My department is undergoing a ‘cultural transformation’. It’s becoming antiracist and pro-women in some beautiful ways, both top down and grassroots. I’m proud of the person my department community is becoming. But I’m worried it’s suppressing a lot of its own personal trauma. Is it possible to break a multigenerational cycle of trauma without a conscious acknowledgement of traumas that have happened, might still be happening?
Our community’s subconscious buzzes … groping by professors … decades of harassment complaints brushed off or gaslit or weighed against grant dollars … warnings not to let a serial harasser close the door in one-on-one meetings … at least three male PIs bothered enough by sexism witnessed in different faculty meetings to tell female postdocs about it … lab incest and the ripples of dysfunction it creates … choosing a climbing gym over a daycare … hearing only from the nytimes of a harasser ousted from our community … female postdoc candidates wary to apply … the women who are often described as ‘choosing’ not to continue in academia.
That’s a part of our community subconscious that I experience. I imagine others experience different slices, intersecting but not the same.
Appreciate that I think our budding community is strong enough to consciously acknowledge what it has endured, is enduring. We don’t need to wait for acknowledgment from our abusers – it’s possible that will never come. Appreciate that our relationship with our parents – the old guard who looked on or worse, but also has and continues to nourish us in many ways – will be complicated. It already is.