Question: (from "Nancy"): This is not for me, as I have tenure and a happy life. It's about a junior colleague, "Clark," who started out well three years ago when we hired him, but has become a frightful villain. People call him (behind his back, of course) Clark the Shark.
He's making a career out of being unhappy.
Instead of doing research and publishing, he devotes himself to patrolling and policing his students and colleagues for real and imagined shortcomings. When he finds a flaw, vengeance is swift and merciless. (I keep tissues handy for traumatized students who stumble into my office for solace.)
When several senior colleagues and our well-meaning chair gently attempted to rein in the Shark, a deep and lasting grudge was born that persists to this day. Clearly no one can correct the Shark.
My question: When a junior colleague repeatedly shoots himself in the foot like this, and then fights nastily with people who try to take the gun away, is it time to give up? Or should a kindhearted senior colleague (such as myself) try again and hope the message might sink in before it's too late?
Answer: Ms. Mentor marvels that people like Clark the Shark manage to get themselves hired. A deeply cynical poster writing under the pseudonym Rosmerta in The Chronicle's comments has one theory about sharks: "Some candidates are expert interviewees, oozing goodwill and professionalism for that one day on campus, only to unmask themselves later as vicious whiners and layabouts." Sometimes, too, big changes in behavior may mean medical problems. But without such information, Ms. Mentor has to assume that Clark's behavior is his choice, some sort of willed cussedness.
Character transformations are the stuff of great drama. For every Paul, transfigured on the road to Damascus, there are hundreds of werewolves, vampires, and Mr. Hydes lurking in the human psyche. They make colorful and entertaining spectacles—unless they're in the next cubicle.
Even in the mild precincts of academe, Ms. Mentor has met tempestuously difficult people who lack decorum and proportion. There was the newly hired Hotspur who, in his first month on the job, picked a dramatic fight with his department chair over a $20 expense. "I will have him fired!" the fledgling cried. Ms. Mentor assumes he's long been set aside.
Ms. Mentor has also written about the underling who must, must correct his elders. The Upstart Whelp knows all, says all, and knows that women, in particular, are beneath contempt. Ms. Mentor reckons that he, too, is now in history's dustbin.
Hotspur and Whelp lack respect for their elders' experience, knowledge, and power. Clark, who seems to be of the same ilk, no doubt also considers his department to be toxic, if not infantile. Bozos rule—which may be why he isn't publishing. After all, his colleagues are unworthy. If he's in the classic mold of the Shark, Clark also hates the region where he's landed. Natural beauty leaves him cold, and tasty local dishes disgust him ("lutefisk is lousy, but poutine is putrid"). His students are lazy bumpkins with execrable taste in music.
Ms. Mentor knows that Clark could teach them about the world outside Pocatello and Pembina. He could be gracious. He could welcome their knowledge.
But he chooses to make life hellish for everyone, including nice, nurturing Nancy—who wonders what, if anything, she might do to rescue him.
Ms. Mentor posed that question to a gaggle of crusty senior academics, who asked pointedly, "Why should she jolly him along? What a creep!" and "What would she be saving?" and "Who is she, his mother?"
Nancy, Ms. Mentor presumes, is one of those people who make a desert bloom with milk and honey. They bake pies for newcomers; introduce them to entertaining local characters; find them sofas and Siamese cats. Ms. Mentor cherishes the Nancys of this world, and most newcomers to the faculty are grateful. Sometimes a long, enriching friendship blossoms, with lively discussions over coffee, shared community projects, and writing groups. (Ms. Mentor knows two couples who fell so madly in love with each other's brains that they switched partners.)
But Clark seems to be bad raw material. There are Nancys everywhere who believe—who fervently hope—that the right words will heal the sick, convert the sinner. Such kind hopers try to cure batterers ("He's very likable when he's not drinking"). They find a shiny, happy person inside every growler ("She really has such a kind heart"). Sports buddies are especially eager to imagine the best: "I know he hasn't published, but he has a fine mind."
Ms. Mentor insists on evidence for the fineness of mind and the kindness of soul. In her lifelong study of the human species, she has discovered that even in academe, someone who appears to be a brute is a brute.
Yes, it's possible for a brute to hide his brutishness and somehow cobble together enough publications and good teaching evaluations to get tenure.
But even if Nancy could say the right words to make Clark into a gentle, cooperative, and productive colleague, would he stay that way? Once tenured, Clark could summon up his inner Shark, and for the next 30 years patrol your department's classrooms and crannies. Teeth bared.
Students pass through in just a few years, but a Shark can shatter them. Ms. Mentor thinks about the late "Rubirosa," a literature professor at Mega Prestige U. who was notorious for selecting a new, pretty, long-haired female graduate student each year to be his "lady love." In those days before e-mail and texting, each new Rapunzel would be plied with phone calls and flowers and invitations to a rendezvous ("Let's talk over the thesis at your place. I'll bring the wine.") Eventually his wife would call up Rapunzel and berate her for stalking Rubirosa, and Rapunzel would wind up leaving school, in tears and trauma.
Rubirosa was known around the profession as a charmer and a fine, productive scholar—but to the Rapunzels, he was a deadly snake. An equal danger is Clark, who reduces students to fear and trembling. Mega Prestige U. can afford to keep a surly bully or two, if they're Nobel Prize winners who add luster to the faculty list. Many are, by common consent, not allowed to touch undergraduates.
But an ordinary mortal who mistreats everyone and produces nothing is just a brute. Nancy and her colleagues can try to save him, or they can save themselves and their students and let the Shark sink or swim on his own.
Question: Is spring ever coming?
Answer: Yes.
Sage readers: Ms. Mentor will soon be doing her quasi-annual column on academic novels, and invites early nominations.
Richard Russo's Straight Man has long been a favorite, along with the novels of David Lodge and James Hynes. Which others, especially recent ones, do Ms. Mentor's readers recommend for guffaws or consolation?
As always, Ms. Mentor welcomes rants and queries, tidbits and witticisms. She regrets that she can rarely answer letters personally. Confidentiality is guaranteed, and identifying items in published letters are always disguised. Everyone will think that you're the one with a heart of gold.
