I first learned about Generous Thinking at the Envisioning the Future of Academic Work at MSU workshop in April, where Fitzpatrick led a breakout session called “Generous vs. Competitive Thinking in the Academic Environment.” Anyone who knows me knows I’m the opposite of competitive, so this title jumped out of the schedule for me. In essence, thinking generously means rescuing academia from paths that seem to relentlessly increase our competitiveness, and instead move us towards activities that bring about the greater and communal good. This competitiveness occurs at all scales; we are rewarded for tearing apart others’ academic work (arguing for our own distinctiveness following the “they say/I say” framework), departments compete for limited institutional resources, and universities compete via reductive metrics and rankings. Competition can be healthy, argues Fitzpatrick, but an overemphasis on individualistic competitiveness turns our work into a zero-sum game and turns colleagues into adversaries. Institutions like MSU need to align their incentives and priorities away from hyper-individualistic assessments and encourage community growth. Thinking generously means valuing work that builds up our community, especially collaboration and mentorship.
Generous thinking resonates with me in a way that few descriptions of academic life have before. Here are three ways that thinking generously has transformed my academic experience, including in our work at the Hub:
Generous thinking validates collaboration. The explicit competition and overly-critical stance of academic culture has always been a source of stress for me. I couldn’t imagine fighting my way to the top of an academic pyramid; it was such a contrast with what I knew about myself as a scholar and as a human being. I’ve always been much more interested in collaborative work like coauthoring, organizing conferences, publishing journal issues and academic newsletters, and sitting on committees attempting to improve conditions for students or departments. Service work, support/facilitation, outreach projects, and community-building initiatives appeal to me because they’re about that building up. The Hub is a unique place in that we come together for project-based work that is bigger than any of us individually. Ideally, the fruits of our projects benefit the academic units and other groups who partner with us, and make MSU a stronger institution. Those successes aren’t a scare resource to be hoarded in Wells 101D but an abundant flow of improved student and faculty experiences through the campus.
Generous thinking amplifies others. Online academic communities are pockets of generous thinking. Academic social media, at its best, reflects generous values. This is something I really noticed when working on Science Gallery Detroit’s social channels last year. It feels very easy and natural in the #sciart world to signal-boost exciting stuff happening elsewhere and to spread interesting ideas and projects throughout my own and MSU’s networks. Today our social streams describe seemingly-endless intractable political problems and a growing tear-down culture. While highlighting problems and speaking truth to power are important roles for scholars on social media, generous thinking asks us to build up rather than only to critique and tear down. A recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed by Gordon Fraser laments the “twitterization” of academic discourse and critique, claiming that “social media has made scholars impatient, vicious, and dull.” I’ve found Twitter instead to be an amazing place for spotlighting emerging research, celebrating achievements like graduations, book publications, and promotions, and commiserating during our shared struggles. The latter is especially true of grad student twitter, where hashtags like #PhDlife and #withaPhD invite us to share experiences and build a supportive online community. Another wonderful example that I've seen more and more is grad students sharing their dissertation acknowledgements sections (here's mine), showcasing all the people who contributed to and encouraged the project.
Generous thinking is for the greater good. Thinking generously has lessons for face-to-face academic communities, not only online ones. The way we work with our peers and colleagues has the potential for both competitiveness and generosity. If our evaluative structures reward competitiveness, it’s in my interest for you to not succeed. In that kind of environment, there’s no incentive to spend time or energy for the betterment of the community, because that energy is better spent trying to out-compete my peers. If we want to improve conditions for living and working at MSU we need to pivot to an environment (and incentive structure, because we can't demand that people already pinched for time and resources be responsible for changing that structure or providing endless free work) that values building up and across academic units. In my PhD program I witnessed a huge shift in morale and collegiality after we began sending congratulatory emails for student and faculty scholarly achievements, like publications, conference presentations, books, and successfully-defended dissertations. This year, one of my themes at work is “collegial” and I’ve been reflecting a great deal on what that means. How am I a colleague to others, and how are we colleagues with each other? How is our service work acknowledged and rewarded? I’m fortunate that at the Hub and in my work at Lyman Briggs College I enjoy the ability to work on recognizing each others’ successes and enhance collegiality. Sometimes it’s as simple as showing up for each other as we try out new ideas. My favorite example at the Hub is our “huzzah” culture, where we give credit at our weekly stand-up meetings or in a #huzzah Slack channel to coworkers who did something helpful or amazing for us.
How can you use generous thinking to make a difference in your academic community?
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