Eggshells

On various philosophy blogs there are debates about whether someone or other should be saying something or other, or how academics should behave toward one another.  No petitions for Collard.  Philosophy as maybe activism.  The return of internecine wars of the anti-war movement.  They are all, in differing ways, interesting topics of discussion and entertaining reading.  In the commentary, one always finds several warnings about how to talk, that some sorts of requests or inquiries may be problematic, that it is bad for senior academics to criticize junior academics, to take for the vulnerabilities of graduate students, why of course comments must be anonymous and so on.  It is the comments that I have in mind now. 

Academics, at least in philosophy, teach.  They grade their students.  They organize and present courses.  They are in departments that organize a major or a minor (almost all of them, anyway).  They write letters of recommendation.  Those with graduate programs teach and advise graduate students, and write more letters of recommendation.  And they conduct hiring searches, and they hire people.  How is all that done?  It is not nurturing to give out bad grades.  It is an exercise of power, imposing opinions.  Making hiring decisions is certainly cruel to those not chosen.  Recommendations are about personal relationships, at least in part.  The winnowing of graduate students, and colleagues, are built on the more senior judging and being critical of juniors.  Why aren't these practices condemned?  

No to open letters and petitions.  But yes to committees and to departments, and each making decisions about curriculum and about personnel?  No voting in a department?  No to voting generally?  Or is it that being asked to sign is just too much pressure?  Unreasonable to expect someone to stand with their own views?  Well.  It sometimes seems that these poor folk in academia should be able to flourish without any risk, and certainly nothing should happen that might interfere with their careers.  An exaggeration of course.  But not enough of one.