumped (‘He’s just awful!’, ‘His supporters are morons’). As for Brexit, the supposed intellectual shortcomings are repeatedly cited: ‘They don’t have degrees!’ – screamed a colleague at me once.
All of this reveals the insecurity that bedevils most educators, especially these days with tenure a rarity. We are haunted by the fear of being exposed and classified as surplus to requirements, which can breed an irrational animus towards the so-called unlettered, who we suspect may be not just our equals, but even perhaps, with their reserves of common sense, our superiors.
We are a bit like the Wizard of Oz projecting a powerful authority but secretly cowering in fear that the curtain will be pulled back in our ivory towers and our true intellectual dimensions revealed. Thus, even the prospect of the unlettered masses succeeding provokes anger, and induces in many a desire to concoct alternative explanations (Russian collusion perhaps, or trickery, the beguiling of simple-minded souls by evil mesmerists) for any reversal.
By deviating from my peers, I know I am letting the side down. I even feel a smidgeon of sympathy. Teaching can be, at least psychologically, a tough and largely thankless job, and we need to stick together. A little groupthink, a few generally agreed upon delusions foster collegiality and kindle a feeling of security. We all feel the same, think the same, so we stand strong. In a way, I’m a traitor.
But it’s only a modicum of sympathy. The abuse and ostracism dissenters have endured (see the Free Speech Union files, ad nauseam) is deplorable, as is the silence when colleagues are mistreated for stating honest, if unorthodox, opinions.
It is sad that I can only write this – a career suicide note in a way – as I’m in the home stretch, with the glorious vista of retirement moving into view.
If I were under 50, I simply wouldn’t dare.
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