P Stands for Professional

“Professional,” like other dialectical descriptors, depends for its meaning(s) on vices being denied more than virtues being affirmed.



When colleagues call themselves “professional,” they do so for varying reason(s). Positive reasons emphasize conformity to selected norms. Meliorative invocations of professionalism dramatize individual solidarity with the collective and sympathy for the ideals of the collective, especially when the self-praise may serve promotion or evalu­ation or some honor. “Professional” may be brandished for negative, defensive reasons as well. Colleagues em­pha­size conformity lest they expose themselves to disparagement or gossip for failing to be like others or, more commonly, like others demand that they be. Faculty direct atten­tion to professional conduct to deny one or more suspected short­comings or to distract attention from proved unprofessional conduct. And, of course, pos­i­tive and negative assignments of “professional” and “unprofessional” may be teamed to differentiate professional us from unprofessional them.

A dialectical adjective, “professional” varies with positives being affirmed and with negatives being denied. Affirmed positives form a public account crafted to be accepted if not quite believed. To understand the positive, however, one often must suss out nega­tive(s) being contradicted. When professions of professionalism are not harmless self-promotion, they mask fears that identity will be damaged. Col­leagues’ sins and terrors are often private until their self-praises and self-exculpations expose the private terrors and latent sins.

Professors who prey upon their students, for example, will stress their professional­ism in myriad ways to construct a positive persona accepted by a credulous majority to be in­con­sistent with abuse of students and trust. Worried that dalliances might become known or rumored, predators advertise the ways in which they are thoroughgoing pro­fessionals. They dramatize their punctiliousness and punctuality. They regale all who will listen about the high regard in which they are held by professional associates. Of course, they would be self-promoting even if they were not predators because self-promotion yields praises and raises. Because self-promotion is ubiquitous, especially among faculty who are not very accomplished, most colleagues will not ask what ulterior motives such self-promotion could serve. Rubes in robes will “gape at you in dull sur­prise” [Janice Ian, “Seventeen”] if they realize that a cover story was at best partially true.

Of course, professors prey upon colleagues as well and so require a concept of professionalism that hides their personal animus and tactical dishonesty. When a psychopath savages an evaluee – merely a hypothetical example until it happens to you – he or she will list a myriad of ways in which he or she struggled to find the evaluee worthy until diligence and love of truth compelled an honest evaluation. The psychopath will note that evaluee – the ingrate! – reacted against this open, sincere, professional evaluation with fury that only proved just how unworthy the evaluee was. As in sports in which the initial aggression goes undetected but the retaliation is noticed, the unprovoked assault is professional assessment but self-defense is unprofessional revenge against an honest servant of the university. All who perceive a stake in defending the procedural and substantive justice of evaluations irrespective of actualities will cluck at how un­pro­fessional, even personal, the victim of assault or assassination is being and will praise the psychopath for remaining above the fray. Any foibles or faults of the aggressor will be ignored. Whatever foibles or faults will transmogrify the victim into an unprofessional, unworthy pariah will be inventoried as they are invented.

For another common example, candor defines professionalism in both negative op­po­sition and in positive alliance. To seem professional one must be candid judiciously while emphasizing how brutally candid one is being. When Thomas More told Henry VIII that the latter’s musical composition was “frankly” splendid [Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons”], even the ninth grader in the back row grasped that “frankly” af­firmed that More was not mincing words with his liege lord, which of course meant that More was lying like a convict to keep on the good side of Henry. [More’s genuine can­dor re­gar­ding the King’s second marriage affixed More’s head to Traitor’s Gate.] The genius of this usage on campus is that it makes one “unpro­fessional” to speak truth and another “professional” to obscure the truth. Any colleague who blows a whistle on shoddy aca­demic programs or fraudu­lent practices marks himself or herself as “unprofessional;” it being far more “profes­sional” in this usage to ignore, condone, or laud misconduct or men­dacity in anticipation that colleagues will recipro­cate when one’s own shortcomings be­come evident. In this usage, “professionals” a) conceal poor instructors, approve weak courses, and salute slapdash majors; b) dispense inadequate advice that may imperil ad­vi­sees but will keep one on the good side of incompetents and incompetence; and c) other­wise flaunt their integrity and probity in the very act of flouting those virtues. When poseurs preen and pretend, “professionals” at least avert their eyes and remain silent but sometimes attack those who deconstruct the pretenses for being “unprofessional.” These “pros” see no scams, admit no disappointments, and defer to any justifica­tions offered by their betters, all the while accentuating how costly their candor has been to their [usually unmerited] advancement.

Nothing gives away tactical use of “professional” more than passionate concern for one’s or one’s department’s reputation. Such fervent, febrile concern is almost always undue. It is undue because almost no one due a good reputation is denied one for long. Gossip, rumors, and yarns do not adhere to well-reputed colleagues, and well-reputed colleagues almost always laugh off this disparagement or that assertion. The ill-reputed usually have desperate concern for their reputations because they fear exposure. Desperation is also undue because well-established infamy is reinforced more than amplified when misdeeds are publicized. It may be ironic but it is assuredly true: those who most often tout high regard for their reputations do not possess such reputations but wish that they did and strive mightily to deny charac­teri­za­tions that would exacerbate their deserved bad names, even though in many cases their bad names could scarcely be worse.

What is true of individuals overwrought about their perceived “professionalism” is truer still of departments. I once met with two members of a department that has been viewed as a campus weak spot for only a few decades. They were concerned that some­thing that I had written members of my own department might defame their department [as if anything short of complicity in 9/11 could]. They defended their concern by obser­ving that, had anyone similarly disparaged my department, my depart­ment would like­wise protest. After I stopped chuckling at this flaccid riposte, I responded, “My depart­ment would neither say nor do anything. Who would believe that my department would do what your department did?” As I recollect, the two did not grasp the differences be­tween departments that made their contention risible.

So beware of those who excuse self-indulgent behavior because “my personal and pro­fessional reputation is at stake.” They almost always protest criticisms or observa­tions too close to a truth that they cannot handle. What was true in high school is if any­thing truer in academia: what individuals or departments protest that they resent, they all too often resemble or even represent. Those who behave in a truly professional manner do not have to tell others how professional they are any more than high school athletes who are truly accomplished have to tell their classmates what jocks they are. Mildly observant peo­ple already know or will not believe. If they do not know or do not believe, self-serving bloviation does not substitute well for the real thing but actually inclines savvy audiences to assume that some opposite is nearer to the truth of the matter. While high school chums or campus colleagues smile and nod amicably if absently, they are asking themselves what unprofessional act(s) this wretch must be denying.