What My New Job Means For Drezner's World

In case you were wondering,...

Photo by JJ Ying on Unsplash

As of today, July 1st, I am officially the Academic Dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University. For those readers not terribly well versed in academic titles, this is not the same thing as being the Dean — that job is ably occupied! Academic Dean is a pretty important position, but I’m not going to be the big boss. My job will be to manage the faculty and curricular dimensions of Fletcher. And given how flexible and easy-going my colleagues are, I anticipate zero difficulties and completely smooth sailing ahead! I have chosen a propitious moment to go into academic administration amirite?!

The point is, I am now neck deep in academic administration. I can no longer claim to be just the simple, small-town political scientist. It can be seductively easy and politically convenient for others to infer that if I speak publicly on the issues of the day, I am speaking on behalf of my school and/or my university.

This is one reason why academic administrators often self-censor; why say something that could be twisted by enemies of higher education — and there are a lot of them right now — into yet another assault on the U.S. university system?

I completely understand that line of argument. And after having mulled it over, my reaction is: screw that noise.

Drezner’s World will continue to be as unfiltered and unexpurgated as it has been for the past two years and ten months.

To be clear: absolutely nothing that the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World publishes in this space should be interpreted as reflecting the official position of the Fletcher School or Tufts University about anything. Any moment when my university or school issues a statement that sounds similar to my mutterings is purely coincidental.

Why not be a little more cautious? Because if you have been paying attention, it’s not safe out there right now for an awful lot of academics. Eagle-eyed readers of Drezner’s World might remember that when I first mentioned my promotion a few months ago, I did so to explain why I was not pursuing opportunities outside of the United States. This part sadly remains relevant:

Even though these are scary times, I occupy a pretty privileged position. I’m an American citizen and a full professor. This affords me the opportunity to produce scholarly research and policy essays that attempt to speak truth to power in a way that my international colleagues and students are finding difficult right now. If my assessment is that the Trump administration is really goddamn stupid, I can still say that as plainly as possible. And I will continue to do so until and unless the administration decides that it can detain U.S. citizens as lawlessly as it has foreign nationals.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration has decided to take that next step in its not-so-slow march towards fascism. Fortunately for me, this particular fascistic step applies only to naturalized citizens. Which means I still possess all the privileges that I did three months ago. And I plan on taking advantage of all my constitutional rights as long as they last.

My status as Fletcher’s Academic Dean does not negate my status as a tenured professor. And so I will continue to use this particular megaphone as long as it lasts.¹ Anyone trying to claim what I say here with Fletcher’s official position on, well, anything, will need to note the abject denial of that claim four paragraphs up.

For the next week or so, Drezner’s World will be relatively quiet. That’s because I am on vacation, not because I am self-censoring. Come next week, to paraphrase Secretary of State Marco Rubio, I’ll be back to providing some serious intellectual ruckus for the near future.

Now if I could just get my email inbox down to zero….

1. Which, if Ana Marie Cox is correct, might not be for too much longer.