The teaches of Sandra Oh: The Chair reminds us how complicated university life can be

The Chair, the new Netflix series that dropped at the end of August, came out just in time to get us all in the mood for back-to-school season. Led by Sandra Oh, the series takes place in the declining English Literature Department of the fictional Pembroke University. When Oh walks confidently into her new office only to fall out of her own chair, I thought, "Right — that really is how September feels."

Beyond its fantastic cast, what really stood out to me was the connections between characters that I never saw coming. The Chair really focuses on how the person we might have overlooked might be exactly the person we need. With students returning to school this month, finding connections in unexpected places feels very on-theme. After all, Zoom is not where most of us thought we would be looking.

The characters in The Chair enter a new school year while standing on shifting ground. The humanities are struggling to justify their existence, and as a result, enrolment rates are plummeting. Sandra Oh's character, Professor Ji-Yoon Kim, is struggling to create substantial change while balancing administrative pressures in her new position as chair of the department, and all the faculty are feeling the strain.

Though the show, refreshingly, doesn't include a pandemic, parallels to this real-life school year are abundant. Students and educators are returning to class this year amidst a lot of uncertainty about how the term will unfold. Some of us are still online, some are back in a restricted physical setting, and some are navigating a mix of the two scenarios. And if we've learned anything at all from last year, we know it could all change again in a second.

Part of what makes this so challenging is that we still remain isolated from one another. Even folks returning in-person may be seeing their peers for the first time in over a year, and others can't connect outside of their Zoom screens. But in The Chair, the show's characters are reminded that sometimes the connections they need the most come from places they hadn't even thought to look. While suspended from teaching, Jay Duplass's character offers to watch Professor Kim's young daughter after she's scared off yet another babysitter — and it becomes the relationship that reinvigorates his love for teaching. Holland Taylor's character, an older professor wary of being pushed out of the department, rediscovers her chutzpa with the help of the tech guy who came to fix her wifi.

These connections are spurred by unwanted changes like being suspended or reluctantly dealing with new technology. But the characters are able to navigate those changes by seeing the new perspective that they bring. Learning during a pandemic is, safe to say, an unwanted change for most people — but it's forcing us to connect in ways we hadn't thought of, and who knows what we might find in the process.

However, there was one point of connection that I felt The Chair did a disservice to. When Jay Duplass's character, a once-loved professor, makes a problematic misstep in class, a video of him goes viral and student protests ensue. Eventually, it escalates to the point of prompting a termination hearing. Narratives like this — where someone "does one thing wrong" and ends up losing their livelihood — are prevalent on TV. In real life, however, these scenarios are rarely ones where a single incident leads to a rapid firing. Despite its questionable basis in real events, this fear that students want to, and can, summarily "cancel" professors affects the way we approach real clashes between students and universities.

In our current moment, this could have real consequences. Amidst events like the renaming of Ryerson University, universities' responses to student criticism are at the forefront of our minds. But it's important to remember that students are in a place to give fruitful criticism precisely because of the skills they learn in university.

Although The Chair is right to point out that English Departments are struggling, it feels like it misses the fact that students in English are there largely because they are invested in what they are learning. I mean, they certainly aren't under the impression that an English degree is a one-way ticket to employment. They study literature because they are interested in examining the nuances of human behaviour and the world in which it takes place.

Student criticisms like the ones that prompted the renaming of Ryerson come from exactly those learned skills. Students are making connections between the history of the institutions they attend and biases in our current educational systems. They are making nuanced assessments of how the past affects the present, and demanding that we act accordingly.

These conversations we're having about universities are difficult, they really are. The stakes are high, and there are going to be frustrations and stumbling blocks. But assuming that students' critiques aren't well thought out or fair doesn't do us any good. Perhaps genuinely seeking common ground might be the best place to start.

In one scene from The Chair, Sandra Oh teaches Emily Dickinson's "Hope is the thing with Feathers." As she discusses it with her students it's clear that everyone in the room, including Oh's character, has found hope in even the most unlikely situations. Perhaps hope is most valuable where we aren't expecting to find it. In The Chair, the characters find much-needed hope in the moments where they reach outside their comfort zone to forge new connections. Maybe now it's time for us to do the same.