The Cost of Academic Martyrdom
As I have attempted to put thoughts to paper about martyrdom, faces and various scenes have flashed before me: a sorority sister who would go on and on about everything she had to do, the leader of a dog rescue group who would send long heated emails about how inadequate others were, the faculty member who clung to “his” doctoral program at the expense of its growth, the countless times teachers/faculty members came to my office complaining about others. I imagine anyone reading these entries may have experienced the same: images of martyrs from their past or present. Upon initial reflection, one might think that martyrs are annoyances that only hurt themselves by being so miserable all the time. While martyrs themselves experience the “cost” of their martyrdom most and most directly, these are not the only costs. Further, the costs martyrs experience ultimately impact the institution as well. Here are at least three costs I’ve seen when it comes to academic martyrs:
Compromised Decision Making
As I noted in the last entry, intensification of work in universities breeds martyrdom, and intensification coupled with martyrdom leads to compromised decision making within academic departments and colleges. Faculty in most colleges are spending far more time addressing needs related to both curriculum and assessment. Accreditation requirements like HLC and CAEP require more and more attention to developing, implementing, and monitoring assessments as well as systematically using the data from those assessments for continuous improvement. In addition, changes in state and professional standards and policies require faculty to revise curriculum to maintain their ability to license and/or credential their students upon completion of programs. With so much work required on top of heavier teaching loads and ongoing service for the institution, martyrs often take the lead regarding the work, and their colleagues often let them do the work rather than sit in hours of committee meetings trying to develop it together.
When faculty allow an individual to control changes in curriculum and/or assessment, they compromise the likelihood that those changes will be implemented with integrity. While individuals may not choose to participate in the original planning and revisions, they may choose to challenge the decisions once made and/or sabotage the implementation of the changes through passive aggressive (or even explicitly aggressive) responses. For example, they may reject a new required common assessment on the grounds of “academic freedom.” This is particularly problematic when an accreditation visiting team meets with individuals and sees that they either do not know the changes that have been made or know what they are, but they do not support them.
Compromised decision making is not limited to curriculum and assessment issues, nor is it simply a problem for those units under stricter guidelines based upon accreditation or state requirements. When martyrs maintain more decision-making power than others, they are at risk of compromising other aspects of an academic unit because they are more likely to be motivated by ego vs. the good of the program/institution. As Helen Meyers notes, service is a means through which individuals can build professional/cultural capital. Therefore, martyrs' decisions may reinforce their desire to promote themselves instead of ensuring that decisions support larger aims within the program/institution. As Matthew (6:24) notes, you cannot serve two masters. The same rule applies for academic martyrs: you cannot promote self-interest and the aims of the university simultaneously.
Thus, decisions are compromised in two significant ways. First, the decisions may not necessarily support the larger aims of the institution or the needs of the students. Second, if the martyr’s colleagues have no buy-in for the decisions being made, then an academic unit is, at best, at a standstill. In worse cases, the unit experiences programmatic and/or enrollment free fall because of their inability to make progress.
Compromised Capacity
Martyrdom takes a toll on the faculty member over time. Whether the martyr is doing too much or perceives he/she is doing too much, the effect is the same: the martyr is at risk for burn-out. Gorski (2015) discovered comparable results when he examined activist burn-out. He noted that the culture of the organization does not promote self-care, and that activists perceive a need to sustain a level of selflessness that can ultimately lead to them withdrawing from their work. Much like Gorski’s activists, academic martyrs are vulnerable because they give so much of themselves to the institution, and the institution does not reciprocate in kind.
While some martyrs can rid themselves of the identity they forged through their sacrifice to leave the university, many cannot. For some, the identity is still too strong. They may feel that they cannot survive professionally outside the institution. For others, they cannot leave because they invested so much of themselves within university service (at the expense of research) that they are not competitive on the academic market. For the martyrs who cannot literally leave an institution, they often leave figuratively by disengaging. I often refer to these individuals as the “walking retired.”
This all-or-nothing scenario comes at a huge cost to universities. These individuals are often those with the longest histories (and thus, the largest salaries) in the institution, and by disengaging, they force others (particularly newer assistant professors) to take on even more work. Each martyr within a department/college results in a significant burden to others – and the newer faculty who take on those burdens see their senior colleagues protected by tenure getting away with doing so little. This creates a huge problem with morale across the unit that compromises the unit’s capacity to engage in collaborative efforts as well.
Compromised Culture
Both compromised decision making and compromised capacity create a compromised culture within an academic unit. First, when a martyr maintains control over much of a program, then faculty see no reason to engage. When needs arise in a department or college, the faculty who have not been involved in decision making do not feel responsible for stepping up and helping handle the new needs. Further, if the martyr leaves, then those who remain have neither developed leadership skills nor are they motivated to take on leadership roles. More importantly, if a majority of the faculty have been disengaged in the work of the unit, then they do not realize the nature of the work required to maintain the unit nor do they understand the implications if that work is not done. As a result, a void in leadership and a pervasive lack of engagement can spell disaster within an academic unit.
This disaster can occur whether the leader who did all the work was a martyr or not – whether it was an individual who had tremendous capacity for work and did work to support the institution or whether it was a martyr doing the work to maintain power and feed his or her ego. However, when a martyr leaves, (literally or figuratively), then the foundation from which decisions have been made is often based upon compromised practices neither aligned to institutional ideals nor supportive of the needs of students. Then the unit then faces two obstacles: lack of support to do the work of the unit and lack of direction for that work.
Years ago, when I was studying educational administration, I remember the charge that a transformative leader should be able to leave a school and come back years later to see a continuation of the positive changes. This only happens when a leader is focused on larger organizational aims and when those around him or her are engaged and equally dedicated to those aims. A martyr, as noted above, is not typically focused on larger organizational aims. So, when he or she leaves, and when the decisions he or she made are based upon his or her self-interests/needs, there is no clear foundation from which others can move forward. Further, when those left to move forward have remained disengaged, they are not able to see this and make the needed changes to ensure progress. Instead, they are quick to complain about the mess left behind with little motivation and no understanding of how to move beyond it.
Conclusion
Having worked at six different universities and having interacted with countless others through my research, I have often seen snapshots at points in time for academic units and wondered how they ever got that way. I’ve seen organizational messes that made me think “If you’d hired a consulting firm to wreak havoc on your unit, they would not have been able to do as effective a job as you have done yourselves.” Organizational “hot messes” do not occur overnight, and rarely are they the result of one individual. However, in the instances where I’ve been able to peel back historical and organizational layers within those units, I’ve often seen a series of martyrs who were catalysts toward the “hot mess-ness” of each. While a single martyr was never the sole reason for the problems in a department or college, each martyr’s presence significantly impacted the degree to which the unit ultimately struggled. Therefore, it is essential to recognize the costs of academic martyrdom and work to diffuse the conditions that breed martyrdom. The latter will be the subject of my next entry.