There is a new assistant professor to whom I would like to send the following memo. People who would like to do well as assistant professors should not say things at meetings and parties that inspire their older colleagues to write fantasy memos like this.
1. I disagree with Colleague A on many things. I do not trust hir. I do not approve of hir machinations. Still, I have been working with hir for years. I trust hir more than I trust you. Ze and I, furthermore, have made a pact not to let you destabilize either of us, or erode our professional relationship. Therefore back off.
2. I do not spend time thinking about “Dead Wood” Colleague, and neither should you. Ze has hir virtues and will retire in due time.
3. I have been friends with Colleague B for twenty years, including fifteen years before we hired hir. Here I have occasionally covered classes for hir, and I teach hir former students regularly. I think ze is doing a fine job even if hir testing policies are anathema to me. I am not going to fight with hir about that just because you, too, are horrified at hir testing policies, even though I think you are right.
4. I do not believe a word of what you tell me about the chair’s secret feelings.
5. I share some of your feelings about Colleague C’s projects and their influence, but only some. I like Colleague C quite a lot as well, and I am not interested in joining you in a conversation trashing hir.
6. You may feel you are a close friend of Colleague D, but some of us have been friends of hirs much longer than you and would not presume to say we were “very close” — ze has a life. I also happen to know from hir that your haranguing tires hir as much as it does me — and I have heard from Colleague B that Colleague E has a similar reaction.
7. I do not believe all the negative things you claim are said about me. The ones I do believe, are old news and I can handle them. Your self description as my defender on these matters is more troubling to me than anything anyone else may be saying.
8. I do not believe most of what you tell me about myself.
9. I do not need your help writing and publishing my work. I need you to leave me in peace so I can work.
10. The vice chair would have been vice chair whether you had heroically supported hir or not, so stop beating your breast about how you saved a fellow human being.
11. Much of the work on the major you think you have inspired Colleague F and me to do this year had already been done before you arrived. All of our long conversations this year have been to explain our whys and wherefores to your incredulous self. These conversations have been exhausting for both of us, and only helpful insofar as we have been able to convince you not to do anything too destructive to yourself or us.
12. The most helpful thing you can do, if you want to help us as you say you do, is to do your job — not try to engage Colleague F and me in enormous new service projects, of your wacky design, but which you do not want to implement yourself.
13. The more you repeat the sentence, “Trust me, believe in me, I will never break solidarity with you,” the more you look to me like Mephistopheles. Back off and do your work.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Wow.
Yep. Brand new assistant professor right there. Of course I am not saying which of my departments ze is in.
Only in academia!
You mean if I quit, I escape this kind of insanity?
Your colleague has not learned “the rules” yet. She ( and I do believe it’s a she) will not make it. She won’t make tenure. In her current state of unbelief, she is flailing around and making horrible mistakes in a kind of do or die mode.
Is this a fair guess?
A woman would have to be truly crazy to act like that and expect to get away with it. This person definitely hasn’t learned the rules. But has virtues.
State of unbelief, I like that phrase. It’s hard to tell what will happen. Due to the virtues, perhaps nothing bad, to this person in any case. One would hope they could have a good effect. But they may just be exhausting.
That last is my concern — they exhaust me utterly.
I know a woman right now who acts like that. But I can avoid her for the most part. What I think is that she has not caught on that no one will indulge her nor is anyone afraid of her. She isn’t crazy, just unpleasant and very very sure of herself in a situation where caution is called for.
Well, the last crazy person was indulged because people were afraid. I don’t know what the politics are going to be like now. Someone in that position would normally be someone I’d actually work with, not just see in the halls. But his conversation depresses me and the person he MOST reminds me of is my X in the office one floor up, the verbal and emotional abuser.
Yikes! How oppressive. But I’m glad I’m not correct in my guesses. I don’t want to Always be right!
I have gotten all the ranters out of my life on a permanent basis and know only the mildest and kindest of men. But I had to retire to do it!
Yes – this situation goes right to my jugular and my concern is how it could make me look. Can’t be on his side if he’s already alienated everyone else — I’ll lose all credibility. Also can’t be perceived to be non supportive of a junior person. Also would like to get this person acclimated, up and running, happy and son on. Yet he has DANGER written all over him.
Obliquely related: I have figured out that my whole, entire problem with academia is that I know how to do cultural immersion (on myself) and they don’t, even consider it anathema. This topic is sort of worth exploring some time. It has various ramifications — one of which that I DO notice where I am and care, whereas your typical academic man doesn’t care, just wants his office/lab and a suburban type house for his wife.
That is just one tiny comment on it all.
What the academic person of this type wants is that ideal dream of academic life that disappeared ages ago.
Did you see “Quiz Show?”
Actually Van Doren was not a professor, evidently. But the kind of respect and deference he commanded was what intellectuals of a certain kind continue to crave. The fact that he was a fraud really did a lot of damage to intellectualism in the popular mind.
Of course I, too, want a far different kind of academic life … and knew professordom was wrong for me the first week … and realized I would be better suited to something faster paced / more serious / more challenging … at high levels of business or government.
Should I see quiz show?
Echoing Katie’s comment: Wow! On the Chronicle boards, they have a phrase of advice that they give to people like this, and that phrase is “STFU.”
New AP had better be spending as much time on his or her scholarship as he/she is getting into the personal relationships in the department.
Undine – on STFU, yes. And I’d never looked at the Chronicle boards before now, and they look good — although I haven’t found that phrase yet.
I actually gave that advice — although not in those words — to another assistant professor like this one time, and got grieved for it. This did not stick but it would still be best to avoid conflict. It’s difficult since this person is actually right about what should be done, but completely unrealistic about what can be and how, and because I really would like to have someone with precisely hir range of skills, which are excellent. Yet I feel unsafe talking with this person because ze has gathered, and repeats so much destructive gossip.
Personal relationships, you’re right. Ze claims, and apparently also *believes* ze is just gathering useful information on what has been possible in the past, on the political situation, on the landscape and panorama for the next few years.
But realistically you can’t do that within just one academic year, it’s a slow study.
Ze is hyperactive and outpublishes the rest of us, and ze does so in good journals while teaching overloads with high evaluations AND leading this big gossip life.
One is supposed to protect new faculty but in this case I think I need to “protect my time” — “selfish” though that may be.