One summer night in graduate school, I broke away from the larger mass of partyers at my backyard cookout to walk my dissertation chairman to his car. My doctorate was in English with an emphasis on creative writing, so, ludicrous as it might sound to some, my dissertation was a collection of short stories, the sequel to the novel I had written for my master's thesis.
As we talked across the roof of his car, my mentor explained why he thought my fiction often deflated dramatic tension far too early.
"You're a Southerner," he said, "and Southerners tend to ameliorate conflict."
Whether or not that is true of most Southerners, it is true of me. In both my upbringing and in my adult life, even in my earlier career in newspaper journalism, I disdained most of the arguing I saw around me. It seemed pointlessly destructive and self-indulgent -- less about necessary debate than about unnecessary egotism, whining, or catharsis. And I thought most adults knew better, including the ones in my stories.
"I write my stories like I host my cookouts," I joked, gesturing toward my house. "I just want everyone to get along."
The good thing about being a Southerner, though, is that we're always up for an ironic twist. The one I offer in this space is as follows: Even though I left the purportedly real world of journalism for the supposedly softer one of academe, it is academe that has made me tougher, more assertive -- more, Lord forbid, argumentative.
In fact, as any college education should, my path has moved me from believing in a false dualism -- in this case between being a caring person and being an argumentative one -- to seeing argument as an essential act of caring for citizens in a campus community.
My transition began a few years before that conversation with my mentor, thanks largely to all those sections of freshman composition I had to teach as a graduate student. Just as I was never a better Christian than when I taught Sunday School, selling students on the value of rhetoric meant selling myself on that concept, too.
I had to believe in the ways that argument could be a force for good in the world, and that, done correctly, argument was actually a path to a mutual discovery of knowledge that got the arguers to new insights by discussion's end, helping every person involved learn other perspectives even as they clarified their own.
All of which was fine -- in theory. But while caring about standards, programs, and people demanded that I argue publicly, the selfish path in academe, and the safest one for new faculty members, is to keep one's mouth shut.
The untenured are usually encouraged to lie low, keep quiet, and avoid making waves. But the duty to be of service in the academic community meant I had to wade in with my opinions, just the same. I did so in some uncomfortable roles.
As adviser to the campus newspaper, I often was in the middle of conflicts between student reporters and disgruntled readers, having to both point out the error of student reporters' ways and, at the same time, stick up for their right to print articles critical of the college. Surprisingly, people respected my stance.
Similarly, I chaired a campus committee that evaluated whether particular courses that had been designated as having a "writing emphasis" actually met the college's guidelines. That meant telling colleagues in other departments whether their courses fell short, with the implication that the enrollment cap granted to such writing-intensive courses could be removed.
Finally, I worked in a department that featured passionate conflicts about both personality and policy, including tensions between the traditional liberal-arts agenda of most English departments and the needs of the professional-track communications courses, for which I was an advocate.
On all of those fronts, I found myself having to engage in more arguments than I ever had before. In my former profession, the tough calls were made by managers who worked within 30 feet of my desk. In academe, in many ways, the employees were the managers.
Plus, we had to argue even though it put those of us who were untenured at risk, since the people with whom I was arguing someday would vote on whether I received tenure.
Yet this past spring, when the fateful sixth-year review rolled around, I was pleased to find that my gradually growing faith in constructive argument had been rewarded. The college's tenured professors voted unanimously to grant me tenure.
The unanimity of the verdict surprised me. Had I not made enough of a stand? Surely I'd ticked off at least one person enough to garner a no vote. But then I recalled another piece of advice my mentor offered at that cookout a decade before.
"You know your dominant tendency is going to be to ameliorate the conflict," he had told me that night. "So you can throw yourself to the other extreme and know that your dominant tendency will pull you back to the middle."
These days, I think that not only should I trust my own dominant tendency more, but also that of my colleagues. I should trust that our dominant tendency pulls the vast majority of us toward respect for both argument and for those doing the arguing, in an atmosphere of good faith. Perhaps argument, done constructively, is not a reflection of humanity at its pessimistic worst, but instead is the supreme act of optimism.
Which casts in a new light my latest challenge. While I earned tenure, I didn't get promotion to associate professor (a common situation at our college). Numerous people I respect have told me I should contest it: "Since you're so bad at acting angry on your own behalf," one colleague said in a strange echo of my mentor's advice, "I'll be angry for you."
There are, of course, many commendable reasons not to signal my disagreement in even the mildest of fashions: the desire not to whine, not to be a spoilsport, not to undercut a conscientious committee striving to do a hard job in an objective manner. And, above all, the desire not to fall victim to a foolishly self-indulgent overestimation of my own merits.
But I know one of the reasons that I'm holding back is less noble -- that old desire to ameliorate the conflict, for fear that my efforts might backfire. Somehow I must marshal my newfound faith in both the people and the process.
As much as I hate to admit it, there is an argument to be made.
