Praise

“Can a book that pulls no punches on the reality of working conditions in higher education be hopeful, even optimistic? Yes. In Higher Expectations, Hawkins and Kern deliver both a realistic assessment and a plethora of practical suggestions for change, ones that students, faculty, and staff at every stage of their careers can enact, individually or in community with others. By sharing examples from a broad range of institutions and disciplines, they demonstrate that transformation is not only possible but already underway. This generous book is a rallying cry for a better academia for all.”

– Jennifer Polk, From PhD to Life

“Higher Expectations offers both a manifesto of visionary change and a practical guide towards that change. Most universities are structured to valorize and embed individual pursuit, privilege, and competition for ever-scarce resources. This is not a natural or inevitable model—it is a distinctly constructed model, and thus, as Hawkins and Kern reveal, open to deconstruction and, importantly, reconstruction. Higher Expectations offers pathways to shift the often unexamined embedded hierarchical assumptions of individualized success and struggle. As Hawkins and Kern demonstrate, it is possible to not only imagine but to actually create ‘higher expectations’ based on support, teamwork, and community. It is a remarkable book.”

– Joni Seager, distinguished professor in Arts and Sciences, Bentley University and dean emerita, York University

“Academia, as wonderful an intellectual enterprise as it can be, is also at times extremely competitive, highly hierarchical, unwelcoming, and inhospitable. Hawkins and Kern’s Higher Expectations is a much-welcomed breath of fresh air, a respite from the hypercompetitive, gruelling academic environment. In this wonderful book, Hawkins and Kern offer a framework for how to rethink, rework, and rebuild academia using ethical core values and principles that guide our pragmatic choices in what are turbulent times for the higher education sector. Higher Expectations should be required reading for all academics.”

– Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega, professor, Methods Lab, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Mexico

“How can we visibilize and better structure our labour, create and sustain non-hierarchical solidarity in our writing, teaching, service, and adjacent activism? Hawkins and Kern offer much needed wisdom across these topics and more in Higher Expectations. I would have 100+ post-it notes in this book by now if I had had it in grad school.”

– Jack Gieseking, author of A Queer New York: Geographies of Lesbians, Dykes, and Queers, 1983-2008

Contents