FIRST-GENERATION
PHILOSOPHERS
On Not Being Special
I had a recurring fantasy on my daily 10-mile ride to work. With Bob Segar’s ‘Roll Me Away’ playing in my head as I approached the factory drive, I’d think: one day, I won't slow down, I’ll open the throttle and just keep going, and going, and see where I end up. But realistically I could see no way out of the trap.
My life made me the thinker that I am. What philosophy gives me is something very dear I have always sought. Despite the professional closed doors, as a person, philosopher, and a historian, I am succeeding at living an authentic, meaningful, and loving life, in the only ways I know how, at arguing for such a life and at helping others to succeed in this.
When you face discrimination and marginalisation, it makes you start to question yourself and your own ability, which I still do. Rarely will you be gifted opportunities, whereas I saw others benefit from them. So I started to wonder whether they were just better than me: were they getting opportunities because they deserved them, while I didn’t?
My experiences as a first-generation philosopher have been shot through with luck. I grew up in the middle of the Canadian prairies, in an 800-person town so remote it had neither paved roads nor stoplights. No one in my family had attended university.
The barriers faced by first-generation students are not accidental. First-generation students’ hurdles around college's administrative, academic, and lack of cultural capital are a pattern of systematic biases.
I am a first generation philosopher. All of my grandparents and my mother were immigrants to the United States from Denmark. In immigrant neighborhoods in those days, occupations tended to go by nationality.
Growing up working-class, I know we are resourceful and compassionate, that we do not only seek connection to find gain but also to genuinely find friendship and solidarity. We mustn’t give up trying to improve conditions for all, especially for contingent faculty and grad students.
Here’s a funny thing that I realized when I got to college. I was now surrounded by people from comfortable middle-class homes who never had to worry about money. What struck me, however, was that my upbringing had been in many respects very valuable. For one thing, I had a work ethic that had become second-nature. This stands me in good stead even today. I’ve never had a problem getting motivated to work, the impetus to get on with it is just there. That’s priceless. For another thing, I had an appreciation of the academic life. If you feel lucky to be at university then you make the most of it.