Academics could gain a certain clarity about themselves if they acknowledged that being an academic is a job, not a mission, and that being an intellectual is merely a form of labor, not an entree into a mystical order.

Our work is writing and teaching and, dare I say it, administration. In this sense we are both in and of the institution -- denial of this fact only reinforces the truth of this fact.

Denial is also a means of forcing extra labor onto your colleagues who have made a good faith commitment to serve their constituents-- that is, their students.

I mean, it's great that you see yourself as outside the institution that you've spent years fighting to enter, and that pays you very well, but who then will end up doing the work you are being paid to do? We know who.

Moreover, what self-righteous, class-backward logic positions the professor above the elementary school teacher, the nurse, the garbage collector? Are these professions only in and of their institutions?

This is a world where a medieval order intersects with a neoliberal system to both mystify and reinforce elitism and brutally hierarchal class relations, both with and outside the university.

There are institutional, shop-floor political struggles with the university. They are not always the political struggles beyond the university.

Also here's an idea: if you're an academic, develop a life beyond the university-- with your family and friends, on your block or in your community, with your church or mosque. There are other locations of struggle. And of joy, too.