Power and Privilege
An apology goes a long way
My first academic position after a freshly-minted Ph.D. was in the business school of a top mid-Atlantic public state University. I was enthusiastically recruited by the faculty there because my expertise in marketing strategy and distribution channels was a good fit for their research and teaching needs. With my pregnant wife and our meager belongings, I moved there in the summer of 1990 to start a new life.
My Department Chair advised me to rent an apartment in Montgomery County rather than Prince George’s County. He said the latter had a high crime rate. Another colleague suggested Tacoma in Prince George’s County as a Bohemian town like Berkeley where I had lived. We liked a housing complex in Seabrook in Prince George’s County and moved into an apartment there. We trusted our instincts instead of the advice given to us.
In a department of about 11 faculty members, we had about six white males, two white females, and three South Asian males of Indian descent. It was a congenial group. On many occasions, a colleague came by the offices around Noon and rounded up people to go to lunch together at the cafeteria. Every Fall the Department Chair invited colleagues and their spouses to his beautiful home for an elaborate cookout. In December every year, faculty and spouses had a holiday faculty dinner together at a nice restaurant. “Publish or Perish” was part of the prevailing culture consistent with being a research one university.
Our son was born six months after we moved. After a year, we decided to buy our own townhouse in Burtonsville, in Montgomery County, just across the border from Prince George’s County. My wife and I were getting used to our parenting responsibilities for a newborn. The Business School moved into a shiny new building. Each faculty got a beautiful office with glass windows looking out on campus or on to an inside atrium. The new building had a fancy coffee station. I developed a taste for a daily cappuccino around 3 PM. A top academic journal published my dissertation paper, and the article won a prestigious national award. I settled into my teaching and students gave me good course evaluations. Life was good.
There was no internet back then. Mobile cellphones were available but expensive. They were mainly used by company employees for business calls. University professors and students had access to an electronic messaging system, Bitnet, the precursor to present-day email. One day I got a Bitnet message from David Dougherty, the Department Chair. He asked if I was available to meet with him and George Blumenthal, Associate Professor, for lunch the following Tuesday at 11:30 AM. Two senior colleagues invited me to join them for lunch by appointment! Though unusual, I was excited. I felt they had something important to say to me that didn’t warrant a casual everyday conversation. I replied to David saying I would love to have lunch with him and George on the following Tuesday. Since I would be teaching a class until 11:45, would it be okay to meet at our offices right after my class and then go to lunch together? David replied 11:45 was fine and I noted this appointment in my calendar.
The following Tuesday I had a good class with my MBA students and returned to my office just after 11:45 AM. There was a yellow post-it note fixed to my door. In David’s handwriting, it said, “Sanjit, George and I decided to go to lunch a few minutes early. See you when we get back”. There was no reason given for why they went early. There was no restaurant mentioned where they were going so that I could join them. There was not even a hint of an apology for reneging on the appointment.
How did that make me feel? Angry. Humiliated. Left out. Powerless. They could do this because I was a junior faculty member over whom they held power. I decided to eat my pride and not say anything when they got back. David poked his head into my office later and asked, “Everything going well with you”? I said, “Yes, fine”. That was it. To this day I can’t figure out why David sent me the message for lunch if it wasn’t important.
My hyperactive mind wondered what may have caused David and George to act the way they did? Were they so hungry that they couldn’t wait for me for 15 minutes? Did they want to discuss something in private that they didn’t want me to hear? I guess I should have been thankful for the note. They could have gone off without leaving a note, which would then have caused me to ask them what happened later. By leaving the note, were they assuaging their guilt and avoiding accountability?
I left the University to return to California in 1996. Twenty-five years later, rekindled by the conversations around the BLM movement and white privilege, that failed appointment still rankles. Wasn’t that incident an exercise of privilege, by the powerful against the powerless? My experience is certainly not comparable to the pain and suffering that marginalized communities have historically suffered. Yet, in a small way, it gives me an understanding of what they continue to face.
There seems to be an unconscious bias among some powerful people that certain behaviors do not need an apology. They say and do things because they can. Power has the ability to desensitize people. It is incumbent on the powerful to be more sensitive to those around them because their words and actions have a greater impact.
I’m not perfect by any means. I’m still late for meetings occasionally. I have even missed appointments. I always apologize to whoever the meeting was with irrespective of their position in society. The apology comes from a place of sincerity and humility informed by my own experience.
