And I have transfered my teaching\u00a0skills, along with over fifteen years of meditation practice, over to mindfulness classes, which have been well-received thus far, leading to the rise of www.mindfulmontana.com<\/a> and www.guideful.org<\/a>. I\u2019m also co-leading a trip to India<\/a> later this year and, well, we\u2019ll see what happens in my new home in Seattle, Wash.<\/p>\n As I turn my attention more away from academia (which is hard, as I do love it so), I leave with some simple footnotes on a critique. My own feelings are far too milquetoast \u2013 or rather\u00a0ambivalent<\/em> \u2013 to warrant their own, unaccompanied expression. So I turn to a piece in The Baffler<\/em> by Maximillian Alvarez<\/a> titled \u201cContingent no More.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n A SPECTER IS HAUNTING ACADEMIA<\/span>\u2014the specter of something that has yet to definitively claim a name for itself, but is rising nonetheless. So many of us have been buried underground, so many breathing through small breaks in the soil that covers our pristine university campuses where guided tours are given and frisbees are thrown, where deep-pocketed donors stroll nostalgically and future debtors gaze longingly. Looking up, we may, each of us, feel like the forgotten seeds moldering beneath these hallowed grounds\u2014but we are, all of us, the tectonic plate holding them together. When we move, the world above will feel it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Part of my reason for finally drawing this out is Pierce Salguero\u2019s recent guest post here on the critiques of mindfulness<\/a>\u00a0[6\/17 edit: to be clear, the thoughts here are not aimed at Pierce or his work, but in part at least toward my own potential place in academia and sympathies for many of the critiques]. Many of these critiques have come from folks picking figs from the hallowed halls of academia; tenured and tenure-track intellectuals ignorant of or content to ignore the specter haunting them.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no sense in reciting these conditions yet again. We already know the score. New generations of faculty and students crushed by unprecedented levels of debt; the increased precariousness of the academic labor force<\/a>; the systematic devaluation<\/a> of academic labor itself; the corporate-style structuring<\/a> of higher education\u2014something, somehow is going to give. Still, either out of pure denial or self-preservation, we keep carrying on<\/a> as if these circumstances can be ignored\u2014as if they exist only in dark spots on the fringes, which we can escape by doing \u201cbetter work,\u201d enrolling in \u201cbetter programs,\u201d getting \u201cbetter positions.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u2019ve asked fellow academics a few times\u00a0about the specter and this sums up many of their responses. When I suggested that perhaps a nation-wide solidarity movement was needed, one more honest (imo) friend, suggested that tenured\/tenure-track folks won\u2019t step up for students and the precariat because: \u201cthey\u2019re afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n And, as if to punctuate this fear, a university threatened the jobs of an entire philosophy department<\/a>\u00a0last month:<\/p>\n The chair of the Philosophy Department, John Hittinger<\/a>,\u00a0wrote, in a public Facebook post<\/a>:<\/p>\n Here are the facts and their significance: every member of philosophy (11 of us) and every member of the English department (7 of us) was not given a contract. That means we do not know if we are going to return to the university in the fall. We are dangled, our very lives and profession, are dangling before the whim of a strong man.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n How many adjuncts or graduate students, whose lives have dangled every semester that they have ever known, are going to burst forth with sympathy for Hittinger and co? As later reported on Inside Higher Ed<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2026it\u2019s puzzling to many on campus that reappointment notifications to tenured faculty members in philosophy may be sent up to month late this year, as the administration reviews department offerings in looking for ways to close a campus budget deficit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Can any academic (especially those in fields like philosophy, english, foreign languages, or religious studies) really guarantee that this won\u2019t be them in the not-so-distant future? The answer is, I believe, a resounding \u201cno.\u201d However, most if not all are content to keep their heads down, smile warmly as provosts or presidents approach, talk of tightening their budgets and their \u201cbetter work.\u201d\u00a0Content<\/em> may be an unfair word there; as many are perhaps just quiet in their desperation.<\/p>\n Alvarez continues:<\/p>\n This speaks to the truly tenacious allure and staying power of the foundational myths that shape the academic vocation. As I argued recently in a piece for<\/a> the Chronicle Review<\/em>, the essential function of these myths is to guide the currents of professional and existential want, to shape our desires and expectations for what life as an academic should be. Such professional myths tell us what we are and what we should be striving to be\u2014via the perceived rewards they deliver, the cultural capital that colleagues and non-academics ascribe to them, and the way they shape our conceptions of what an ideal \u201cacademic\u201d looks like.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And, getting right down to it:<\/p>\n It\u2019s time we come to grips with the uncomfortable truth that many of the desires and lofty aims that drew us to academia in the first place are killing us softly, rotting away our ability to achieve the goals that initially drew us in while compounding the conditions of our own exploitation\u2026.\u00a0That is, after all, the supreme draw, the sweet poison, of such myths: they prey on the most self-serving and hyper-individualized conceits of an already laissez-faire academic culture that idolizes individual thinkers while equating professional success with genuine intellectual worth. It shouldn\u2019t be hard to see how the mythology of such a culture merges so seamlessly with the neoliberal ethos of self-reliance and the self-serving fantasies of meritocracy<\/a> and capitalistic bootstrapism<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I could quote all of it, but there\u2019s a word for that. And you really should read the full piece yourself<\/a>.<\/p>\n Instead, I come back to mindfulness and my own turn away from academics critiques of it.<\/p>\n Academia is a Goliath, and it is slowly being brought to its knees by neoliberalism. Mindfulness, by contrast, is a pretty insignificant\u00a0corner of the world, economically and culturally. I applaud continuing projects that uncover the history and understandings of past Buddhist practices (such as Robert Scharf\u2019s lecture here<\/a>), current trends as discussed by academics like\u00a0Ann Gleig<\/a>, Scott Mitchell, Jeff Wilson,\u00a0and others, or the forward looking thoughts discussed here<\/a>\u00a0or Miles Neale\u2019s long-time insider critique<\/a> discussed here recently.<\/p>\n I have no desire to draw out my own critique of academia. It is, after all, a critique of all of us (inside academia or not). It is a critique of the whole corrosive neoliberal system around us. Academia, and academics, are no more to blame than are mindfulness teachers or Buddhist lamas with twitter accounts. I\u2019m leary, as well, about tribalism: the idea that we don\u2019t criticize \u201cour own\u201d because we (buddhists, mindfulness teachers, academics, etc) are all on \u201cthe same side\u201d against some reified enemy. People on our side are just as apt to make mistakes and just as deserving of the kind notice when they (and I!) do.<\/p>\n And so I go on, one\u00a0eye on\u00a0the system around me, one\u00a0eye on\u00a0the ground before me.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Teetering on the edge of academia, I watch eagerly as each new hiring cycle rises and falls. This year marks the first season that my PhD, the longest single endeavor of my life, is finally done. My parents and many of their generation assured me throughout that once that diploma was in hand, the doors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"featured_media":6823,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,602],"tags":[86,629,102],"class_list":["post-6821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academia","category-mindfulness","tag-academia-2","tag-critique","tag-mindfulness"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"image](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/83\/2017\/06\/model-2339867_1280-1024x693.jpg\")