I wholly agree with you – and with the author of the Chronicle piece you referenced – that faculty who aren’t fully able to teach in person shouldn’t be required to do so. That may be because they’re vulnerable to severe illness if infected and are therefore rightly fearful of the classroom, or because they were previously ill and are now suffering from long COVID. I haven’t thought through which ones should be required or encouraged or permitted to teach virtually, which ones should be put on disability, and which ones if untenured can simply be replaced. But professors who have reason to believe they shouldn’t be teaching in person shouldn’t be teaching in person.
The Chronicle article describes an extraordinary level of institutional resistance on the part of Work Connections at the University of Michigan to professors’ righteous claims of vulnerability or disability. I don’t know if the description is accurate, nor do I know if U–M is typical. I have heard somewhat similar but much, much milder stories from old friends in academia.
But there is a real dilemma here for universities (and other employers). Let me describe the opposite extreme. What should we say about a young, healthy, vaccinated professor who is genuinely fearful of resuming in-person teaching, even in a well-ventilated classroom that is not-too-crowded with mask-wearing, vaccinated students, in a community where COVID transmission isn’t especially high? There really are some teachers whose fears of classroom infection are not reasonable. (There seem to be a lot of them, frankly, in K–12 education.) And they can usually find a doctor to validate their fears … just as people fearful of COVID vaccination can usually find a doctor to validate their fears.
At some point it seems fair to tell such professors that their fears are excessive even if not entirely groundless, and that they should really make an effort to return to the classroom rather than cowering at home. But of course I wouldn’t use a word like “cowering” if I were genuinely trying to encourage courage!
When that point is reached, I’m not sure what the university should do vis-à-vis professors who still cannot bring themselves to teach in person. I suppose the answer depends on a determination of whether their excessive fears constitute a psychological disability or they are simply being stubborn or selfish.
But surely trying to convince them to return to the classroom – empathetically, with no reference to “cowering” – isn’t oppressive.
I don’t know anything about Silke-Maria Weineck except what she says in her article. I don’t have any opinion about whether her specific concerns, or those of the colleagues she mentions, are sensible or excessive.
My point is simply that some people’s concerns are sensible and some are excessive. Given what we have all been through in these past 19 months, it would be shocking if that were not true.
The broader and more important issue is how to respond to people with excessive COVID concerns. I think right now is a time to cut slack for people’s excessive concerns. This is equally true for people on both edges of the mainstream, data-based consensus: both those who are reluctant to take COVID precautions and those who are reluctant to return to normal living.
Many on both edges are on those edges, in part, precisely because of excessive polarization. In part, of course, they have been lured into extreme, irrational positions by misleading information. (As you well know, there is plenty of misinformation in both directions, not just the anti-precaution direction.) But in part they have been pushed to extreme, irrational positions by the exaggerations of the other side, by the other side’s contempt, and especially by the other side’s efforts at coercion.
It is unfortunate that the U.S. confronted the worst public health crisis in a century as polarized as it is – and doubly unfortunate that our public health crisis ended up exacerbating our polarization instead of bringing us together. But that’s where we are. I don’t know how to reduce the polarization, but we can at least try to isolate the polarization from pandemic decision-making. The tough challenge that that entails: cutting slack for the other side’s extremes.
Coercing reluctant employees to get vaccinated has a huge downside, whether they’re professors or nurses or grocery clerks or journalists. It does work; most employees will roll up their sleeves rather than lose their jobs. However, they will do so resentfully.
When people decide (to their own surprise) to take some action that is inconsistent with their preexisting attitudes, they are likely to reconsider those attitudes. This important psychological phenomenon is called cognitive dissonance. It doesn’t happen when people feel coerced.
Thus, people who feel coerced into getting vaccinated will not be motivated to reconsider their antivax concerns. Instead, they will become angrier and more convinced that they are the victims of oppression. I think employees forced to get vaccinated are quite likely to morph into sullen revolutionaries. The coercive employer or government isn’t winning them over, in short; it is losing them forever.
In some ways, employers might be better off simply firing vaccine-hesitant employees, instead of creating a cohort of workers likely to become permanently resentful at having been forced to get vaccinated in order to keep their jobs.
(See this recent post on COVID vaccination rewards and punishments, and overviews of the role of cognitive dissonance in risk communication here and here. Also see this 2012 argument against making healthcare workers get flu shots.)
Exactly the same thing is true of employees who are genuinely fearful of returning to their normal workplace. If denied the opportunity to continue working from home, most will comply rather than lose their jobs. The resulting negative impact on their morale and their attitude toward their employers is amply demonstrated by the Chronicle article.
Novel risks often provoke what I call an “adjustment reaction,” a temporary overreaction. (See Adjustment Reactions: The Teachable Moment in Crisis Communication.) It is wiser to nurse people through their adjustment reaction, not to try to disrespect or coerce them into not having one. That is equally true of people excessively fearful of getting vaccinated and people excessively fearful of returning to normal life.
Copyright © 2021 by Peter M. Sandman
