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I see so many young women graduate students worried about the horrific scenario where some pompous senior man tries to destroy you at a conference with hostile comments on your presentation.
My (probably unpopular) advice: don’t worry about this!
My (probably unpopular) advice: don’t worry about this!
Not because it doesn’t happen. It absolutely does happen, and it probably will. But because it’s not the worst thing that can happen to your work, or your career.
If a hostile senior man is asking rude questions, or pontificating, he’s behaving badly and stressing you out. But he’s also engaging with your work, in public, *on your terms*
You know the work better than he does, and he’s making himself look bad even if he’s technically correct (the vast majority of scholars hate this behavior).
You can deal with him by answering the question (if there is one!), always remembering that *you’re* the expert on your own work.
Now, what if he’s right about something minor?
Who cares?! Concede the point and move on.
Who cares?! Concede the point and move on.
And what if he’s right about something major?
That sucks, but we’ve all been there (or will be there eventually). Better to hear it in a panel than in reader reports.
That sucks, but we’ve all been there (or will be there eventually). Better to hear it in a panel than in reader reports.
And in the nightmare scenario where he keeps going, and the panel chair doesn’t intervene (which she should) this is what you can do:
Smile, even though you’re exploding with rage (or shaking with fear), and say “I obviously disagree with you. Let’s talk about it after the panel.” Then you look great - and friendly, and competent, and confident - and you win.
(You don’t actually have to talk to him after the panel. You just have to say you will.)
The man you have to worry about is usually not this guy. It’s the guy who sits politely through the panel and then denigrates your work to his friends at the bar. And it’s also the man who keeps forgetting about your existence.
These guys are more difficult problems and IMO the only way to deal with them is to publish a lot, but that takes time and is hard and unfair.
(This is *not* advice about what to do if your plenary speaker denigrates other scholars and uses racial slurs - a very different scenario!)
But in my view, not being worried about the hostile panel dude is the best way to deal with him.
For my next installment, I will give advice about what to do if you accidentally *become* the hostile panel dude. (Something I fear I may have done in my ignominious past.)
