Kelly C. George, Ph.D.: 0:00
If you're a professor on the tenure track, no matter what institution you're at, and trust me, I'm at a teeny tiny one, you might be dealing with some of the feelings that I'm dealing with. I've got a conference paper I was in the middle of, a grant I was in the middle of, not to mention two classes I was in the middle of. And suddenly, everything's different. And if you're like me and you teach to what's in the room, suddenly it feels like there's just one thing in the room, and that's a pandemic. It's not like a small thing in the room, like when a student is texting when he shouldn't be, right? It's a really big thing in the room. So what do we do as writers and thinkers and researchers? Do we just keep going? There's a meme floating around right now that you might have seen. Two images juxtaposed: one is the Titanic sinking (from the movie Titanic, of course) and the other is the band playing, the musicians who continue to play as the Titanic sinks. And the caption is: "online learning right now." We're all trying to move on business as usual, right? Just like the film "And the Band Played On" critiquing our collective action during the AIDS epidemic. So what does it mean to be a person poised with your instrument at this moment? What does it mean for the band to play on? And should the band play on? Is that our proper role right now? Do we continue to pick up our instrument? Do we put it down? My guess is, if you're a teacher, if you're a writer, if you're a thinker, if you're a person who makes stuff, you won't stop making and talking and thinking. But you have to look around and notice that the boat is sinking, that people are jumping off the boat into icy cold water, some of us, So yes, make, think, play, write... but I'm not even sure it's ethical to make, think, play, or write about anything but this. Which I know will seem miserable for some of you, right? Some of you -- a friend posted on Facebook early in the social isolation advice, he posted, you know, "shout out to my friends posting non-COVID-19 material right now on. [laughter] And I do really like that because it is nice to have a refuge. But I also think, as someone reminded me recently, that we'll all be judged by how we act right now, by what we do in our communities, in our professions and in our families. So it's not the time for inaction. It's the time to step up to the plate. But we who deal with ideas have a particular way we step up to the plate, and that's what I'm interested in figuring out.