Tuesday 19 November 2013

Alessandra Lopez y Reyo quits the Academy- Hurrah!

This article, by Alessandra Lopez y Reyo, appeared in the Times Higher Education Supplement. My comments are in bold.
'When I received my doctorate in art and archaeology nearly a quarter of a century ago, I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to leave the academy. Why not? You studied Tamil with Dr. Marr and got a First- but you did not then nor do you now know Tamil. You were the only student of Tamil and got a lot of personal attention but you didn't actually learn to speak Tamil at all, did you? You did however blackmail me, a 20 year old Iyer Tamil Brahmin, whose family was well known to Dr. Marr, into marrying you. You were 26 and in your second year. I was a graduate of the LSE working for KPMG. You  tried a little but failed to learn Tamil. All you could do was decipher the script and regurgitate lecture notes. You are not intelligent. Your Art & Archaeology PhD is meaningless because it is based on the notion that you know Tamil and Sanskrit and therefore are a worthy pupil of Dr. Padma Subhramaniyam- who is related to me. She had some speculative notions in this regard but since you are neither an Artist nor an Archaeologist nor a Philologist your thesis in this context is the opposite of 'Academic Research'- it is special pleading stupidity, only excusable in a genuine partisan of a specific ethnicity.  
BTW- you never held a proper job in the U.K once you stopped being an au pair. Instead you traded on your supposed 'scholarship'- which was bogus- and later on your supposed 'ethnic minority status' based on your marriage to me.
 But I am about to swap the security of a monthly academic salary for the precariousness of independent scholarship – if that concept even still exists Concepts either exist or they don't. You made no discoveries or even ventured anything belle lettristically worthwhile, in 'Art & Archaeology'. Other people, some affiliated with Universities, some not, have done and continue to do so. You can't. You are too stupid and ignorant.– because I feel I can no longer sacrifice my dignity and integrity within a university. You have no dignity or integrity. You quite literally prostituted yourself to a corrupt Indian official to get a grant. You got pregnant and returned to England to blackmail me, a 20 year old idiot, into marrying you. Even after you divorced me, you kept my surname of 'Iyer' because that way people thought you knew Tamil. You don't. It was only because I threatened to expose you that you stopped using the Iyer name. I had good reason to feel appalled by your behavior. When I fell ill, while still married to you- you tried to get me deported. This is in keeping with your Elitist, Eugenic ideology which has you sneer at your students and spend time polishing your worthless ancestral escutcheon. The name of Archbishop Lopez y Reyo, as Governor of Sicily, stinks to high heaven. I have never used your name or relatives in Italy to advance my interests there. You yourself, far from having a sense of honor are the absolute kiss of death for any such notion. Which of your former patrons still talks to you?
To re-cap, you only got a First at S.O.A.S because you were married to me and so people thought you must know Tamil. You didn't. Padma Subhramaniyam only took you in because you were the mother of an ostensible 'Iyer' related to her. But your son, too, repudiated any reciprocal connection with me- though, strangely, he wanted to keep the surname 'Iyer' till I made it clear to him that, by reason of his failure to honor my father, he would face my full wrath in this regard- not impotent admonishments merely, for which he had ready a pert reply,  but active socio-economic  boycott OF HIS EMPLOYERS. 
 We can't have people passing themselves off as belonging to the Iyer community when they are blatantly guilty of not just filial impiety but corrupt practice and Cowardice. Anyway, though gracelessly, it appears he has quietly changed his name and completely given up his hobby of making mendacious complaints to the police about me, because he found out that this 'Black Man', in Britain, is not a Second Class citizen- at least with respect to a lying little swine like him- but one who has the nous to send him to jail.
In the same way that I ensured that America was not fooled by your self-serving mendacity, I have also made sure that your son, in adulthood, reaped no reward by the use of my father's name.
At present, only a fool or a knave would trust him. He is utterly without honour- at least, so far as I can testify. But, those who could certify him find I am the obligatory passage point and objectively have to judge him to be unworthy.  He will gain no honorable employment but continue to be little better than a boiler-room shill. Why? The fellow is either stupid or lazy. He does not do independent Research or even properly apply himself to learn difficult techniques.  Let him do so and he will come up by himself. Alessandra can also redeem herself in a similar manner. But, why should she? There are other 'availability cascades' than the purely Academic- this sick sick woman will become a Kristevan therapist!
My post-PhD life was a whirl of visiting lectureships, research fellowships and awards. These included a once-in-a-lifetime Getty Collaborative Research Grant that enabled me to travel frequently to Asia to study performance practices in collaboration with senior academics at the National University of Singapore. Entirely true. But, your 'research' was worthless because you are stupid and have no genuine zeal or aptitude to uncover anything of interest. Venture Capitalists often finance stuff which is 'an epic fail'. That's what Entrepreneurs are supposed to do. Similarly, the fact that you received support was not a testimony to your intelligence or achievements but was simply a 'punt'. You failed. That's obvious to everybody. Go be a Kristevan therapist- you really are senile enough- why don't you?
After nearly five years at the University of Oxford, I was hired by the University of Roehampton in time for the 2001 research assessment exercise, to teach on the dance programme. I was not a dance specialist-on the contrary, you always claimed to be precisely that. You had taken a course in Labonotation at Roehampton while we were married- but the department believed I had the kind of “non-Western” expertise BECAUSE YOU WERE USING MY SURNAME! that their ambitious new dance programme was looking for.
I did what academics are supposed to do: I taught, researched, supervised PhD students and did administration. No. Academics are supposed to inspire their students and to make discoveries- not simply go through the motions. I consistently applied, successfully, for research funding, and by 2007 I had been appointed reader. So, your assiduous careerism and self-promotion bore fruit for you as an individual. But, did it incline you towards the upliftment (to employ an Indglish expression) of your students? No. You sneered at them the same way your Piedmontese Mom sneered at the Leccese seamstresses that she was contractually obliged to teach the Classics to.
But the sense of unease that I had begun to feel soon after my appointment gradually became overwhelming.
I dreaded the start of each academic year. You have no 'Guru Vatsalya'- does the mother dread the return of her child? Does the teacher dread the return of beloved students? I rarely had an opportunity to draw on my subject area expertise you have no subject area expertise. You don't know Tamil. You dance badly. You have no sense for even basic Morality- let alone Indic Spirituality. You are simply not trained in Archaeology while your attempts at Aesthetic theory are utterly risible because you are stupid. in my teaching, even at postgraduate level. Instead, I was expected to be a jack of all trades, lecturing to a student body whose first-years frequently required remedial English and who almost all refused to read beyond lecture notes, ignoring the bibliographies I carefully put together. Your ideas are worthless. You are a stupid and an ignorant woman. The bibliographies you carefully put together are an X ray of your worthlessness.
Nor were we allowed to censure them: we all had to bow to the managerial imperative of treating them as customers who have to be satisfied, allowing them to show impatience and lack of respect with impunity. Respect for you? You sneering, sneaking, fraud? And despite their inability (or unwillingness) to understand what studying for a degree entailed, inflated grades prevailed. You are a teacher. You have a PGCE. It is up to you overcome inability or unwillingness to understand something germane to a course of studies. Clearly, you failed. But you didn't resign. You permitted 'inflated grades'. Why? Because you were corrupt. Roehampton, by your testimony, 'inflates grades'. Roehampton graduates may be good or they may be worthless- we don't know. Their alma mater 'inflates grades'. It cheats. Its diplomas are useless. Did you resign immediately when you found this out? No. You were part of the fraud.
But we also short-changed the students in some ways. For instance, we were never totally honest with them about their employment prospects, even though I know that a significant number are now unemployed and in debt, and many are working in completely different fields. For some, their dance studies degrees still only boost their CVs for jobs as Zumba teachers. Zumba teachers don't need a Degree. Put it another way, a person with a degree who isn't a popular Zumba teacher gets sacked. You knew very well that Roehampton's Dance Dept. didn't get Oxbridge types before you took the job there. But you yourself are not an Oxbridge type. You are too stupid. You were a 'mature student' and a particularly ignorant and worthless one at that. What sort of 26 year old marries a 20 year old- by BLACKMAIL?
BTW, where did you think your students would get work?  
Roehampton’s department was rated in the 2008 RAE as the best in the UK (there are not so many, after all), but this only caused complacency, which to me seemed totally out of place. But you didn't resign did you? Why? Are you utterly corrupt and despicable?
Staff were also undervalued by management. One example of this is the inflexible working practices that mean motherhood and academia are still largely incompatible. You used your child to make yourself an object of pity and thus gained employment. Your son went to a boarding school. How can 'motherhood and academia' be largely incompatible if your own success within it, if not predicated ENTIRELY upon it, yet so very obviously indicates otherwise?
Meanwhile, the “impact” agenda, which now drives the research agenda, is foreign to the humanist values that attracted me to academia as a space of free, non-instrumentalist critical thinking. You are stupid.  You write shite. That's an empirical truth. You are incapable of creative thinking. BTW, critical thinking is tautologically instrumental.
I feel part of an oppressive and hierarchical structure that demands the compromise of individuality and creativity in order to fit the mould. Not everybody at Roehampton is shit. You are and they tolerated you didn't they? Look, the truth is you are a stupid woman. You wouldn't have got into Oxford or Cambridge or even London Uni unless you went for a course nobody in their right mind would take. You were the only student of Dr. John Marr. You married me. John and Wendy knew my parents and were beholden to the Sundarams with whom my family is related by marriage.  You would not have been welcome at Kalakshetra if it had been known that you tried to get me deported.  BTW it is your own misbehavior which has made you and your son 'pariahs'. Nobody can trust you.  You are not 'good people'.
Roehampton’s most recent research excellence framework-inspired recruitment drive made me question whether I still wanted to be part of this system. Young, promising academics who had taught in the department on fixed-term contracts for several years were not given a chance because the university was chasing world-leading publications, so the department had to fill up with readers and professors. So, you were hired because people thought you might be smart and get an International reputation. You were too stupid and ignorant to do so. But, you didn't love your students. If you had, you wouldn't now resign. You'd take a pay cut to remain with them.
Nor is my experience unique. Go to any department in a middle- to low-ranking university and you will hear similarly woeful tales. When Margaret Thatcher decided both that polytechnics should become universities and that the principle of the free market should be applied to higher education, she sealed the new universities’ fate. Yes, Sandra, I know you are an elitist with an obsession with your own 'Aristocratic' lineage. But who pointed a gun at your head and forced you to work for that 'jumped up Poly' Roehampton? If you had any love for your students, or gratitude to Roehampton, you would not write this sneering, sneaking, tract. With such an uneven playing field, they must jockey for any advantage, and rigour is often the first casualty. Rigour? Are you kidding me? Your writing is worthless. You know it, I know it, everybody can know it. Do you even read the rubbish you write?
Research funding has become quite impossible to obtain for those outside “elite” research-intensive universities. Your research was worthless because you did not know the language you claimed to know. Everyone in the arts and humanities is desperately trying to forge alliances with scientists, to gain access to research money and add greater credibility to their work. Research councils’ budgets are tight and academics are pitted against each other, often harshly peer-reviewing a competitor’s application because it might be in the way of their own. 
Universities, aping the worst businesses’ obsession with their bottom line above all else, are churning out MAs and PhDs with little regard for the future either of students or subjects. But, SOAS churned you out and your work is utterly worthless. You were the only student of Dr. Marr. You can't even speak Tamil. I feel sorry for those currently embarking on doctorates, doomed to discover that their expertise is neither understood nor valued when – having realised that the academy can no longer absorb them – they enter the mainstream job market.
Perhaps my decision to vacate my position will have the knock-on effect of seeing some idealistic young academic – with enough publications to be submitted to the REF – offered their first permanent post. But if they were to ask me for advice, I’d tell them to think long and hard before accepting it. Your advice is worthless. Genuine Researchers exist. So do people who understand that Teaching is an affectionate Imitatio Dei. You were too stupid and self centered to either treasure your pupils or find pleasure  in Alethia's pursuit.

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