Acts of Professional Kindness
“Many of us owe our careers to… well-timed acts of professional kindness in the face of bureaucratic mechanisms or capricious supervisors.” (Pinning this to the top for a couple of days.)
[Sylvia Wald, “Spirit’s Constellation”]
The passage is from a point in the review where she has turned to Koethe’s poem, “John Rawls et al.” Part of the poem describes a time Rawls bestowed one of those “well-timed acts of professional kindness” on Koethe.
Human history is full of turmoil and trouble; bad news isn’t new. Though we all know this, I also know that a lot of my readers are dealing with a fair amount of fresh, vivid, bad news. In the midst of challenging times, it can be consoling, inspiring, or just plain pleasant to remind ourselves of the goodness we’ve come across.
In that spirit, I invite you to share when you’ve been the beneficiary of a particular act of professional kindness—with as much detail as you like.
I’m also pleased to be able to present, with his permission, John Koethe’s poem, “John Rawls et al.”
JOHN RAWLS ET AL.
for Julius Sensat
Everyone says they want to live in a decent world,
But that no one can really say what it is. I don’t think
It’s that hard though: John Rawls essentially described it,
Though a) he was a philosopher, so no one gives a shit,
And b) other philosophers keep debating it to death,
Since that’s what philosophers are supposed to do. Still,
It comes down to a few things that I don’t think anyone denies:
First, it’s one that everyone could accept without coercion;
Second, it’s one where everyone tries to have the life they want
As long as others can have theirs too; and third, where what we value
Is distributed in a way that makes sense to everyone. Of course
The devil is always in the details, which you could spell out
In various ways, and yet the overall design seems pretty clear:
A vision of a realm of ends that even Plato would have been able
To recognize, if not accept. So much though for philosophy.
Why can’t we simply see it and go on? Are we so oblivious
To what’s there right before our eyes that we behave as though
It doesn’t even exist? There must be something in the very ideas
Of justice and decency that makes people laugh or scream
Or pretend that they’re illusory, even though they know they’re real.
Maybe what seems compelling in the abstract doesn’t speak to us
Unless we see each other face to face as we attempt to get along,
Though empathy has its limits and proximity can drive you crazy too
Like a domestic argument. Or maybe the underlying nature of the world
Is so hidden from us that we hold it in awe as we go about our days,
Surrounded by the starry heavens and the moral law. Either way,
We seem to have an urge to make the obvious obscure and the obscure
Seem obvious in the isolation of our individual lives, as in this poem,
Which isn’t part of anyone’s life but mine, though I wish it were.
Let me lift that veil of ignorance a bit. Jack Rawls played end
At Princeton and belonged to Ivy Club. He was going to be
An Episcopalian minister, then became an atheist in the trenches
Of WWII and wrote the book that I’ve been celebrating in this poem,
A book that clarifies what everyone believes about a decent world,
Whether they know it or not. My memory of him though is more down to
earth:
He sat in on my doctoral defense after Rogers Albritton decamped
For California. Burton Dreben wanted to make me take out something
I’d said about Quine, flailed about for an hour until Rawls finally
Wrapped things up with “C’mon Burt””‘–it’s not for publication,” offered
Me a drink at the faculty club which I declined, and then I went home.
That’s my most vivid memory of the greatest moral philosopher since Kant.
I’m not sure what any of this has to do with philosophy and poetry
Or anybody’s life, except that they’re mixed up together, as everything is.
I used to talk about A Theory of Justice in the big introductory course
I taught, though I’m no authority and no doubt got a lot of details wrong.
Yet it’s remained with me and seems to me more obvious every day
As I watch television and read newspapers and journals of opinion—
Which you can’t say about most philosophy, or for that matter much else.
And I still wish I could live in that humane and decent world, even if it
only exists
In my imagination and memories of Jack Rawls and of what philosophy
Aspires to before it comes back down to earth and sees its vision fade.
– John Koethe
I’ve been the beneficiary of so many acts of professional kindness in my career. Here’s one that comes to mind this morning. When I moved to Rutgers from Berkeley (as a spousal hire), Peter Klein saw to it that the Formal Epistemology Workshop and the Rutgers Epistemology Conference were co-located in New Brunswick that year. And, he covered the expenses for FEW out of his own personal research funds. Not only did this make me feel welcome (in a situation where I wasn’t really feeling all that welcome, tbh); but, it centered formal epistemology in a crucial way (and at a crucial time in the development of the community). I learned a lot from Peter during those years. And, I’ve been trying to pay it forward ever since…
Like Branden, I’ve benefitted from more acts of professional kindness than I can tell about here; indeed, more than I can even count. Philosophy blogs often serve as a vehicle for recounting situations in which other philosophers have acted like jerks, and, of course, there are a lot of jerks in philosophy, just as there are in any profession. But it’s worth remembering that there are a lot of very decent people in the profession as well, and I would bet that we all have benefitted from the kindness and generosity of many such people. Thanks, Justin, for providing the space for focusing attention not only on the things in the profession that need changing, but on the good that is there as well.
Thinking about the kindnesses done to me, one stands out. Michael Devitt took an interest in me many years ago when I was an undergraduate at University of Sydney, which I was attending only because I happened to live right next to it. I was 29, working full-time, and taking philosophy Honors courses only to shorten the three-year “Pass” degree, which I needed for my plan to move to China teach English. Devitt arranged a meeting where he tried to talk me into staying the extra year to do the Honors degree. I asked what would be the point of that. As the conversation went on, Devitt — partly in exasperation at my ignorance of even the existence of graduate school in philosophy* — asked me the most important question of my life: “How do you think anyone gets to be a professor?” As someone who had grown up in a working class environment where almost nobody even went to college, it had never occurred to me that I might be allowed on the other side of the college classroom.
I would not be a professor today but for Devitt’s kind intervention.
*Devitt: “with an Honors degree you could go to grad school!” Me: “grad school? What’s grad school?” Devitt: “it’s where you can go after your undergrad degree.” Me (thinking…): Hmmm… I know where all the other schools are…?? Me: “Where are grad schools?” Devitt (losing it, demonstrating with both hands): “This is a grad school!”
As a follow-up, relevant to a thread below, one lesson Devitt taught me is that academia isn’t always an old boys club. In my experience Devitt has always been an equal opportunity mentor. But academia is a mixed bag. I tell the above story to my contemporary moral problems classes when addressing the claim (from e.g. Pojman) that students at any level don’t need role models that they identify with. I’m a white guy who because of my own background didn’t identify with my white guy professors. How much harder might it be for non-white non-guys, then?
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong barely knew me as some graduate student he once had a conversation with in the hall when he visited Princeton for a year. When I cold emailed him out of the blue over a decade letter to write a letter of support me for a year at Duke on a Mellon Fellowship, he not only agreed but help me set up an office there and helped me move in. There I made the first season of Hi-Phi Nation and the rest is history.
Like others, I’ve been the beneficiary of too many acts of professional kindness to recount here. But two in particular stand out. First, Michael Smith was very welcoming and accommodating when I asked to spend a year abroad as a visiting grad student at Monash University to study with him and Peter Singer. Michael helped arrange a tutorship for me, read some of my work, and even shared his manuscript for The Moral Problem. Second, Hugh Wilder (who was then chair of the philosophy department at the College of Charleston) was very welcoming and supportive when I took my first job (a one-year teaching appointment) there. He helped my wife and me find a place to rent, and he and his wife welcomed us in person with a gift basket the day that we moved into our rental.
I want to mention someone who I think has left the profession, Eddie Cushman, and a spontaneous act of kindness when he was a graduate student that made so much of a difference to me. I mentioned this in the intro of my book but I don’t want it to get lost there (who reads intros anymore?). I left my PhD program in molecular and cell biology at UC Berkeley and was trying to pick up the pieces of my academic life. I thought I might try philosophy so with misplaced confidence, sat in on some grad seminars including one taught by Martin Thomspon-Jones on rationality and realism in science. Having not taken any philosophy as an undergrad, I guess I assumed my overtraining in science would put me in a position to have something to say about philosophy of science. Paying to take the class for credit, I had to give a presentation which I *know* was horrible. I’m sure lot of us can relate to feeling really low about ourselves as philosophers. Well, I felt that in spades afterwards. If you’ve been to Berkeley’s philosophy department, you’ll know the lovely Howison Library and I would spend my time there reading as much as I could to catch up. One day, there’s a tap on my shoulder and there’s Eddie who leans in and gives me words of encouragement about the presentation, just the right words when you’re feeling utterly inadequate. I didn’t know him beyond the fact that we were both in the seminar together. Maybe he could tell I was trying so hard to belong but flailing. Whatever he was thinking, it was a random act of kindness that made me feel just enough less inadequate to go on. I’m sure Eddie won’t remember his intervention. Years later, when I joined the department, I got to know him a bit. All of us graduate students thought he was the most brilliant among us. I’m so sorry he’s no longer in the profession.
Nice to see Eddie’s name pop up again. He was a TA of mine when I was an undergrad. Even years later I recall him as extremely sharp as well as supportive with his words and generous with his time.
Richard Chappell was such a kind, wonderful, and amazing TA when I took his class (with Michael Fara) as a first year. I remember asking what I took to be a fairly innocuous question concerning God and I got like paragraphs back carefully distinguishing the epistemological, metaphysical, and semantic aspects of the question I was happening to be asking. I was a typical first year student – excited about philosophy, wanting to fit everything I was learning in my other philosophy classes into every philosophy paper I was writing. I didn’t do as well as I would’ve liked, but he was still very encouraging (which wasn’t always the case for the other Princeton grad students!). I think I would have been stubborn enough to persist in philosophy even if he weren’t my TA at the time, but the memory of that kindness lingers enough.
(I also get that this isn’t totally an act of professional kindness per se, but I think it counts insofar as I am now, as a professional philosopher, thinking about this as somehow formative).
Where to start? Maybe the most impactful professional act of kindness in philosophy for which I’ve been the beneficiary happened when I was an undergrad applying to grad programs. When Jeff McMahan learned that I could only afford to apply to half a dozen or so programs, he covered the costs of adding a few more and told me to include USC. The rest is history. Jeff’s kindness changed my life.
There was a faculty member at the University of Central Oklahoma, Darian DeBolt, who did this for me. And I was never even one of his students!
I’m sure Jeff will feature heavily in this thread. To give just one story: I spent a term visiting Rutgers during my PhD. I turned up, clearly pretty broke. Jeff took me to the store and bought me a load of groceries to get me by.
I was told once a story about the Henryk Hiz that I hope someone could confirm (but I’m pretty sure the person who told me heard it directly from Hiz). As the story goes, he arrived at Harvard for his PhD almost penniless, and then he realized that he was not going to get his first paycheck until the end of the month, and he wasn’t sure how he was going to make it. He went to C. I. Lewis, who was then Chair of the department to explain his predicament. Lewis then said that fortunately, they had a graduate fellowship for these kinds of cases, and proceeded to hand him a check. Only many years later, Hiz realized that Lewis had given him a personal check.
I have so many experiences of such kindness in my career I could go on for hours. But I only had my career at all because of two professors at my grad school (UT–Knoxville). Richard Aquila lent me the air fare to fly to Wisconsin for my interview, and Rem Edwards paid to have my dissertation professionally typed (which I could not afford at the time and tried to do it myself–failing miserably). Neither wanted repayment, but over the years I managed to do that–only because they believed in me. UT has never been Leiterific perhaps–but it has been just plain damn terrific to me.
While presenting at a lovely conference a couple of years ago, I ended up chatting with Anne Eaton (Hi Anne, if you see this!). Much to my mortification, I blurted out that I was feeling professionally overwhelmed due to trouble focusing on research following the unexpected death of my sibling. I felt my tenure clock ticking insistently, and I was extremely stressed.
Not only was Anne kind, understanding, and encouraging; but she also gave me some valuable professional advice. I now try to pass this information along to others whenever it’s relevant: You can ask your university for a bereavement extension on your tenure clock. Even if you don’t end up needing it, this can take a huge weight off your shoulders during a tough time.
I didn’t know this was a possibility. My university granted the extension, and it gave me the breathing room I needed to manage my grief. Eventually, I got back to writing, and things have dramatically improved. I can’t overstate how much Anne generously listening to my struggles and providing actionable advice helped me get through that difficult period. What might have just been an embarrassing moment of oversharing ended up being a truly pivotal moment for me. Thanks, Anne!
Some of this is more general kindness than professional, but some is professional. I’d been a grad student at SUNY Albany, but left the program after writing an MA to join the Peace Corps. While in the Peace Corps (in Russia) I was working in a university and decided (somewhat foolishly) to teach a class on feminist theory, as none had been taught there (as far as I could tell.) But, I didn’t have any texts or anything. Naomi Zack, for whom I’d been a TA before leaving Albany, mailed me several volumes of feminist theory, as well as some other texts that I was able to read and use, at her own expense. (She also sometimes sent me some good coffee beans, which were very hard to get in Russia, at least outside of Moscow, at the time, and a nice scarf – that’s not so much “professional kindness”, I guess, but a more general kind, but was still greatly appreciated.) When I decided to apply to go back to grad school and law school, she arranged for the philosophy department at SUNY Albany to pay to have my transcript sent to the places I was applying to. I think that was only something like $10/application, but given that I had literally no money, it made a big difference to me in being able to go back to grad school. I was super thankful for her help, and that of the other SUNY Albany faculty members.
It’s fitting that this poem is dedicated to Julius Sensat, now emeritus at UW Milwaukee. Julius spent countless hours offering generous, detailed feedback on my weekly seminar papers, and I’m pretty sure he carefully read over ten drafts of my (not very good) writing sample for Ph.D. programs. Whenever I meet a fellow student of his, we swap stories about those meetings in his cluttered office—clutter that included some printed out pre-publication version of Rawls’ Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy. Julius would rock gently in his chair, brow furrowed, reconstructing our arguments, gently raising objections, and he’d look up with excited eyes and a big smile when we solved a problem. For many of us UWM alums, Julius’ mentorship was a series of acts of professional kindness over the course of two years.
I second your point about Julius, Justin. I arrived at UWM only after he retired, unfortunately, but Julius still sat in on Bill Bristow’s Hegel seminar, thoughtfully engaging with the class. And he was kind enough to agree to be a member of my thesis committee despite being many years retired.
The folks at UWM in general will always be some of the kindest folks I’ve come across. Bill Bristow, Miren Boehm, and Nataliya Palatnik supported me through the PhD application process and continued to believe in me even when, through a series of rejections, had stopped believing in myself. I remember leaving Nataliya’s class with her one day and mentioning that if I were shutout from PhD programs I’d go back to Canada to work construction, a suggestion she didn’t take very kindly too, instead suggesting that I should stick with philosophy and apply again (which, thankfully, I didn’t need to do).
For Bill, I remember vividly his email to me after I finished my writing sample, telling me that it was something to be proud of regardless of how the application process went. It meant a lot to me then, and it does now. He and Miren also went out of their way to voice their support for me when I ended up waitlisted at a program. I remember hearing from Miren when this was going on and finding out that Bill had already reached out to the department, unprompted, to support me further. Without the kindness and support of everyone at UWM, I might have ended up a cold Canadian construction worker (although I still may).
This is such a refreshing topic for a post. There is far too little appreciation in our field. Two people who were really supportive for me early in my career were David Hull and Margaret Gilbert. Both of them provided extensive critical feedback on papers that I was writing that addressed their work. I had met David when I was teaching at Calgary, and I met Margaret at a World Congress of Philosophy in Boston – they had no special obligation to help me. Subsequently, both passed my name along to journal editors to review papers, or to comment on APA papers, the sorts of things one really appreciates early in one’s career. Later in my career, encouragement from both Hasok Chang and Paul Hoyningen-Huene was very much appreciated. They have also helped my career along in various ways. Also, Anjan Chakravartty passed my name along to Transylvania University, to give a Bingham-Young Further Engagements Lecture on Kuhn. This was one of the most enjoyable experiences I had giving a talk at a university.
Sadly I’ve encountered as many (if not more) acts of professional unkindness as acts of kindness, which, seeing all the positive things about academia posted above, makes me wonder if it’s just me. Anyways, just as acts of professional kindness can make one’s career (as the quote says), acts of professional unkindness can undo it as well.
I agree. This discussion is also making me suspect that the old boys club is alive and well.
Several of the above involve people, on one or both ends of the story, who can’t plausibly be thought to be part of the “old boys club”, and several don’t involve “boys” at all, so I think this is probably not a good moral to take from the thread.
The majority of the posts in the current discussion are by men who were the recipients of ‘professional kindness’ from other men, and in a couple of cases from women. It would be nice to see more women reporting that they have received ‘professional kindness’ within academic philosophy.
After I was expelled from Harvard for political protests, I thought my academic career was over. Partly it was because I thought I was going to Vietnam to do alternative service and I didn’t know how that would work out. Also, I was completely disillusioned with academia after being at Harvard, so was working as a dishwasher. I happened to run the Hilary Putnam literally on the street, and told him how I was doing. He called me a few days later, and said he had made phone calls to a number of departments about my situation so I ended up talking to both MIT and Boston University. I decided on Boston University entirely because of Marx Wartofsky, himself a leftist, who said he would take care of the fact that, due to my expulsion from Harvard, I did not have an undergraduate degree (I still don’t). My academic career is due entirely to Hilary and Marx, and I cherish the memory of both of them.
I was a very early stage, not-yet-tenured professor teaching at U. Mass Amherst when out of the blue I got a letter from Gregory Vlastos, someone I did not know at all except of course by reputation, praising an article on Plato I had published. It was such a huge boost for someone at my level and just so incredibly kind of him to take the time to do that, given that he was a senior person at the very highest level in the field.
Now this is impressive. Thanks for sharing Cynthia.