Maggie Berg

Barbara Karolina Seeber

Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy

The Slow Professor

Maggie Gordon

The slow movement is dedicated to challenging the harms of our speedy capitalist system. To be slow is to put care and thought into your actions, and to resist the pressures of working so hard as to lose the ability to work well or enjoy life. The Slow Professor applies this philosophy to academia, talking about how academics are now pressured to take on so much work that it is almost impossible to do this work well, or to think deeply about the issues that one needs to ponder deeply. Are universities become more and more corporatized, academics are pushed to deliver research that makes money. Thinking is no longer a profitable endeavour, nor is much of teaching. So Berg and Seeber call on their fellow academics to resist, stop trying to fix the unfixable with time management skills that serve only to make you feel terrible about yourself, and slow down. 

I had some criticisms. Because the book was short, there was no space given to how non-tenured academics can join in this slow movement without damaging their career prospects. However, that could easily be a book on its own, and Berg and Seeber are speaking to an audience does have some power to effect change, so the book is important!

The Slow Professor Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy

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