Becoming a Full Professor in troubled times
A personal update
Since the beginning of this month, I’ve been a Full Professor at the Institute for Theory and Practice of Communication at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). My start date marks the end of a lengthy hiring process that almost failed just before the finish line because politicians’ austerity decisions are forcing the UdK to no longer make any further appointments.
For me, it's the pinnacle of a career that hasn't always been linear. In retrospect, I sometimes have the uncanny feeling of having just made it across a bridge collapsing behind me, and not only regarding my own life. What does it mean to work at a university in times of massive budget cuts, fragile freedom, and rapid advances in artificial intelligence?
In this article, I approach some fundamental questions from a personal perspective. How can one escape the arrival fallacy? Why is a professorship even important—as opposed to, say, a life as an independent author? And what does it mean to teach at a university at a time when the vice president of the "free world’s“ leading nation claims it wise to say:
"The professors are the enemy"?