UCSD, No Thank You
Last year I turned down a professorial position at the University of California, San Diego, birthplace of the new social movements and the stomping ground of people like Herbert Marcuse and Angela Davis. The position was described by some of my colleagues as a ‘bait and switch’ routine: the advertised post was not at all the one formally offered to me (just a few days before the beginning of the semester). In a word, the position was completely unlivable and would have almost certainly plunged me into homelessness.
And then I read about the housing crisis in San Diego, about the students and professors who are living in their cars. And I remembered that this was a country whose motto of ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ was disavowed by the academic class (e.g., ‘its not our fault, its the administration,’ etc). And I remembered the difficulty I faced for several years teaching and researching under the intense pressure to conform to the ruling ideological environment of so-called ‘evidence-based science,’ ‘outcomes-based teaching,’ and, to top it all off, the eradication of humor in the classroom (replaced only with contrived ‘faux-laughter’ that serves only to express one’s supposed knowledge).
These are among the reasons I left the continent, in search of a place to think. It led me to India, Russia, Ireland, Kazakhstan, and many other places. I realized that one half of the hemisphere was filled with students and faculty who were bold and daring, forthright, and in good humor.
Conversely, in Pakistan, where I am now working, I witness a country attempting to pull itself out of crisis. It necessitates invention: bold, original, interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary thinkers are required. I am among faculty and students who are intensely engaged — without much ideological pretense — in the future of their country. When I accepted a professorial position here, I also accepted purpose and direction and permitted myself to relinquish the nostalgia for the movements and political aspirations of the past; their spirit has been almost entirely eclipsed by the newest social movements, which, in their own way, do not always constitute progress but rather regress: something much more daring is afoot.
