In an open letter, professors Jessica de Bloom and Janet Fuller with the personnel faction say the toga is at odds with the UG’s goal to ‘acknowledge and appreciate people’. The alternative is the toma, the tunic for overlooked mid-level academics.
We the personnel faction underscore the points in this opinion piece about the toga, which excludes assistant and associate professors. We support The Young Academy and its project ‘Everyone Professor!’. The hierarchy inherent to the ‘exclusive toga’ can no longer be reconciled with the UG’s goal to acknowledge and appreciate all employees.
But even more important than an inclusive ceremonial garment for all participants in a PhD ceremony is the underlying problem: a dysfunctional hierarchy that doesn’t provide assistant and associate professors with enough opportunity to act as doctoral advisers.
The Higher Education and Academic Research Act states that everyone who is ‘sufficiently competent’ is allowed to act as doctoral adviser (art. 7.18). However, each university and faculty has its own interpretation of this act.
At the UG, this has led to different policies across faculties, as well as some questionable policy actions. Assistant professors, for instance, are routinely unjustly excluded from applying for ius promovendi.
Assistant professors are unjustly excluded from applying for ius promovendi
Sometimes, getting ius promovendi is even predicated on an employee’s ability to get subsidies. That means there are other (and potentially inappropriate) criteria for getting ius promovendi than the ability to properly supervise junior researchers.
Another issue in the application for ius promovendi is the structural dependence on colleagues for a multitude of seemingly necessary recommendations. In other countries, professors apply for ius promovendi at universities other than their own to prevent this kind of undesired interdependence and conflict of interest.
What makes someone a good doctoral adviser is academic competence (a PhD and a productive research line) and some experience with and affinity for supervising junior researchers (successfully co-supervising junior researchers and training in supervision/leadership).
It’s also important to realise that supervising junior researchers is a team effort and that less experienced advisers are usually matched up with more experienced ones, meaning the former aren’t all on their own.
You can wear the toma over your regular clothes and it complies with the dress code
To help them, the personnel faction has created the toma: the tunic for overlooked mid-level academics. It serves as a protest to the inequalities apparent in the rules around who is allowed to wear a toga. The toma can be worn over your regular clothes and complies with the dress code for academic ceremonies.
However, the embroidered ‘tunic for overlooked mid-level academics’ on the back will allow you to make a statement to the academic community: we acknowledge the hierarchy in the academic ranks, but we appreciate everyone’s contribution equally.
The toma represents appreciation and acknowledgement of assistant and associate professors and their contribution to a PhD track and/or the ceremony. Until someone changes the dress code, anyone can wear a toma during academic ceremonies.
An alternative would be the entire PhD committee refusing to wear a toga or carrying it over their arm whenever a committee member is prohibited from wearing a toga. Anyone wearing a toma (or any professor refusing to wear a toga or draping it over their arm), is demanding the following changes:
- Ius promovendi for everyone who is sufficiently competent to act as doctoral adviser. That means assistant professors also qualify.
- Every associate professor automatically qualifies for ius promovendi because they’ve proven their competence by being promoted to associate professor.
- Everyone with a PhD is allowed to wear a toga during academic ceremonies.
You can borrow a toma from the university council’s personnel faction. Email [email protected].
Jessica de Bloom works at the Faculty of Economics and Business, Janet Fuller at the Faculty of Arts. They are both full professors and represent the personnel faction on the UG’s university council.