Question: I'm a young, female, untenured faculty member with multiple disabilities, but they're not visible and don't affect the quality of my work. The accommodations I need are minor, but my colleagues' attitudes are an issue. I don't have the behavioral patterns or paraphernalia that people associate with my disabilities, so I don't "act disabled," and it's rumored that I'm a lazy liar.
But once people know about my health situation, many of them reduce their expectations and go into the "oh, poor you" routine. I vehemently do not want pity, and I'm getting fake empathy from a dean who's also a famous skirt chaser, although so far he's made no such advances to me. Still, I'm afraid that those who observe his overcourteous, borderline-sleazy behavior to me will jump to the most gossipworthy explanation, hurting my career. What do I do?
Answer: Ms. Mentor is charmed and mystified by your letter, which seems to her a triumphal account rather than a cry for help. You've vanquished most of the monsters whiffling through the tulgey wood; the only dragon remaining with eyes of flame is the dean.
Ms. Mentor at first expected you to cite the Americans With Disabilities Act, which requires accommodations. But you've handled that.
Ms. Mentor could tell you that academics, like other mortals, sometimes harbor prejudices against people with disabilities. "They'll cost more in insurance" is one claim, but more often there's vague muttering about "bad fit," meaning that hirers don't want to come right out and admit they're more comfy with people like themselves—white, young, straight, able-bodied.
But you haven't asked Ms. Mentor about that, either—nor about coping with those who consider you a lazy liar for having a handicapped-parking sticker, or saying you have to be in bed by 8 p.m., or awkwardly declining to go to lunch.
You can't control what others say, but you can often control what they see and how they see it. You can admit to "a couple of minor medical conditions" and needing "more rest to keep up with the high standards of this department. Everyone is incredibly accomplished." (When you flatter people, they often forget about you. They're too busy preening.)
Or sometimes they're being patronizing. "How brave you are" is cloying and annoying. So are the distraught sympathizers who make you comfort them ("My tumor isn't a death sentence. Really, it isn't. It doesn't interfere with my teaching. Stop crying.")
But you haven't asked about that, either.
And advice givers—according to the secret oath they all take—are supposed to answer only the question that they're actually asked.
You, poor dear, ask so little of Ms. Mentor. Just a small, mundane, universal worry. What if you are sexually pursued by—oh, no—an administrator? Many professors do see themselves as righteous defenders of their academic prerogatives against the vile encroachment of administrators, who are routinely defined as the enemy. (Are people who hated their fathers especially drawn to academe? Ms. Mentor wonders.)
Joining the administration is often called "going over to the dark side," as anyone who becomes a department chair finds out quickly. You're suddenly a villain who must be watched: What's to keep you from hoodwinking your faculty or frittering away resources? If you're a female chair, you're suddenly expected to be a listener-mom, and if you dare say no, according to one horrified leader at a Midwestern college: "They acted like I was denying them the breast."
Deans are even more defined as the enemy because they were never on your team in the first place. They're almost certainly from some other department, some other field of knowledge. They can't know how important your work is, nor how unappreciated you are.
But in these troubled times, many deans are actually heroic manipulators of figures and budgets. As middle managers, cruelly squeezed between demands of departments and declarations from higher-ups (provosts, chancellors), they may be the most stressed administrators in academe. Ms. Mentor is not surprised that so many colleges now have "acting deans," filling the slots of those who said, "I'm outta here," with the usual official story that Dean X "resigned in order to spend more time on research and teaching." Who wouldn't?
Yet your dean has somehow managed to find time to be sleazy. What if he decides that patting you on the head is not enough?
The fundamental rules apply. Don't take rides or bonbons from strangers, don't dress provocatively on the job, don't make flirtatious eye contact, and don't be alone with him." Ms. Mentor, feeling Victorian, wonders if she should also add, "Make sure a chaperone is always present, lest your virtuous reputation be threatened."
But what you've written about is, in fact, a matter of virtuous reputation. You're still developing your reputation as a teacher and scholar—not as someone's lackey or love bunny. The dean may be warm for you, but you must be cool.
In days of yore, an aloof air or a nun's habit had a cooling effect. Nowadays even aggressive would-be romancers avoid women who are taller or older, more muscular or more powerful than they are. "Hot for Provost" isn't a popular campus song, and there's no category called "Chancellors I'd Like To, Um, Make Sweet Love To."
Ms. Mentor supposes you could, eventually, dispose of all potential lechers by being the chancellor. But first you need to get tenure, and the dean will have a say. Be kind to him, but exceedingly professional. Keep a written record, at home, of any unprofessional overtures, with dates and details.
If he says, as a notorious New England professor once did, "You have the most marvelous lips," Ms. Mentor gives you permission not to hear him ("Could you let me know when the grant application is due?") or pretend to misunderstand ("I'm sorry, I don't know anything about ships"). Be mildly apologetic, say "thank you" a lot, talk about how busy you are, with the intricacies of teaching, the minutiae of scholarship, and the step-by-step details of every committee meeting you attend.
Insipid prattle is often a great deterrent to would-be skirt chasers. You're not a zesty challenge. You're simply too boring.
In the larger academic world, a different kind of boring (being marinated in jargon) is sometimes mistaken for intellectual sophistication. But Ms. Mentor considers that a serious disability. It keeps students from learning. It's much too visible, and it should be shunned in favor of people like Ms. Mentor's correspondent: clear, bright, nimble, and mobile.
Question: I unthinkingly took my now ex-husband's last name (call it "Merlin") years ago, published a lot and made the name famous, and now he's dumped me for an undergrad. Should I (a) dump his name, or (b) keep it proudly as mine, leaving him to explain constantly that he's not the renowned "Merlin" but the other one, the nobody?
Answer: (b).
Sage Readers: For summer, Ms. Mentor seeks newish academic novels that will delight and instruct her readers. What should join the current favorite, Richard Russo's Straight Man?
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