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Academia

I took a year off from academia to work in an investment bank; I liked the math involved but lacked a sense of purpose (other than self-enrichment) and knew that I wouldn't stay.

Otherwise I've been in academia non-stop since 1978, with nine years as a student (undergraduate and graduate) and 35 years as an instructor. I'm a tenured full-professor with no desire to work in administration so I'm pretty much stable in my rank.

Academia as such (as opposed to reports of academic research) tends to make the news negatively. Recently the president of Harvard resigned because of accusations of plagiarism. (I do not know the details and will not comment on the merits of the accusations.)  Prior to that she had been called to speak before congress with other presidents due to strife on their campuses re the ongoing fighting between Israel and Hamas and how free expression was on that issue.

I'm trying to think of academia in the news that was portrayed positively and to be honest it's hard to come up with examples. There are predominantly lightning rod issues of harassment, bias, cheating scandals, etc. that should be publicized and criticized.

I just wonder if there will ever come a time when the good that academia does will be deemed newsworthy.  The news media tends to focus on visual stories; it also focuses on easily described time-specific events, and so good teaching by my colleagues at my university and other places is rarely discussed outside of where it occurs, unless there is an award and a ceremony and even then it is not likely to be heavily reported.

And yet I continue to enjoy going in to work with colleagues who work hard to educe, to draw out the best of our students. We differ by discipline in what we can help with but that is the common mission. It has a different face in research universities but ultimately it is the same mission.

On a more minor note three people this past week at work asked for advice (which is cheap for me to give, as I've been around forever and love to talk) on how to help other people without immediate reward. I look at the news reports about turmoil on campuses and know that it is so very easy to focus on the fringe and not the heart of academia.

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