BY IRENE MULVEY
Happy busiest time of the semester, colleagues. And for those of you raising children, or who have elderly family members to be concerned about, I don’t know how you do it all at this time of year. I have no idea how I did it myself when my own children were young. But here we are, trying to figure out how to enjoy the upcoming break with family and friends, as we uncap red pens and stare at mountains of exams or papers to grade. This is not even to mention the exhaustion that comes with the job. Perhaps that’s a subject to explore at another time, when I am not so exhausted.
Who would have thought we would be ringing in 2022 while still battling a virus that was discovered in and named for 2019? Certainly, the global pandemic adds another layer of difficulty to our lives. From the glass-half-full department, let’s note that the pandemic and lockdowns have provided people with an unexpected and rare opportunity—a chance to think about and reassess how and where we spend our time and what’s truly important to us, on a daily basis and for the long term. For those who are genuinely open, the pandemic has made it impossible not to see the humanity and struggles of others every single day. Difficult as it is, we are living through and experiencing the COVID-19 reset. Let’s take advantage of that to make things better in our lives, on our campuses, in our communities, and in the world.
Every year at this time, I am reminded of what Ebenezer Scrooge’s nephew says in trying to explain to his joyless uncle that Christmas should not be called a humbug, and that people who go around saying “Merry Christmas” should not be boiled with their own pudding:
I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
Membership in the AAUP involves you in our work and our struggle, and I am deeply grateful to the tens of thousands of members engaged to varying degrees in our struggle. Our mission to ensure that higher education contributes to the common good is part of the larger struggle hinted at by Scrooge’s nephew, regardless of which holidays we celebrate. If you’re a faculty member who is not a current member of the AAUP, please consider joining or renewing your membership today.
We fight in solidarity in pursuit of justice for all—racial justice, economic justice, gender justice, environmental justice, justice that sees and values the humanity in everyone and the equality of everyone. Our mission and our fight address profound social questions, and solidarity is the only thing that has ever moved us forward—solidarity in pursuit of justice. What keeps me going in this work, and what has always kept me going in this work, is the opportunity to strategize and work with like-minded people in the struggle for justice. Higher education, especially public higher education, has the ability to open minds and lift people up, and it is essential in order to protect and strengthen our democracy. The AAUP has been and will continue to be vitally important in ensuring higher education fulfills its core function in our democracy. I know how hard it can be to stay calm when faced with intransigence, incompetence, or malevolence that obstructs change for justice. I know it’s easy to be swept up in anger when you experience or witness injustice—and no doubt that anger can be extremely valuable at times—but we cannot let our righteous anger make the motivating impulse at the core of our struggle less visible: we fight in solidarity in pursuit of justice. Into 2022 and beyond, through strengthening our profession and higher education, our fight continues to make our time on this earth as “kind, forgiving, charitable”—as loving—as we can for everyone who is sharing the journey with us, and for all those who will follow.
Irene Mulvey is president of the AAUP and professor of mathematics at Fairfield University.
