They Can't Look in the Mirror
A Free Speech Panel. A Curriculum Committee. Same Disease.
FacultyLeaks.com is an anonymous dispatch from inside higher education. Some identifying details have been changed. The dysfunction has not.
Last week, Jonathan Zimmerman — a historian of education at Penn — published an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education with a simple thesis: academia won’t look itself in the mirror. It’s easier, he wrote, to dismiss critics with condescension than to reform.
He had proof. He’d watched it happen in real time.
At a Washington meeting of education scholars last year, Zimmerman attended a panel on Trump’s threats to university funding, free speech on campus, and more. During the Q&A he raised his hand and asked a reasonable question: could academia examine its own role in bringing about the current crisis, rather than just circling the wagons?
Dead silence. Then an audience member announced she was deeply offended by the phrase “circle the wagons” — Native American displacement, genocide, hateful history. The moderator thanked her for reminding everyone to be “careful in the language we use to describe others.” And that was that.
A free speech panel. That couldn’t discuss free speech. Without policing speech.
Afterwards, several people told Zimmerman privately that they’d wondered the same thing he had. But they were too scared to say so during the panel. Why stick your neck out?
Zimmerman walked away with his thesis confirmed in real time. I read his piece and thought: yes, and here’s what it looks like from the inside.
A couple of weeks ago, at 1:37am on a Wednesday morning, a colleague on my curriculum committee left a comment on a course proposal I’d submitted.
“I’d recommend reconsidering the use of ‘Master (B)’ in section 4C, as this type of hierarchical language can carry racialized and gendered connotations. ‘Skillful’ might serve as a more neutral alternative.”
This is a curriculum committee. Its job is to evaluate pedagogy, learning outcomes, and course rigor. Instead, at 1:37 in the morning, a member was not parsing standard accreditation language for hidden subtext.
The Dean has read this committee the riot act. New programs are stalled. Faculty are waiting. His message was direct: move faster, do your jobs, stop holding up approvals.
Their response: a 1:37am comment questioning whether standard academic language is a racial slur.
For the record: I changed it. After waiting months for the committee to even take up the proposal — they’d tabled it at the previous meeting because they’d spent the entire session on other matters and never got to a single course — “Master (B)” suddenly didn’t seem worth the fight. I made the edit and moved on.
That’s how this works. Not through dramatic confrontation, but through the slow attrition of people who have better things to do than defend accreditation terminology at 1:37 in the morning.
Zimmerman called it “a culture of fear, timidity, and conformity.” He’s right. The panel went to lunch. My committee continued sleeping on approvals.
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