The chair shows the conservative soul of the university – Francesca Coin

For some days the international media have been devoting many reflections to The chair, the Netflix series written by Amanda Peet and Annie Wyman, screenwriter and Harvard academic. US magazine The Atlantic called it the best Netflix series in many years; according to the New York Times it is a “biting satire of the academic world” while for Time it is also “a rather accurate account of what it means to be a black lecturer in the contemporary university”, adding that “for this reason it is painful to watch”.

The chair is the story of Ji-Yoon Kim, a Korean-born woman who was first appointed director of the English department at Pembroke university – a fictional US university where this role was filled only by white men. Played by the talented Sandra Oh, Ji-Yoon Kim is an empathic woman with a great sense of ethics and social justice, who is preparing to play the role of director with a series of priorities: attention to “climate change, racism, the prison system and homophobia ”, which for her are the main problems of today.

These priorities guide it from the beginning, starting with the choice to entrust the distinguished lecture – the most important public lecture of the year – to Yasmin McKay (Nana Mensah), a scholar beloved by students, in the race to become the first full-time black teacher in the history of the department. And then that of not firing older teachers, whom the principal defines as “bulky dinosaurs” and who still see themselves as the only custodians of the canon of English literature.

Misogyny and racism
Sandra Oh’s work is not easy. Neither the role of director nor her integrity are enough for a woman to change anything in a conservative setting like university. In fact, while the series aims to celebrate some changes – today there are guidelines in Western universities – what it really does is to highlight how hard misogyny and racism die hard in conservative institutions like the university.

And in fact, while students ask for critical tools to face the present and while Ji-Yoon defends “eco-criticism, the development of gender studies and the critical theory of race” as important lines of research to change the unequal society in which we live. , the requests coming from the administration and from colleagues go in the opposite direction. The principal wants to cut costs, reduce staff and increase enrollment, not so much because he cares about school dropout but to increase the income from university fees, which dropped by 30 percent in the English department.

For this he wants to fire the “dinosaurs” and recruit David Duchovny, the actor who played Detective Mulder in X-files and that in the series he embodies himself, presenting himself as the star of the show who has never read an academic article but who can use his fame to attract students. “I happened to meet such a person at the farmer’s market,” says the principal to persuade Ji-Yoon to hire him. “He has a country house around here. We started talking and I thought: here’s the kind of person who can revitalize the study of literature ”.

These are all ingredients that describe today’s university well: a conservative institution, tormented by precariousness, cuts and ever-higher taxes, hostage to a cultural canon that was firm in the colonial era in which, too often, disciplines aimed at social transformation are considered “useless” and knowledge becomes a spectacle.

It is amusing to see Duchovny attempting to persuade Ji-Yoon of the intellectual value of the first chapter of his doctoral thesis, a thesis that began thirty years earlier and never completed, while imagining what the word “prof” would sound like in front of his surname. It’s funny but it’s tragic at the same time, because while the authors stage the disconcerting flattery that universities show towards celebrities – in Italy there are countless honorary degrees awarded over the years to singers, footballers, or controversial characters, for the most disparate reasons – we understand that we are looking at the tip of the iceberg of that process of emptying and spectacularizing knowledge.

Ji-Yoon does everything to remain consistent with his principles, but always finds a wall in front of him. After all, the greatest merit of The chair it is precisely his ability to display the toolbox used to continually drive Ji-Yoon into invisibility and ridicule his every effort. Among these tools we find the mansplaining, the practice with which men insist on explaining to women things they already know, just to “put them back in their place”. This is what happens when David Duchovny corrects Ji-Yoon for his pronunciation of the words in English, specifying not to “because you are Asian, that is, I do not know if you are Asian, I do not see the color of the skin or the race .. either. faces now, I only see the aura ”.

The series is full of men silencing women, Ji-Yoon herself is interrupted or ignored when she speaks.

Authors Amanda Peet and Annie Wyman masterfully show how many different ways women are made invisible even when in positions of power. These are always subtle but far from insignificant dynamics, indicating precisely how much racism and misogyny pervade every detail of our daily life. And so, while Ji-Yoon insists on defending critical knowledge, gender studies and the critical race theory – the critical theory of race targeted by former President Donald Trump because it pushes to take responsibility for the impact of colonialism in our history and culture – Ji-Yoon finds himself being the protagonist of surreal situations, which force his visions ethics of social justice to end in a stalemate.

The chair stages the tragic impasse of the contemporary university. As Amanda Peet said “academia is a pressure cooker right now”, fueled in part by “intergenerational tension” between “young idealists”, “middle-aged people whose idealism has faded” and ” older people who once considered themselves pioneers ”.

On the one hand, students ask for critical knowledge to address the most pressing problems of the contemporary age. On the other hand, those who govern the university want to cut the staff, recruit student-clients who pay taxes, remove the most radical teachers and if possible create a beautiful university-show with some celebrities, some benefactors and a few useless courses. And finally, there are the dinosaurs, the guardians of the canon who watch to ensure that their role is not downsized. US scholar Luke Harris spoke of “decreased overrepresentation”, to describe those in a position of privilege and feel threatened by a more inclusive approach in terms of gender, race or sexual orientation. Elliot Rentz, the elderly white lecturer who in The chair does everything to prevent the promotion of the black teacher Yasmin McKay is a good representation of it: he tries to prevent the natural over-representation of white men among the deans of the department from being scratched, because “the natural order of things” cannot be subverted by the irresponsibility of a black woman with great talent.

What Peet did not say in his statements is that under these conditions the university is not reformable. Ji-Yoon instead explains it clearly: “I feel like someone gave me a time bomb because they wanted to make sure a woman will hold it when it explodes.” It’s hard to blame her.

Unfortunately, The chair it shows how the contemporary world of culture is often hostage to those who want our society to remain unequal and discriminatory, as it has been for too long in the past. Fortunately, there are still those who are bravely working to change it, despite adversity.