Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

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Not to suggest that this isn't a serious matter for the people there (and some of this language might be understated, like "limiting oxygen to colleagues" as a euphemism for literally strangling a student)... but academia can still get much worse than this.

Having talked with lots of people in industry and academia, the worst stories are from academia.

Intuitive speculation...

An industry CEO with clinical ego problems can eventually grow an org chart of enablers and twisted culture enforcers, and might've even managed to stack the board, and might escape investor revolt for a long time. But the employees can usually leave without throwing away the careers in which they've invested their lives, know they have rights, can probably afford consulting a lawyer, etc.

Now contrast that industry situation with a (bad) university environment that similarly feels superior, and that it shouldn't be subject to outside rules, but additionally the abused often can't just leave, nor defend themselves: grad students, postdocs, tenure-track early-career needing support of the entrenched, poverty-level adjuncts needing the reference towards a full-time job, high percentage of foreign students on visa, underpaid support staff who took the job for discounted tuition for their children, etc.

I once heard a joke that the reason academia is so hostile is because the stakes are so low.

There's some truth to that saying about "academic politics", but I think it can also twist the understanding of a situation, so that people unfamiliar are less sympathetic than they should be.

Consider all the kids aspiring to pursue some field that at some point funnels through a university. They're not knowingly signing up for some niche bloodsport. And that's not what the situation actually is. The complaints about academic research dynamics in some fields aside, there's a more immediate problem of frequently unchecked bad behavior by individuals, often victimizing people who are in very vulnerable positions.

The term "academic politics" invokes our ideas of "politics", such as around those who run for elected office: that it's largely BS and lies, and only for those who have the stomach for that, and that everyone who plays it has to learn how to play dirty. Fortunately, that's not an accurate characterization of all that goes on in a university, and it's certainly not the traits for which we want to pass-filter all our researchers and university teachers. When some individual in a position of power is behaving badly, and the consequences rain down upon the defenseless, that's not "politics".

("Politics" only kicks in when the abuser brings in enough money/prestige that that a corporate-oriented official wants to silence the messenger, or when members of the abuser's academic caste implicitly close ranks in ignorant solidarity. But the abused still aren't political operators.)

I agree with that. It’s also more about respect and feelings than industry. For the most part industry motives boil down to money. Academic motives are varied and often hard to measure.

This phenomenon is anecdotally true at least. I remeber years ago reading an article about running that mentioned the same thing. People who are "age groupers" are way more outwardly hostile and competitive than actual elite athletes (so the article was saying) and the conclusion again was that the lower the stakes the more seriously things get taken by those involved. There was actually also an article on HN a few months ago talking about the same thing in swimming as a metaphor for something else - there's three lanes, the top, middle and recreational, top and recreational are nice, middle are all assholes.

The joke goes way back. But decisions affect careers--those who have invested eight or ten years of post-secondary education hope to find a forty-year career. There is not (by banker's standards) a lot of money involved, but it is a big chunk of someone's life.

(I am not an academic, by the way, and never aimed to be one.)

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