How to be a bishop in a world of pawns
Plus lessons from anxiety, kickboxing, and Canadian treasure Bruce Cockburn
Hello and welcome to Academia Made Easier. I am so glad that you are here.
I come from a long line of anxious people and when I was in high school this anxiety manifested as insomnia and panic attacks. My parents sent me to a counsellor to help me with this. (Was this dude trained? Who knows – it was the late 80s!) He taught me some breathing techniques and tricks for adjusting my mindset. He also said something that has haunted me for decades:
“There is no point in worrying. Life’s devastating events tend to be things you could never imagine.”
This did not help my insomnia.
But decades of life experience have proven him right. Many things I deeply worried about thankfully did not come to pass, while life’s blindsides have been beyond my imagination. Case in point: waves hands frantically at the world.
Right now, I feel a lot of worry. Worry about the safety of vulnerable people. Worry about the sovereignty and well-being of my own country. Worry about the future of liberal democracy and human rights. Specific to our postsecondary sector, I worry about an ideologically driven backlash against universities (as Ronald J. Daniels argues in What Universities Owe Democracy, “Attacking universities is a time-worn page in the authoritarian’s playbook”) and what this will mean for higher education.
Decades of life experience have also taught me I have two approaches to worry. One is to freeze, mind my own business, and protect myself. The other is to determine my own (often tiny) sphere of agency and to, in the words of Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn, “kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.” At times, protecting myself is all that I can do. But when I have the capacity to do so, identifying my agency and taking action helps me feel less helpless in the face of worry.
If you, like me, worry about a world that feels out of control, I hope today’s small thing to try immediately helps you to consider your potential to ‘kick at the darkness’.
One Small Thing to Try Immediately: Choose to be a Bishop
Like many, I was struck by the actions of Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, who made a large ‘kick at the darkness’ in her call for mercy for the vulnerable at the American presidential inauguration service. In a context in which so many are happy to play the pawn, Bishop Budde spoke up and then refused to back down. I admire her recognition of her agency and her courage to act on it.
Few people have the opportunity for large kicks at the darkness. But we can draw inspiration from Bishop Budde within our own spheres of agency in academia. (As Daniels writes, “Universities are not merely bystander institutions to democracy but deeply implicated in, and essential for, its success.”) I also believe that these much smaller kicks at the darkness matter, add up, and inspire more and perhaps larger kicks by others within their spheres of agency.
Here are some ideas to get you started.
1. Recognize your agency. Bishop Budde had a unique and powerful audience. Academics also have audiences. As academics, we can support our students in the development of civic engagement and critical thinking skills and work with our colleagues to consider how the curriculum might support students while advancing the public good. We can speak about our areas of expertise to the media and policymakers. (Shout out to my Canadian political science colleagues writing on Substack and in The Conversation. You are doing important work!) We can engage in our communities through outreach and events. (Check out this cool initiative at my own University of Saskatchewan.) Students, the media, policymakers, and the communities in which we live are all important audiences. We can take Bishop Budde’s example and consider how we wish to engage with these audiences.
2. Advocate for and take care of others. “I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.” Bishop Budde’s sermon called for compassion for the vulnerable. We all have the opportunity to advocate for those who may lack the ability to advocate for themselves within our workplaces (students, colleagues) and communities. We also have the opportunity to support each other. A lot of people I speak with these days are feeling stressed. They worry about the well-being of their children and family members, about the direction of the world, and about their own capacity to cope. As a society, we need each other’s support and friendship. So check in with those who you suspect may feel vulnerable. Be there for them, and let them be there for you.
3. Hold onto your values and convictions. Acting on your agency and advocating for others may receive pushback. Anticipate this and plan how you will respond in ways consistent with your values. In reading an interview with Bishop Budde, I was struck by how her values of humility and kindness resonate in the face of the backlash she has received. Indeed, when asked about her feelings of personal danger after receiving death threats about her sermon, Bishop Budde focused her answer on the needs of others.
A final word about kicking at the darkness, should you choose to do so. Cockburn sings “nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight.” But as I learned in my brief and unspectacular foray into Muay Thai kickboxing a few years ago, kicking is tiring. It can be a struggle to maintain your balance. And things you kick at often kick back. It is important to consider your capacity: you might not be in a position to kick at anything right now, or you might need to pace yourself. Please take care of yourself. You matter.
Until next time…
This is my first newsletter of 2025. Happy belated New Year! If you want more on the topics of this newsletter, please see “How university education prepares students to be engaged and informed citizens”, For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities, and “How to find new hope when the world is … a lot.” And if you just want to read about academia, wellbeing, productivity, and all that good stuff, no worries: I have lots of small ideas on those fronts to share with you in the year ahead. Watch this space!
Stay well, my colleagues.
P.S. For those who know me well and are shocked to see me referencing a religious leader, well, I am equally shocked. Life is unexpected! Unrelatedly, if you are on BlueSky, please connect with me at @loleen.berdahl.bsky.social . I mostly post cat photos like the one below, so don’t expect much!
If you find Academia Made Easier useful, please support my chocolate habit through my Buy me a coffee page. This site allows readers to show their appreciation for the unpaid labour of writers like me. 🍫🧁🙏
If you like the look of classically styled women’s clothing and the feel and functionality of athleisure, I strongly recommend SophieGrace, a Canadian company. Be sure to use my discount code AcademiaMadeEasier to get 20% off.
Have you got your copy of my new book, For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities? If not, please order it now (and/or ask your university library to get a copy), be sure to sign up for the related Substack “Reimagining Graduate Education”, and note that my coauthors and I welcome invitations to work with units to implement the book’s ideas! Reviewer feedback of note:
“It is the kind of quietly good book we need to see more of. … This book provides a very solid description of the process of defining and developing excellent, sustainable arts programs that serve students rather than academics. And not only is it dead-on in terms of its recommendations about how to design and evaluate programs, it has a lot of helpful matrices and worksheets to help those who are put in positions requiring them to do exactly that … More like this, please." - Alex Usher
“Nearly half the book is dedicated to charting a transformative course for liberal arts departments.... If For the Public Good can provide the impetus for social sciences and humanities departments to refine their graduate studies programs, the career outcomes for tens of thousands of grad students will be the better for it. That alone would move the needle on Canada’s public good problem." - Literary Review of Canada