Overthrow the academy

At Occupy Duke, I have engaged in conversations unbound by traditional or conservative constraints. During this experience, I have constantly challenged my conception of self and knowledge. Unfortunately, these anomalous experiences juxtapose Duke as a reflection of the Academy, primarily due to the mechanisms currently and inappropriately defining this space: departments, majors, faculty tenure and grades.

Before my faculty readership heads to the barracks, let’s be real—tenure’s days are numbered. Free speech is protected by law and public image. Sometimes the existence of tenure even discourages free speech: Tenure, always hanging over the heads of junior faculty, discourages dissent in departmental and University politics. Further, tenure creates an unnecessary pressure to publish quickly, and sometimes clumsily, before reaching that point where you could potentially relax. The Academy should never force capitalistically defined productivity onto intellectualism. Given the extreme distaste for tenure outside of the Academy and increasingly within its halls, it has become clear that tenure will end—now, what can faculty get in exchange? Give up tenure before it is demanded of you and, in doing so, recreate the space for yourself and the future.

Faculty should demand empowerment, especially on issues directly affecting the classroom and intellectual pursuits. An empowered faculty collective—partially obtainable through unionization—could replace the unnecessary bureaucracy found in deanships, the provost and possibly the University president. Without the current power structures—which mainly derive power through the allocation of money—faculty could predictively huddle into their outdated and confined zones of intellectual decay: departments. For this reason, among others, true faculty empowerment and departmental abolishment depend on one another; one without the other would fail miserably. If faculty members hear such calls from the triumvirate running this show, they would rightfully reach for pitchforks. Let them hear it from students on the basis of education.

The primary goal of this space is revolution; education is entirely revolutionary by challenging ontology and epistemology. If this space continues to ignore its commitments, Duke will be nothing more than a job training institute. The Academy’s structure must force interaction between schools of thought and personal experience. One promising academic model mirrors an anarcho-syndicalist structure with emergent syndicates around proposed fields of study like food, hip-hop, American labor or—as Mark Taylor argued in The New York Times—water. These working groups would arise organically and suspend study as determined by the collective. Traditional studies like basic chemistry and mathematics could be found in a variety of syndicates similar to the physics department’s current separation of general mechanics and electricity and magnetism along the proposed fields of study. Specific studies like string theory or Marxist literary theory could exist as their own syndicates but with new and necessary diversity from philosophy or history.

Most will complain that such a structure will allow free loaders. The current structure leaves many students unengaged in their studies and encourages students—we all know a few—to search for an “easy” or “guaranteed” A. The prevalence of this cowardly failure directly mirrors the academic structure and those working within that structure. A horizontally modeled Academy would reunite studies and interests and through this desire—as Alfred Whitehead describes—return to the rigorous study that the current model ignorantly defines as prerequisites.

Some faculty claim that the influx of scientific research funds would skew interest. This is part of the problem: True scientists understand the potential fallacy of fact; they challenge everything. If you allow the abstract academic divisions to interact with and teach one another, they will understand the necessity of a diverse Academy. This is not altruistic but selfishly and directly necessary for all involved.

Instead of the organized validation service we now run at Duke—majors—this educational structure would embolden students to search for a faculty council of five or six members from diverse backgrounds. These faculty members, accumulated over the course of the education, could properly challenge, criticize and recommend the students whom they work with. Faculty, unburdened by departmental procedure and constant interpretation of dean proclamations, would find this advising structure rewarding both educationally and personally. Instead of a nebulous grading scale which, because of departmental inflation, reflects nothing, this model gives faculty the power to make real demands of students. Instead of jumping through hoops—restricted on the top and bottom ends—we might high jump.

Duke must, for once, have confidence in itself. We are not Yale or the other Ivies; admit that fact and stop waiting for them to do everything first. Duke’s age is its greatest asset. We can change everything if we wish. Create an educational structure that fosters rather than suppresses intellectualism. Anticipate rather than react to the evolution of the Academy. Such a change would properly appropriate funds to intellectual progress rather than faculty and student babysitting. Duke would attract more applicants and interest from the academic community. Conservative hand-wringing will do nothing to reverse Duke’s slipping ranking and reputation; it is time for something radical. Duke must become an educational space where faculty and students are empowered to shape their own internal and external revolution.