Look, people, I am not naive. I've been in this business for a very long time. I've worked many other jobs (nothing to do with higher education). There ARE many things wrong with academia. There are structural issues that need to be fixed.

Loving academia doesn't preclude ...

... knowing that there are a lot of things that need to be changed, and that individual change does not always equate collective shifts. That said, I'm also a scholar of collective action and mobilization and I also study norms, rules and institutional change.

These things ...

... CAN be fixed. They require shifting the norms of academia to make it more humane without losing rigor. But I for one know not one, not too, but many academics who are incredible scholars AND amazing human beings.

These individual traits are not mutually exclusive.

I don't want to lose hope, I don't want to become cynical, and more importantly, I want better conditions for those coming behind me. That's why I do what I do. It's not naivete, it's a firm commitment to changing academia from within, as small a change as I might be able to make