Draft Four: The tragedy of “institutional logic”
On not teaching journalism at the university any longer.
I am writing this letter on Saturday afternoon, from the Athens’ airport. Just a few hours ago, I had the privilege of moderating a panel at the iMEdD Forum on community-led design, where my amazing guests talked about a participatory research project, co-created with marginalized communities in Wales. The design method placed compassion, collaboration, and care at the heart of everything they did.
In the end, if any institution is to change, those are among the core principles it should follow.
Unfortunately, this letter is a about what happens when it doesn’t.
I wish the main character would be different, but it’s not. It is, once again, the Journalism School at the University of Bucharest. The same school that employed teachers calling students “stupid”, the same school that employs teachers that sue journalists and current students, the same school was home, for years, to a teacher who was harassing students.
Those who know me are sometimes annoyed I don’t hold grudges, and don’t avoid (many) people that have hurt me. So, it’s fair question why I keep picking on the school where I got my BA.
It’s because I love this profession, and, with all its flaws, I love this school and its perennial unrealized potential. I love it because I love the students, and believe they deserve so much more. We deserved much more 25 years ago when we attended, my younger colleagues deserved more 10 years ago, this current generation deserves more, too. I understand this is frustrating to hear for people who still teach there and do their best, but isn’t it time we stopped making apologizing for bad systems just because they make room for a handful of good exceptions?
*
For two consecutive years I taught the narrative journalism lecture class, and a group of stellar industry colleagues taught the seminars. I have taught the seminars, too, on and off for about 10 years. I taught all seminars in the 2020-2021 COVID school year. This year, I won’t. And neither will my colleagues.
I had told people I doubted the school would ask me to take over the class again after earlier this year I reported on its failures to protect its students. And, indeed, they didn’t make contact. But, I would soon find out, the reason quoted by Bogdan Oprea, who runs the Journalism department, was that I had apparently said in an email that I no longer want to do it.
His interpretation is false; a stretch if I’m being generous. I did email Oprea in January with some feedback about the class – I said I also believed narrative journalism would work better as a graduate level class (which might happen starting next year), and that the school ought to drop the lecture and just keep the seminars, where the bulk of the work happens.
Just 10 days before the start of academic year (it kicks off this week), Oprea reached out to award-winning journalist Luiza Vasiliu, who has been teaching one of the seminars for a while, to ask her to take on the lecture. Oh, and also find people to take on the seminars. She asked why I wasn’t doing it, and Oprea told her it was because I didn’t want to. He never asked directly, or ever fact-checked his own interpretation of that email.
Finding a lecturer and four working journalists to deliver seminars in 10 days is ridiculous, but unfortunately the school remains consistent in its bad planning: in my experience they’ve always asked at the last moment. Imagine the position Luiza was in: teach a semester long course and find 4 people to teach the seminars – it all starts in 10 days, and we need an answer ASAP (for bureaucratic reasons).
I’ll save you the details of what followed – Luiza has covered them here. Suffice to say she informed the school – Oprea, to be more precise – that she would do the class, and that she almost locked in a whole crew of people to teach the seminar. (Eventually that crew included some of the best young journalists working today in long form writing: Oana Sandu, Andreea Archip – who is an editor in chief, Ioan Stoleru, Laurențiu Ungureanu). But Oprea kept pressing for an answer before a meeting the next morning, and, eventually, he informed Luiza (the evening before the meeting, mind you) that the offer is off the table. He was in a hurry and found someone else, it’s been taken care off, thank you very much.
Luiza, understandably, was stunned, and hurt. She was put in a position to scramble to fix the school’s bad planning, only for the school to say: yeah, never mind.
When she told me the next day, I was deeply hurt and sad. Both of us posted on Facebook what happened, and Oprea replied to Luiza’s post saying it’d be simpler to set emotions aside and think in “institutional logic”. (I don’t even want to go into the issue of a man asking a woman to be less emotional). I stand by what I posted earlier this week about how hurtful and demeaning this “institutional logic” is:
“Institutional logic” doesn’t seem to include respect for the professionals who come to teach at the university for just a few hundred lei a month. It doesn’t cover the care that leaders representing an educational institution should communicate and demonstrate, nor the empathy they could show, or the desire to offer students the opportunity to meet some of the best professionals working today. Professionals who will surely think twice before accepting such invitations again.
Legally, the school could do this, I guess: organize poorly, make an offer and take it back, or simply take this class away from us. Neither Luiza, nor I, nor the rest of the people she had lined up are employees of the university – we were independent contractors. But we had high ratings from the students, we are actively doing the kind of work this class was about, and I believe we were helpful to them. (Does it make me increasingly interested in launching a journalism product to cover the University of Bucharest and its practices? I would lie if I said it didn’t.).
But the school seems to think the students don’t need us, certainly Oprea has no problem pushing away good journalists. From what it seems, the course will go to a lecturer who is already employed there, one who the previous generations of students have clashed with over her behavior in class. The seminars will all go to an employee of the national broadcaster – one person, instead of four longform writers.
Maybe they will provide the students with the hands on experiences and industry connections we provided them with, but I’m skeptical.
*
I don’t know why this hurts so much, and I’m cringing a little at sharing all of this. After all, teaching is a pain in the ass. Sometimes, the students themselves are pains in the ass (and they know that). The money is abysmal – I made less than 1,000 euros in fourth months of classes. This is a rough period for me, and I would most likely have asked Luiza, or another of my seminar colleagues, to take over the lecture even if the school offered it to me.
But they didn’t. And they didn’t leave it in the capable hands of my colleagues.
They decided the school moves on without us, because that’s how bureaucracy and institutional logic work. At least that’s what Oprea says, and he acted like someone for whom statutes and rules come before compassion, care or respect.
(This is a sidenote, but I’d love your take in a quick reply – especially if you are reading from outside Romania. Oprea is also the main spokesperson of the University, and I personally believe there is a tension between these roles, if not a conflict of interest. The spokesperson of the University protects the University. The director of the Journalism department should be a voice for questioning what spokespeople say. I learned today that the Journalism School at Columbia told journalists in New York city it would get them on campus to report on the Pro-Palestinian encampment there even after outside access was shut down. That went against university policy, but it stood for truth. I don’t see the Journalism School in Bucharest doing that, and I don’t know how you can juggle protecting the institution and being on the side of those that should challenge it.)
*
My mother would have turned 75 years old Saturday.
She was herself a university professor, and an oncologist. One of her former colleagues once told me she would have been proud to hear I taught at the university, something she had always loved. She died almost 20 years ago, so she never got to see me do this. Actually, she barely got to read any of my journalism and was skeptical of the profession I chose. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear she thought a university was a more prestigious and upstanding institution than a newsroom.
Instinctively, part of me also believed that. But, especially over the past few years, looking at how institutions of higher learning responded to well documented instances of harassment and sexual abuse, to continuous revelation of plagiarism in the PhD thesis of high-ranking politicians or to campus protests, burst that bubble a little.
Those of us in journalism still want to do things for the next generation joining this profession. As much as we wished more of us could do that in an institution willing to grow, and be a standard bearer, it looks like it’ll take more time than we thought.
What hurts, I believe, is that it’ll actually take more time than is really necessary.
SIDE DISHES:
Speaking of classes – this might be interesting to Romanian journalists in Bucharest. Andrada Fiscutean, my favorite Romanian writer on science and technology, is going to teach a 6-week explanatory reporting/writing course that we are hosting in our offices (in which everyone reports and writes a story). The deadline to apply is this coming Friday, Oct.4. Details and registration, here.
Over the past couple of days, as Israel has been bombing Lebanon, I have been thinking a lot about the most moving documentary I saw this year – Anxious in Beirut – which portrays the city as having to endure an almost endless cycle of tragedies – war, protests, COVID, an explosion. You can stream the first 50 minutes here.
Last week I suggested you read Black Pill to understand how the alt-right came about, and how the dark corners of the Internet created dangerous social movements. As a companion, I also think you should Taylor Lorenz’s fantastic book Extremely Online, which chronicles the social media era, the rise of the creator (alongside the price of fame), and the fight over who makes money online and who owns the labor.