The Sustainability Design Alliance are a group of researchers dedicated to advancing the state of the art in software engineering for sustainability and sustainability within software engineering. We wonder to what extent this pursuit is hampered by the very institutions and mechanisms that purport to facilitate genuine understanding and advancement of knowledge. This position paper questions what impact the post-Humboldtian university has on the disconnect between research and practice, in a context where macro-structural forces such as external funding income and performance metrics are valued over research insight, resulting in structural conditions under which functional stupidity — the active suspension of critical thinking within organisations — has become normalised and rational. We identify systemic issues and concerns around metrification and performance accountancy that negatively impact academic sustainability. We exemplify how they impact researchers’ individual and social sustainability and hence pose an existential threat to the software engineering research community. We propose an alternate future and pose a set of discussion questions around which the community can engage in dialogue.

@inproceedings{paperbot12640,
  title = {Beyond Dark Academia: Reclaiming Agency and Belonging to Overcome Metrification and Performance Accountancy},
  author = {Birgit Penzenstadler and Stefanie Betz and Ian Brooks and Ruzanna Chitchyan and Leticia Duboc and Shola Oyedeji and Jari Porras and Norbert Seyff and Colin C. Venter},
  booktitle = {ICSE},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1145/3793657.3793882}
}