Abstract
In this autoethnographic essay, I reflect on three spheres of academic work—program administration, teaching, and scholarship—and find evidence of the effects of neoliberalism in each sphere of practice. Specifically, I articulate the prevailing emotional experience of my academic work as anxiety, which is a consequence of internalizing the construction of students-as-consumers and responding uncritically to the demands of academic organizations that require my compliance and neutrality. To the extent that academic freedom is a reward afforded to those with tenure, my essay argues that the cost of leading a privileged academic life is that we use our privilege to question the status quo, particularly in our own institutions of higher education.
When Christopher Poulos issued an invitation to contemplate autoethnography as resistance to neoliberalism in higher education, I was a little surprised. In the past, collaborating with Chris has been an invitation to play and this felt more like homework—something serious was afoot that seemed more urgent than our conversations in the past. Admittedly, my reaction stemmed from having only a sketchy understanding of the neoliberalism conversation. So, I started reading and was soon gratified to learn that I was not the only academic grappling with the idea. Renowned scholar and public intellectual Stanley Fish (2009) had also needed to research neoliberalism after being accused of supporting its precepts. In a nutshell, as a set of economic principles, neoliberalism is grounded in a fundamental belief that free market capitalism can and should be a model for all human enterprise. Thus, in the context of higher education, neoliberalism promotes a vision of universities as marketplaces where educational products are consumed by students, and where the value of said educational products is determined by the extent to which graduates become productive workers within a capitalist economy (Giroux, 2010; Saunders, 2010).
It is the spring of 2016 as I compose this essay and, as the threads of the argument come together, I sense that the United States as a collective is unraveling. Donald Trump (a reality show businessman with no prior history of public service) is the presumptive Republican Party nominee for the U.S. Presidency. Trump’s bombastic campaign rhetoric and sweeping victories in the Republican primary elections reflect what may be the natural and obvious endpoint for a system that embraces neoliberalism as the dominant paradigm for organizing a society. At the very least, Trump’s ascent suggests that when millions of Americans vote for a candidate for public office, traits of compassion, reason, morality, civility, and experience are no longer as relevant as celebrity, wealth, egotism, and bullying—all of which somehow are interpreted by Trump’s supporters as evidence of success, integrity, and strength. Although I am comforted by the legions who, like me, watch the unfolding political drama with a growing sense of panic, I resist the temptation to ignore, discount, and dismiss as “crazy” the others whose worldview runs so counter to mine. As an autoethnographer and academic, I must ask what role I play in this historical moment, when a presumably thinking public seems to be investing wholeheartedly in an individualistic and market-driven vision of the future.
Thus, I turn to the topic of the relationship between autoethnography and neoliberalism and the challenge posed by my friend and colleague, Chris. My scholarly commitments as a qualitative methodologist lead me first and foremost to consider how autoethnography as a practice resists the neoliberalist emphasis on measurement, observable outcomes, and the acquisition of practical skills. The persistent creep of neoliberalism into higher education began decades ago and its appeal to economic rationalism parallels quite elegantly the creep of positivism across the social sciences (Bochner, 2014). First appearing as a useful approach for investigating and deriving knowledge about some aspects of social life, positivism soon became the dominant paradigm through which all research practices would be judged. In a similar manner, neoliberalism proposes that higher education should be viewed principally as a means to prepare students for productivity in the workforce as opposed to preparing citizens for active participation in a democracy. Arriving, as it did, in a benevolent guise, the argument that higher education should be connected to employability was and is not easily dismissed, particularly when it is used to encourage students of traditionally underserved groups to seek further education (Lucal, 2015). However, like statiscal methods in social science, the neoliberalist framing of higher education went from being a useful strategy for encouraging greater access by disenfranchised students to becoming the dominant paradigm for understanding and organizing higher education as an industry. As Lucal (2015) points out, the argument for greater access to education was really a Trojan horse that brought escalating levels of student debt and plummeting levels of student “success” (defined as “on-time” graduation rates). Looking back, the narrative turn in the social sciences offered resistance against the hegemony of positivism; critical pedagogy (Friere, 1970; Giroux, 2010) offers resistance against neoliberalist teaching practices; autoethnography can and should play a role in both struggles.
When reflecting on autoethnography as a practice of resistance, I think primarily of the rewards of teaching autoethnographic methods to others. Because the research practices of autoethnography are indivisible from its moral commitments to empowerment, relationship, possibility, and ontological reflection, it clearly stands in opposition to neoliberalist values of conformity, objectivism, free market capitalism, and protecting the status quo. Neoliberalism frames individuals as units of production whose value resides in their ability to navigate through and “win” the game of life—presumably by dying with the most toys. In contrast, autoethnography calls human beings to reflect on their experience as agents in relationship to others and to derive value/meaning from that experience and those relationships (Bochner & Ellis, 2016). When it incorporates critical inquiry (Boylorn & Orbe, 2013), autoethnography also includes interrogations of power and injustice, positioning the researcher within a larger system of freedoms and constraints that resonate throughout society. The narrative products of autoethnography also implicate the reader—autoethnographies are written for others, after all—and are offered freely as resources to other humans seeking to answer the question “how should I/we live?” Thus, engaging in autoethnographic inquiry develops reflective and critical capacities, particularly those that cause us to question and story our role in wider sociocultural apparatuses, as well as the capacity to listen and think with (Bochner & Ellis, 2016; Frank, 1995) the stories of others. Such capacities make it possible to perceive, critique, and act in resistance against neoliberalism and other paradigms that perpetuate oppression. In sum, teaching the practices of autoethnography can support the development of intellectual and discursive skills that resist the neoliberalist tendency to reduce human life and meaning to a series of economic exchanges.
After considering and articulating for myself why it is important to teach autoethnography, in true autoethnographic fashion, I then turned the question inward and asked—what can autoethnography teach me about neoliberalism in the academy? As a full participant in this industry of higher education, what would an autoethnographic investigation reveal? A number of notable autoethnographic studies of life in the academy have been published (e.g., Bochner, 1997; Herrmann, 2013; Jago, 2002; Pelias, 2000; Richardson, 1997), and yet for me the idea of writing about my experience of academic work as labor (Vander Kloet & Aspenlieder, 2013) is new and feels risky for reasons that I discuss later in the essay. What follows is an autoethnographic examination of the neoliberal trends that permeate most activities of the higher education industry—at least for those who are fortunate enough to be tenured or tenure-track members of the faculty. My process began, as it always does, with the storying of moments that call my attention and persist in my memory. My intention was first to reflect on what those moments felt like and how my body responded to the events. After collecting stories from different spheres of my academic life—my role as a graduate program director, as a teacher, and as a scholar—I was struck by the pervasiveness of a single emotional experience that underscored seemingly diverse events: anxiety (the title of this essay is an homage to Warner’s, 2005, book on contemporary motherhood as well as W. H. Auden’s poem of 1947). The final part of this essay reflects on the utility of my autoethnographic exercise and calls for more widespread engagement of autoethnographic reflection by academics as an act of resistance and recovery.
Program Director at Work
The Graduate School Meat Market
At one of 30 dressed-up tables in a vast conference space, a heavily laden buffet table outside the doors, my nametag and I sit beside a sign that says “MA in Health Communication.” This once-a-quarter ritual event is an academic meat market. Prospective students browse the tables and size up the Program Directors who nibble surreptitiously at the free food. Periodically, prospective students sit to chat about their graduate school options. There is no way to know how many (if any) students will show up at my table or when they will do so. The randomness is a form of torture.
I glance to the left where my colleague, the Program Director for Public Relations and Advertising, is holding court with eight or nine attractive 20-somethings. I glance to the right where the Program Director for Journalism is collecting extra chairs to accommodate his enquirers. I put on my best smile, pretending not to feel like a wallflower.
As bad as the waiting is, worse is the following exchange that invariably occurs at some point in the evening when I finally receive a visitor, particularly when the visitor is accompanied by a parent:
[I point to the information sheet that has been prepared with strict supervision of the university’s marketing department. I feel like I am on a blind date, trying to settle upon the topic that will interest my dinner partner and/or provide evidence that there is some kind of match to be made here.]
Sometimes, I have a lively and inspired conversation with a prospective student. The ones who stay in my mind are the young women from economically underserved neighborhoods of Chicago. These women tell me that they are the first of their family to complete an undergraduate degree. They have seen the effects of a fractured system on the health of their communities and they want to “give back.” They see graduate school as a hallowed place and graduate education as the key to ensuring their future. Torn between my desire to help them achieve their dream and my awareness that my program bears a hefty price tag, I quietly emphasize that graduate school is a big step. Mentally, I redouble my commitment to helping my students make career connections that might counterbalance the weight of student loan debt.
Sometimes I am inspired. Mostly, I leave these events exhausted, anxious, and demoralized.
The Market Report
Every 2 weeks, all the graduate program directors in the college receive an email from Enrollment Management. Our Dean is copied on the message. The attached report lists each program with columns for numbers of applicants, number of admissions, number of students who have accepted a position, and the number actually enrolled for the following academic session. For our information, these numbers are compared with numbers from the same time the previous year with an accompanying percentage in the positive or negative direction.
Many years ago, I stopped weighing myself daily because I realized that I was allowing the number on the scale dictate my mood and self-esteem.
The aftermath of opening these email reports feels weirdly familiar.
Disciplined by My Peers
As directed, I arrive 10 min early for my appointment. In an unfamiliar building, I have found my way to a closed wooden door bearing only the number 509 to indicate that I am in the right place. Clutching my documents, checking and rechecking my appointment calendar, having reached the culmination of months of preparation, I realize that I am completely at a loss. What do I do now? Do I wait? Do I knock?
I decide to wait. Several minutes later, a woman, not unfriendly, walks confidently to the door. “They changed the meeting room,” she smiles and opens the door. “Are you waiting?” I nod and open my mouth to explain but she continues quickly, “We’ll be ready for you in a few minutes.” The heavy door swings closed.
My opportunity has passed, and I am left feeling small and immature, clutching my sheaf of papers.
I stare at the closed door as the minutes tick by and I wait . . . not for a deposition for a Supreme Court Hearing, not for an appointment with the CEO of Google, and not for an audience with Pope Francis. I am waiting for my meeting with the University Curriculum Committee to hear its judgment on my proposal for a graduate certificate in health communication—a proposal that has occupied a significant portion of my time and effort for the past year.
I shift my weight from foot to foot as my appointment time comes and goes. Periodically, I hear fragments of spoken conversation, particularly when the pronoun “she” is pronounced, as in, “She came to meet with me . . .” or “She clearly intends for this to be . . .” I cannot hear enough of the dialogue to determine what is really being discussed.
Minutes tick by and I become irritated, then annoyed, and then dismayed as the 10-min window for my appointment opens and closes. My mind protests, “I’m supposed to be in there—in the meeting. I arrived on time!” My feet protest as I stand in the high-heeled shoes I wore with my businesslike pencil skirt in a costume selected specifically for this occasion.
I struggle not to feel like a naughty child outside the principal’s office. I cling to my identity as a competent, middle-aged, tenured Associate Professor. I struggle, but I fail. By the time I am invited to enter the room, I am docile, disciplined, and agree to every minor change the committee requests, including removing the table around my table of contents, removing all references to research that supports the proposal, and writing myself a letter of support to include as an appendix to the proposal.
Teacher at Work
Gag Orders
Standing in front of my undergraduate health communication class, I feel my heart begin to beat a little faster and my blood pressure rise. We have reached the moment in the course when I introduce an argument about the “real reason” for the poor performance of the American health care system. After explaining the official reasoning behind the managed care system dating back to its adoption in the early 1970s, I carefully introduce evidence connecting the corporatization of the health care industry to the decay of health care quality and equity.
I watch my students’ faces as I run the video of Linda Peeno’s (C-SPAN, 1996) testimony to Congress regarding deceptive, unethical, and deadly practices in the managed care industry. As a former insurance company Medical Director, Peeno explains how she used her expertise as a physician to deny necessary medical treatment and save money for her company. I drive the point home by informing my students that, in 2009, Peeno again testified to a House Subcommittee on the private health insurance industry, noting that the situation for patients was even worse than it had been in the 1990s (C-SPAN, 2009). Concerned that my students will become immobilized by the depressing outlook, I carefully introduce the words of the late Sir Tony Benn, retired Member of British Parliament in his interview with documentary filmmaker, Michael Moore for the movie Sicko (Glynn, Weinstein, & Weinstein, 2007). Discussing the origins of the National Health Service (NHS) in England after World War II, Benn points out what became obvious to the creators of the NHS—“If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people.”
By this point in the class meeting, my heart is racing. I continue to scan the faces of my students for signs that I am going too far, that I am becoming too political. Fearful, I stop the interview with Tony Benn right before he delivers the following lines regarding democracy:
An educated, healthy, and confident nation is harder to govern, and I think there’s an element in the thinking of some people [that] we don’t want people to be educated, healthy, and confident because they would get out of control. The top 1% of the world’s population own 80% of the world’s wealth. It’s incredible that people put up with it. But they’re poor, they’re demoralized, they’re frightened and therefore they think that perhaps the safest thing to do is to take orders and hope for the best. (Tony Benn in Sicko, Glynn et al., 2007)
Instead of playing this portion of the video and risking being accused of insulting America or promoting socialism, I encourage my students:
Educate yourselves further on the political dimensions of the health care system. Pay attention to anything you hear about health care policy. You are voters. I’m not going to tell you how to vote, but if you are interested in health care you must have an educated opinion about it.
I want to go so much further. I want to rain down fire on the processed food industry, and rail against the failure of politicians to enact basic safety legislation (let alone gun control!). I want to rain down fire on the pharmaceutical and insurance industries for making it easier, cheaper, and more desirable for Americans to consume prescription drugs than make lifestyle changes to support their health. I want all my students to see that no one is truly “free” whose government has sold off to the highest bidders countless basic human services like health care, clean drinking water, environmental safety, and the criminal justice system. But I stop short.
Instead, anxious to maintain my reputation as “a good teacher,” I have internalized the message that it is not wise to make students feel uncomfortable. As a female professor who is aware that she operates under continual gender-based scrutiny (Meyers, 2013), I am aware that I should never appear “biased,” or “political,” or “strident,” let alone “angry.” I walk the knife-edge between failing to be a good academic worker in this age of neoliberalism and failing to do the real work of educating my students to be better citizens and better people. The worst part of this situation is recognizing that I have internalized the neoliberal directives—be positive, be practical, be apolitical. No one sat me down and told me the rules of engagement. Rather, the rules have infiltrated my body like secondhand smoke and consequently I protect the status quo of the marketplace by treating my students as customers.
In this age of trigger warnings and transferable skills and measurable learning outcomes, it is difficult for critical thinking and political activism to find a foothold. When it comes time to perform my role as a professor, there is no need for surveillance because I am already primed to gag myself.
Hope for the Future
“Dr. Foster?” A beaming face peeps in my door as I swing my chair away from my computer screen and greet Hyzel—a graduate from the health communication master’s program who is now training to become a registered nurse.
I recall with amusement that Hyzel began the program because she was interested in health care but, unlike “most of my family” (as she put it), she did not want to become a nurse. Near the end of the MA program, she experienced a vocational calling to pursue nursing as a career, and I could not have been more thrilled.
Now nearing the end of her program, Hyzel has begun to think about next steps.
Hyzel talks of her love of clinical work with patients, her role as an instructor in the clinical skills simulation lab at her school, and her desire for something more.
As I think about heading into my role as an RN (Registered Nurse) [Hyzel explains], I’m just not sure that it’s going to be enough for me. I see so much going on around me that could be so much better—with communication and with systems in the hospital. I don’t know what path to take so that I can have a say in making things better.
Hyzel and I discuss some ideas, and I promise to connect her with a colleague at a nearby medical center who might know more about her career options as a nurse. As Hyzel leaves my office, I feel unspeakably proud of her and I have hope for my program.
Despite the career-oriented discourse that dominates the narrative of my program, the core values and capacities that make this graduate education (and not a trade school) have left their mark on Hyzel. Although she is engaged in a professional training program and clearly values the work she is called to so, she is not content to be a skilled nurse who carries out orders, or even a compassionate nurse who makes a difference to patients as she connects with them one-on-one. She can see instances of injustice, inefficiency, or lack of care, and she feels both empowered and compelled to make a difference.
Scholar at Work
The Numbers Game: Part I
Toward the end of the calendar year, I complete the first of what I hope to be several coauthored manuscripts about family physician education based on a painstaking and time-consuming qualitative analysis of discourse in group advising meetings. Findings from our multiphase sociolinguistic analysis of 12 meetings (10.5 hr of audio recordings, 225 pages of transcription) have been boiled down to the concise 3,000-word report format required by our targeted medical journal. The report evidences a relationship between the language adopted by faculty in group advising sessions and the resident physicians’ ability to reflect on their education and demonstrate practices of adult learning. A rather specialized insight, to be sure, but it is undeniably relevant to the conversations of resident socialization and education that are of interest to the journal’s readership. I wait optimistically for the review to come in.
After about 3 months, I see the journal’s title in the subject line indicating that a decision has been reached regarding the fate of our manuscript. I am too seasoned a scholar to leap frenetically to open the message. I anticipate there will be revisions, so I clear a few tasks from my inbox before coolly clicking on the subject line and beginning to read.
I browse through the substantive reviews and note useful suggestions for revision. I see that clearly more work is needed to explain the assumptions of inductive data analysis and the absence of a hypothesis, but it’s not beyond my grasp. I note with satisfaction that both reviewers compliment the content of the data tables that illustrate residents’ and faculty members’ discourse and the utility of our findings with respect to activated learning. I am feeling good.
Then I read the decision of the Editor who has rejected the manuscript despite the positive responses of the reviewers. He has graced us with five lines:
While I do think the authors address an important and timely topic, the manuscript is too long and too complex. Given that the study included just 6 residents, the generalizability of the findings to other programs is very limited. Generalizability is an essential quality for Original Articles to achieve. This study might make a reasonable Brief Report, but it would have to be drastically shortened to fit into this category.
I am livid. I feel like responding with my own terse little email:
If you were going to desk reject this manuscript, John, why did you bother sending it out for review?
But I don’t.
I wonder why I continue to play this game.
The Numbers Game: Part II
I started life as a visual and performing artist and one of the reasons I am drawn to autoethnography is that it is a methodology driven by passion. This is not to say that other researchers are not passionate about their subject matter or their methods, but autoethnography takes strong emotion—passion—as its genesis. Perhaps some autoethnographic writing begins as more of an itch than an ache but, by their conclusion, autoethnographic projects generate stories worth telling, worth reading, and worth feeling—stories that evoke a response. Because of its adoption of emotionality, memory, imagination, and creative writing as tools of inquiry, the territory that autoethnography has claimed within social science remains contested. The advances of the last 20 years notwithstanding, for as long as there are gatekeepers in the academy who are positioned to determine what “counts” as scholarship and what does not, boundaries will be inscribed and reinscribed largely to maintain the balance of power. This power to define what counts plays itself out in the cycles of evaluation that mark the academic life of a scholar.
Reflecting on my record of scholarship, I peruse the list of publications that populate the first section of my CV (curriculum vitae) and resist the urge to count the “vita lines” as I have so often in the past. Like many other neoliberal proclivities, the compulsion to count has been ingrained into my psyche over many years of job applications, annual productivity reports, pre-tenure and tenure reviews, and the social comparison I (used to) engage in with other academics as I judged my relative stature. This time, not counting but considering the extent to which my published work reflects my passion and my voice, I am surprised by how many pieces do not tell a story or, perhaps, how many reflect only the academic voice required by the journals and books that qualify me as a scholar in the health care field. I can also see in the list of my publications the strategy and care I have taken to balance the number of articles, book chapters, and commentaries, producing an effective distribution of solo and coauthored pieces and of methodological and discipline-specific manuscripts. Particularly in the pursuit of tenure, there is a certain degree of wisdom in approaching one’s record of scholarship with a plan. The problem is that almost 15 years after graduating with my doctoral degree I cannot yet see the articulation of my unique vision and passion, my “contribution” to the world. Perhaps more unsettling is the question of how much time I have spent working on research projects that were not necessarily of my choosing. When I reflect on my CV in this way, I see the vita of a scholar who has played by the rules and I question whether that is enough and whether, at the end of the day, this is what I want to count as my life’s work.
Resisting Neoliberalism
Like most academics, I experience my identity shifting on an hourly basis according to different roles and activities—teacher, writer, researcher, advisor, program director. I associate each role with relationships—with students, readers, colleagues, and administrative team members. Until I began pondering the question posed by Chris Poulos regarding the relationship between neoliberalism in the academy and autoethnographic practices, I did not realize I had overlooked an essential role that contributes to my identity as an academic—the role of “worker.” Prompted by Chris’s challenge, I was forced to ask the question, “If I am a worker, what kind of worker am I?”
I suspect that my failure to include “worker” among my perceived roles is not uncommon among members of the faculty. The organizational discourse that distinguishes us from “staff” highlights our difference from others whose labor involves hourly accountability and reporting to supervisors. Those of us with the privilege of tenure may also breathe a little easier, soothed by the notion that we have a “job for life.” And yet, few academics of my generation trust the façade of security that tenure provides; indeed, many of us question whether tenure serves the purpose for which it was originally developed—to ensure academic freedom and the continued advancement of society—or whether it simply serves as the final “hoop” for academics to jump through so that they never have to work too hard again. Having recently passed through that final “hoop” to achieve tenure, I am dismayed to find that I do not feel empowered to speak more freely in the classroom nor to write and publish more critical and cutting-edge research. Even the prospect of publishing this mildly outspoken essay prompts me to share it with my Dean so that she can serve as a shield if questions arise during my eventual bid for full professor. So, in this age of neoliberalism, what kind of worker am I? Answer: An anxiously compliant one.
I love my job. Having lived through years of underemployment in my early adulthood, and having spent 5 years midcareer in a corporate position in the health care industry, I realize that as an academic, I have one of the most privileged careers available. The privilege comes not from money or from power in its traditional sense. My privilege resides in the high degree of autonomy afforded the full-time professor. As busy as we are with our diverse range of activities and responsibilities, we typically have the freedom to decide how to work, what to work on, when to work, and, increasingly, where to work. The often grueling tenure and promotion process notwithstanding, to a large extent, we also define for ourselves what “success” means.
And yet, the further I advance in my career, the more I have come to realize that the pervasive emotional tone of my day-to-day life is anxiety. While acknowledging the joy, fun, curiosity, discovery, and sense of accomplishment that make the work of teaching and scholarship worth doing, I also posit that the ground on which we walk as academics is more akin to a factory floor than a fertile field. As ideals of social justice, diversity, community, and peace come under ever more organized attack in the sphere of public discourse, I know I must respond with greater courage in my work as an academic; I must question the assumptions of neoliberalism, enact a more passionate and emancipatory pedagogy, and write in ways that better reflect my core convictions regarding the directions we need to take. Furthermore, I must question the assumptions of neoliberalism that affect the academic labor within my own institution—because if I don’t, who will? There is a real and present danger in believing we are academically free simply because we declare it to be so. I sense a collective forgetting among my colleagues who seem to equate the ideals of academic freedom with the ability to teach a class online while wearing their pajamas—forgetting that academic freedom is supposed to safeguard everyone’s freedom by questioning, always, the status quo.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.