Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the “Academic” Curtain…

Shame. We’ve all felt it.

It’s that uneasy feeling that we’re (at our core) somehow deficient – not good enough. That our best falls short. It’s different than guilt. Guilt generally relates to actions. We feel guilt for what we do. We feel shame for who we are. Shame relates to our identity.

When we feel shame, we tend to cover up. We mask our weakness and put our “best foot” forward. We hide those parts of ourselves that we think are deficient. We tell ourselves, “You couldn’t possibly be accepted by Group X if Group X knew _________ about you.”

I’ve seen this “cover-hide” phenomena play out over and over again in the funniest places. It manifests in the workplace when people don’t want to admit ignorance of company procedures for fear of public embarrassment. It happens in the church (perhaps too often!) when brothers and sisters in Christ prefer to highlight the positive experiences of their week for fear that telling about their crappy stuff will land them in the “pastor’s office.” However, I think the strangest place I’ve found this occurring is somewhere I would never have expected: the Academy.

Yes, the Academy. The very place designed to pursue and preserve “truth” is actually mired in the same façade and pretense prevalent everywhere else. Sure, the academy trades with “knowledge” instead of Christian morality or company procedures, but the same fear of judgment from others prevails. Publishing choices, conference presentations, professorship acceptances (and everything else) often turns on the desire to build a CV that tells everyone that you “know something”; that you’re the expert.

Now, I’m not blaming the folks currently in the Academy for this. It’s an ethos that’s been around for a long time. There are implicit “understandings” going something like: If you’re not sharp enough, then you’re not good enough. If you’re not intellectual enough, then you’re not worth listening to. You need to meet certain academic heights before you’re taken seriously.

And the list could go on.

I just wonder when everyone will realize that this ethos encourages a recapitulation of the “cover-hide” phenomena. The reality is that no one (not even top scholars in a field) knows everything. The journey of knowledge acquisition is always an on-going journey. There is always something else to discover. Perpetuating the myth that you need to “know something” before you matter, forces people (academics in this case) into living a life of covering and hiding. For, if they let on that they might not know _________, they might expose themselves to ridicule from peers, lose the respect of students, etc. No one wants this, so they cover themselves where they “lack” and peacock their strengths.

BUT…..

What if incoming academics decide to facilitate a change? What if a few brave souls “drew back the curtain” and honestly pursued knowledge, with all the confusion, toil, and courage that goes along with it? What if they refused to believe that their worth in the Academy comes from their accomplishments?

Maybe the Academy could change.

Maybe the Real Man behind the Machine of Rigorous Knowledge could be exposed.