By firing me (and a few other faculty too,) the university's managers are essentially arguing that it would not make a difference to the university nor to the world.
I think otherwise.
Nor will they be able to convince me and the world that I was doing a "bullshit job," to use the phrase that the late anthropologist/commentator David Graeber coined in order to describe the modern economy. Graeber, whom I have quoted a lot in this blog, defined a bullshit job as being so completely pointless that even the person who has to perform it every day cannot convince himself there’s a good reason for him to be doing so.
Sriram is a curator who uses straight-up bullshit to create enlightenment of learning in the fecund Willamette Valley http://t.co/e0DHvHrbUk
— Soon to be "a former professor" (@congoboy) March 21, 2015
I often mocked myself in the classroom too. The jokes were about me--after all, they are the safest ones. After one of those jokes in an Honors class many years ago, a student, Ermine, loudly said something that made quite an impact on me. With a smile that seemed to suggest that he knew what I was doing, Ermine commented that I engaged in that kind of humor because I was super-confident about myself.
Guilty as charged!
A few years ago, a faculty colleague commented that I could very well be the university professor who is most known outside the university because of my commentaries in the newspapers. Whether or not I was the most known, I certainly did receive emails from people I had never met. They were responding to my commentaries in the papers.
Like this person who wrote on March 21, 2005:
Sir
Thank you for your excellent guest opinion and for your work with students. We fear for our country's future as it is more and more difficult to discern reality from make believe. You are a bright light.
Of course, even a couple of university personnel wrote to me.
After having read that same commentary, a then dean at the university, Hilda R., emailed in March, 2005:
Nice Op Ed piece in the Statesman Journal recently, Sriram. You help make WOU look great.
"You help make WOU look great."
I am now being laid off because the president and provost have decided that I don't help make WOU look great.
A year later, in September 2006, it was another dean at the university, Stephen S., who emailed me: "Sriram, Nice editorial! Keep up the campaign."
The campaign has been put to an end.
Perhaps you are thinking that I am providing old data, and I have been the cliched deadwood since. Nope; I stopped counting the number, but I think I was getting closer to 200 newspaper commentaries. Or, maybe it is past that number?
In April 2017, the executive director of the state's higher education commission surprised me with this email:
Dr. Khe,
I just wanted to say that I really appreciated the column you submitted to Oregon Live. It is heartening to hear that the election has generated the type of student interest that you describe, and that you are at WOU helping respond to those questions, guide those discussions, and expose more Oregonians to the field of geography. Such important work. Thank you!
The president and provost have decided that I don't need to respond to students' questions and guide their discussions anymore--especially if they are in the field of geography.
There is one feedback from a reader whom I have never met that I carry around in my wallet. A talisman of sorts. It is from 2008.
I was fortunate to have had such a meaningful job for all these years.
Though I wish that the job had lasted a tad longer, it had to end sometime; after all, nothing goes on forever.
Many moons ago, when about this time of the year I had started planning for the migration northward to Oregon, I was scanning the local, downtown, community newsletter of sorts--I think it was called the Village News, perhaps modeled after the Village Voice.
In that, and unexpectedly, I received one of the best compliments that I have ever received. The editor had noted my departure from the university and the town with a comment that the area was losing a public intellectual. I was pleasantly shocked.
It was all the more wonderful because it came from a person whom I had never met. This meant that she had based her comment strictly on my op-eds in the local newspaper, the Bakersfield Californian.
I knew even back in my teenage years that my life would be in the intellectual arena. Further, I knew that I wanted my intellectual activities to be in the public, and not in some obscure office, not because of a need to be in the spotlight but because of an obsession of sorts to understand social issues and to discuss and debate with others my understanding.
But, of course, I had no idea then of a phrase "public intellectual." It was one of the many new ideas that came to understand over the course of six graduate school years.
A couple of years ago, a student told me that he wanted to engage in the kind of public discussion of ideas like how I do, and asked me for suggestions on how he could go about it. That stumped me. I had no idea what the formula is. I agree with the author here:
The phrase has come to mean an academic who occasionally addresses a general audience, as if all academics were intellectuals, and some of them were also public ones. In fact, academics and intellectuals are antithetical types. An intellectual is not an expert, and a public intellectual is not an expert who condescends to speak to a wider audience about her area of expertise. An intellectual is a generalist, an autodidact, a thinker who wanders and speculates. As Jack Miles puts it in a stellar essay on the question, “It takes years of disciplined preparation to become an academic. It takes years of undisciplined preparation to become an intellectual.”
I love that description of "years of undisciplined preparation." I might never have come up with that phrasing, but that has exactly been my life until now. Undisciplined preparation.
The intellectual’s job is to think past the culture: to question the myths, metaphors, and assumptions that limit our collective imagination. The founder of the breed was Socrates. As Kazin also said, an intellectual is someone for whom ideas are “instruments of salvation.” Becoming one requires a little more than setting up a blog.
Indeed.
Engaging the public has been far more productive in terms of creating and sharing knowledge, than my formal scholarship can ever be.
Back in graduate school, I was cautioned against gong this route by one of my graduate school professors. Jim Moore applauded my passion for this approach, but warned me that academia would care only about the formal academic inquiries via the publish-or-perish peer-review process, though they would certainly get jealous about any notoriety that I gained from my approach. Jim was, and is, correct. But, it would not be me, and not my life, if I did anything other than what I wanted to do. I carried on with my Quixotic tilting at windmills.
Every time I visit India, my father asks why I don't write for the Indian newspapers. I have found it difficult to explain to him that the op-eds in the newspapers there are not the kind of the public intellectual discussions that I favor. Often they are filled with jargon, written by experts and not by intellectuals. The writings often seem to have an undertone of the specialist having decided that the ignorant public needs to be educated with his/her expert opinion. As if the public policy issue would be solved, and solved easily, if and only if the public listened to that expert. That does not strike me as the role of the public intellectual.
There is so much to talk about ... never has there been a better time. It will also be nice though if people listened to me! ;)
I received emails in response to almost every op-ed that I wrote. A few were hateful, yes. But, for the most part, people were decent even when disagreeing with me. I always replied to them, except the "haters and losers," to use the current president's words. To me, there was no second thoughts about replying; the whole point in writing op-eds was to engage with the public on important issues, and I loved that engagement.
As a reader of commentaries, I have also written a few emails to authors. I don't recall ever emailing when I disagreed with the author because I fear that critical engagement is not what most writers like, even though I love that. I have emailed almost always rejoinders in agreement. Many of them have replied, mostly with nothing more than thanks.
Even recently. After reading this essay in the context of the Sabarimalai controversy, I wrote to that author. That was a month ago. A few days after that, I wrote to another author who had engaged with the public on correcting the narrative about Aurangzeb. And a couple of days after that, I emailed another author in response to her commentary about the status of women and caste in India.
I never received a reply from any of them.
And, oh, in case you thought that it is the awfully arrogant men who don't reply, well, all the three are women. And, oh, if you thought it is because they are Indians, or Americans, well, one is an Indian, a second is an American, and the third is an Americanized Indian. There!
A contrast to these is my favorite contemporary public intellectual--Jill Lepore.
I wrote to Jill Lepore a couple of days ago:
Dear Professor Lepore:
After years of reading your essays in The New Yorker, for the first time I read one of your books--These Truths. I enjoyed reading and learning from it. Thanks.
While reading, I was also blogging about it, adding my own thoughts as well. The following was a comment a few days ago at the final post in the series:
I have been following your writing with great interest. I have a question: What makes America great? My daughter - a very bright 12 year old - is being taught history by a gifted teacher who told them a history of the United States very much in line with the Lepore thesis that you have explored in this blog. So I asked her: if America is all this, then what makes it great?Perhaps you can answer this question?
I suggested in my response that I will be most delighted to read what his daughter wrote in response to the question, "what makes America great?" I am yet to hear from him.
It then occurred to me that this is a question that I should direct to you. Or, maybe you have already written such an essay that I can read up somewhere?
Thanks again for your awesome writings in everyday simple language that makes reading them a pleasure.
Jill Lepore writes back:
So glad you enjoyed the book. I think my answer to that question is in my next book, which is called "This America: The Case for the Nation."
I suppose Jill Lepore sets the bar high. Good for her!
A few years ago, a student remarked in class about my blog; he said that the more he kept reading a few old posts, the more he realized a striking similarity between the blog content and the class content.
Of course those were the old days before trump, when my writings here were rarely unprofessional. Which is also why I have now stopped telling students about my tweeting and blogging.
But then, maybe I should, because it will be a powerful evidence that while I am highly charged and definitive about issues and people here in my private space, none of that spills over into the classroom. In classes, even when students ask me what I think about whatever the issue is that we are discussing, my typical response is that while I certainly have my own opinions, my job is not to bring them to the classroom, but to push them into thinking from multiple perspectives.
You, dear reader, on the other hand, have never observed me in my classes. And perhaps you have often wondered whether I am a ranting nutcase in the classroom. Rest assured that I am one hell of a straitjacketed professor in the professional environment.
So, in that spirit, I provide here a task that I assigned a class. You will notice that the topic is not new to this blog, but the tone is markedly different from how I would have written about it here. Right?
Finally, you will also notice a parallel between blogging and teaching. In both, the structure is the same: We lay out the arguments, and bring in appropriate quotes, right? Even the task that I assigned is the same way ... The real difference between my teaching and blogging is how "professional" I am in my language ;)
Go ahead, and write up the 2,000-word essay, and I will give you feedback ;)
****************************************************************
In his op-ed (from class discussions on 11/15, or click here) the Dalai Lama writes:
The time has come to understand that we are the same human beings on this planet. Whether we want to or not, we must coexist.
He adds that “empathy is the basis of human coexistence.”
Such a coexistence, the Dalai Lama argues, requires the United States, too, “to think more about global-level issues.”
While the Dalai Lama does not refer to any specific event or issue in that particular op-ed, he has been vocal about the ongoing Rohingya crisis. In other contexts, he has also explicitly called on the global leaders, which includes the United States, to act on the Rohingya crisis.
The Rohingya crisis brings together, unfortunately, many aspects that we would want to understand: For instance, the role of religion and religious differences; the level of economic development; the structure of governance in the country/countries directly affected by the crisis; and even the “different” looks of the people. Thus, in a tragic manner, the Rohingya crisis makes an ideal candidate as a global issue, and also makes as a final exam topic.
Your task for the final paper is this: In addition to clarifying the complexity of the Rohingya crisis itself, do some background reading in order to understand:
What has the Dalai Lama said about the Rohingya crisis?
What has the current president of the US said about the Rohingya crisis?
What has the president’s secretary of state said about the Rohingya crisis?
How do their views compare/contrast with the Dalai Lama’s call “to think more about global-level issues” and with “empathy is the basis of human coexistence”?
Based on all that reading, and based on the relevant materials from the course, you will write an essay in response to the following:
Do the views of the president and his secretary of state agree with the Dalai Lama’s views—about the need for global thinking and about the Rohingya crisis? If they are not in sync, then whose position do you agree with and why?
In writing the essay, keep in mind that the essay is an end-of-term demonstration of how you have met the course goals:
Understand the complexity and interdependence of contemporary global issues.
Appreciate how one’s own culture and history affect one’s worldview and expectations.
Appreciate the vastness of the world and the opportunities to create a better future for all peoples.
It was the old days. But not quite the oldest days. In the oldest days, men smoked in their offices and everywhere that it pleased them. A few women also joined them.
I am talking about the old days when men and women had to step outside the office buildings in order to smoke. They were always huddled together, and invariably by near the entrance doors.
And they loved to talk with non-smokers also. Only later did the etiquette evolve of non-smokers barely nodding a hello to the smokers as we kept on walking by the entrances.
Which is how one day I ended up talking with David.
He was much older than me, and was nearing retirement. I was barely enjoying my lucky break into academe.
We talked about what I wanted to do in the academic world. I brief him, to the extent that it was clear within me, about my rather non-traditional interests in scholarship and about public intellectualism.
He puffed away. And nodded as he listened to me.
And then, as he exhaled the last of the cigarette smoke while stubbing the glowing tip, he looked me in the eye.
I didn't have to wonder for long what he was going to tell me. His message was simple: If that is what guides me, and if I am convinced about it beyond doubt, then that is what I should pursue.
Looking back at it, I am thankful that he and my graduate school professor, Jim, were so strongly supportive.
Or, maybe I thank them only because life has turned out alright? What if that approach had not worked out? What if I had to return to the life of drudgery and monotony of the "real world," which is where I was for more than five years before that lucky return to academia?
Even if things hadn't worked out, I am confident that I will be thankful to them--at least there were two people who thought I was capable enough of their support.
A few month ago, I wrote a lengthy thank-you email to Jim. Among other things, I wrote to him:
I want to thank you again for one particular aspect of my intellectual and professional life: There is a good chance you do not remember a conversation that I had with you during my grad school days, when I said I wanted to directly contribute to the public, instead of the traditional research. You encouraged me in that, but also cautioned me that academia does not value public engagement. You went one step more and said that society needs active engagement from academics.
Science is conducted for the greater good of the community—so why
aren’t we engaging with the largest beneficiaries of our work?
Well, ok, this is not an undergraduate student. Not even at Harvard.
Katherine Wu is a third year graduate student at Harvard University and Co-Director of the science communication organization Science in the News.
Good for Wu to ask such questions, and to co-direct this initiative.
For me, of course, this is old territory. So old, and so often that I have talked/written about this, that I am tempted to shrug my shoulders and say, "if only the world listened to me!"
Not only scientists, but non-scientists, along with business folks and cultural elite, all seem to think that they are not a part of the public, and they like to operate in their own rarified world. I have forever tried to argue that it is extremely important to engage with the public--at least for selfish reasons. One would think that scientists want to convince the public that science is important and so is funding it. Business folks would want to convince that they are doing things for the public good.
But, nobody cares a shit--unless and until they feel that the lack of engagement with the public is affecting their own rarified world.
trump happens, and now scientists are worried. Seriously, why did a trump have to happen for scientists to realize that not only they need to engage with the public, but that they too are a part of the public?
Scientists are, just like everyone else, a subset of the general
public—that is, “people.” For each and every one of us, there is at
least one field that is unknown, a field in which someone else considers
us the general public.
Exactly!
If we had the intellectual humility that we do not know it all, and that we could not possibly know it all, then that alone would have reminded us that we are the "public" according to an expert in a field about which we know nothing. Right? You see why this is all old story for me?
As scientists, we should engage in conversations with the general
public whenever possible, whether it’s over Thanksgiving dinner or by
volunteering at a local high school science fair.
At a minimum, scientist or non-scientist, each of us should commit to
simply showing up. Without participation on both sides, communication
doesn’t happen, and we can’t challenge each other to relay information
effectively. Communication is a conversation, not a series of lectures.
Don’t just expect that conversations will happen—take part in making
them happen.
I am all for conversations. But, hey, nobody listens to me, and I am merely talking with myself all the time! ;)
The election of the current president is not the only one that has happened at this interesting time in history. He and his complete disregard for the truth is not that unique. That was on the political side of our lives. Almost all the dynamics that helped the president completely dismiss the truth are also the ones challenging the work of scientists. Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan says:
The Internet and the World Wide Web have been a tremendous boon to scientists. It's made communication far easier among scientists. It's in many ways leveled the playing field.
...
Along with the benefits, what has happened is a huge amount of noise. You have all of these people spouting pseudoscientific jargon and pushing their own ideas as if they were science. They couch all their stuff in technical jargon. They talk about energy and negative energy. Well, what does negative energy mean? Energy has a very precise definition to a chemist or a physicist. These guys are using it in some mumbo-jumbo way, but it sounds scientific. Scientists are very busy, and our science has become so technical that it's a real effort to communicate it in an accessible way to the public. The public is bombarded with all this information, so who do we believe?
The people end up believing whoever tells them the simplest of stories--even if those stories are nothing but bullshit!
I blogged about Ramakrishnan, in 2010, after reading his essay. Back then he was a freshly minted Nobel laureate.
Back to Ramakrishnan in the contemporary context:
How do we as a science community grapple with this and communicate to the public a sense of what science is about, what is reliable in science, what is uncertain in science, and what is just plain wrong in science? How do we live with uncertainty? Scientists live with uncertainty. We know that no matter how confident we are in our theories, it is possible that we're wrong, that our ideas may be wrong, and we always have to be prepared for that. That isn't to say that our ideas lack merit and that they shouldn't be taken seriously.
This is a problem in many fields. Climate change, for example, is a classic field where uncertainties in the consensus opinion are pounced on by people who don't like the idea of climate change and therefore oppose it. These are real long-term issues that we need to grapple with.
In the seminar class last fall, I had materials for students to think about the role of uncertainty in knowledge. Understanding that is a necessary path towards intellectual boldness, I told them. If Ramakrishnan had talked about all these back then, I would have made the students watch the interview.
So, why is Ramakrishnan talking about these now? Because, he is now the head of the Royal Society. With that honor comes the responsibility--he has to address science and society:
The last year has been very interesting because, for the first time, I've been taken out of my little area of ribosomes and structural biology into thinking about broader issues about science. How do we communicate science? How do we ensure that science is reliable? How do we promote interaction among scientists? How do we constantly make the case of why science is important not just to government, but to the public and to others? It's been a very interesting experience because it's made me think about science in a much broader context.
I wish scientists would do more of that--if they want to make sure that science survives the likes of the current president of the US. Marching for science alone will not achieve anything.
I have blogged before (like here) about how Charles Darwin's argument on natural selection and evolution threatened people's understanding of who they are. It is not easy, I suppose, to accept that we humans are not that special. Not made in god's own image. If in god's image, then, ahem, when I look at the mirror I can only conclude that god is ugly;)
People continue to have a love-hate relationship with science because of that identity problem. My adopted country displays that attitude really well. The country displays a love-hate towards all thing, I guess. We import stuff that clearly states it was "Made in China"; we buy a whole lot of it and then bash China. But then that too is about our existence and identity, right? Which is why we now have a president and his politics that scream America Wurst, er, First!
[The] public rejection of science is an extension of our politics, which
in turn have become an expression of our constant outrage about
everything that offends our deepest beliefs about ourselves. As social
scientist David Dunning has put it: “Some of our most stubborn
misbeliefs arise not from primitive childlike intuitions or careless
category errors, but from the very values and philosophies that define
who we are as individuals.” When those misbeliefs are challenged,
laypeople take it not as correction but as a direct attack on their
identity.
Which is why I have often argued that science has a public-relations issue. Whether it is climate change or GMO or vaccines or anything scientific, merely presenting more and more evidence is not going to help science nor the scientists. (Those with better PR skills, like donald t. rump, then happen!)
At the same time, experts cannot withdraw from a public arena
increasingly controlled by opportunistic demagogues who seek to
discredit empiricism and rationality. Instead, the expert community must
help to lead laypeople, who find the modern world intimidating and even
frightening, back along the road to a better day when the citizens of
the United States valued scientists and other professionals as essential
parts of the American story. Experts must continue, as citizens, to
advocate for those things they believe to be in the public interest, but
the most important role they can play is defend a stark but empathetic
insistence on science and reason as the foundation for public policy.
It is awful that trump had to happen for intellectual experts to finally begin to accept what I have been yelling and screaming for years, for decades: The need for public scholarship and engagement.
Early next month, in Boston, I will be one of the panelists on this topic. Hopefully, the academic world will seriously rethink its approaches in this new reality. If not, we are all doomed!
The lengthy diatribe of an email from some stranger named Jake Elder was in response to an op-ed of mine, and it began like this:
I see the Geography Department at O.C.E., opps!...Western Oregon University has an individual who is somewhat challenged with grasping reality. You from India? Maybe it's a cultural thing that makes it difficult to understand Western Civilization and the people who created it? Maybe there are also very obvious reasons why the 3rd world is just that...
One of the downsides in my pretentious existence as a public intellectual is, well, that word "public." In addition to the constructive engagement with strangers who comment and email, there are these wackos as well who email me. Of course, this guy Jake Elder's nonsense does not come anywhere near that hate email's content. What is scary in a way is what this Jake Elder notes in the middle of his rant: "a number of my former students." He was once a teacher? Oh my!
After having written 178 newspaper op-eds (yes, I counted them when I came to typing this sentence) over 22 years, I wonder if I am battle-tested enough for a larger audience. Hubris, I tell ya! The best part about the 22 years and 178 op-ed essays is that they have not all been in the same paper and not even in the same geographic area. In California and Oregon, and spread over four newspapers. That variety makes me feel even better about what I have done in this commitment to public scholarship and engagement, even if my esteemed colleagues think I am not qualified to teach at any level. Did I already remark about hubris? ;)
What about those columnists who have written for the same paper for years on? Like Thomas Friedman. Speaking of him, this commentary raises an interesting question: "does anyone even read Thomas Friedman anymore?" I can't recall the last time I read his piece. Or, even if I read it, I don't recall it making any impression on me. But, he has been there for a gazillion years. Shouldn't even people like him be term-limited out of their positions?
Why shouldn’t there be term limits for opinion columnists? It’s a fair question, given that the Times op-ed page too often feels weighed down by tired pundits who dispense the same thoughts long after they’ve curdled.
Exactly!
There are no writing positions at the Times more exalted than
that of opinion columnist. It’s as close as a journalist can get to
having tenure without having to teach, which may be why so many who hold
the title cling to it for so long
A good point. Further, by the time they write the column, well, we bloggers big and small have already discussed those issues anyway. Their columns are stale and boring to us.
Such lengthy tenures at the supposedly truth-telling places concerns me. Supreme Court justices serve for ever and ever until they croak. And, of course, in higher education it is tyranny of the senior-citizen faculty.
It is one thing to provide a sense of job security when the task requires sorting out the truth. Even I, despite all my insignificance, won't be able to write the op-eds that I write if I were not in a tenured job. Early on in the op-ed writing I was not a member of academia. One day, the boss asked me to meet with him and suggested that I stay away from certain topics that might bring attention to him and the organization. When I reminded him about the freedom to express opinions, he said that maybe I could at least stop identifying myself as an employee of that organization. As Socrates exemplified, truth-seeking and truth-telling is fraught with dangers.
Oh well. Such craziness will continue on. The same old columnists will spin the same stuff over and over. The justices will drool and stumble. Faculty way past retirement age refuse to go away. No wonder that is a shocking surprise when the 65-year old "weeper of the house" vacates his seat.
There are lots and lots of days when I wonder if the manner in which I approach my professional responsibilities towards students and taxpayers is worth all the hassles that I bring on myself. The road not taken is not always easy to travel--way too many potholes that Robert Frost did not warn me about. Those damn poets and their wild imaginations about beautiful grassy paths that exist only in their minds!
Yet, I continue along that road in my professional obligations. Almost always alone. Because, every once in a while, somebody pops up to encourge me that I am on the correct path after all. Like today.
What happened, you ask? Pull up a chair. Sit down with a cup of coffee and hear me out.
My latest column was in the paper today. Of course, I was as excited to see that column with my photo as I was when the first of those happened more than two decades ago. It is always a feeling of "hey, really, I wrote this?"
In this modern age, I tweeted that. Right from my bed.
And then I tweeted again, after having that glorious morning coffee. I told you I am one excited fellow. Hey, you will also be that way if you travelled an offbeat path.
A couple of emails from strangers, appreciating my column. Very exciting, of course. But, what really convinced me today that I am doing alright is an email that the newspaper's editor forwarded me. An email from a person who is a stranger to me. The email to the editor noted:
After reading that email, more than once, for now I am ready to pretend that there are no potholes. It is a state-of-the-art road that I am on.
Hey, Frost, thanks! And a special thank-you to that newspaper reader.
The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
Even after having authored 169 op-ed essays over the years--yes, I counted them a few minutes ago--there is a worry in the back of my mind: what if there is nothing more in me to write about?
This worry is not anything new. It has been the case for a long time now, though I am not certain when exactly this emotion kicked in. It is a terrible nightmare. A nightmare of my own creation, no doubt. But, it comes up, especially soon after an op-ed is published.
Dreading about failure is not unique to me by any means. And to write about such a fear is also a typical approach that writers take, I would think. It is cathartic. Further, if we lower our bars ourselves, then we come out looking good if we do produce something, right? ;)
failure in writing is more of an intimately crushing day-to-day thing.
O.K., minute-to-minute. Measured against your ideal of yourself.
You see how that writer describes the failure as an intimate experience that is triggered by measuring "against your ideal of yourself" and yet she writes about it for the entire world? I tell ya, such public cleansing avoids what would otherwise be a huge expense of gazillions of dollars that we don't have on shrinks!
When I started going down this path of a lowly-paid faculty who wanted to write op-eds, I used to send copies for my father to read--after all, the op-eds are on topics that would interest him too. Once he asked me how much I got paid for the op-eds, and was shocked to hear me tell him that there was no money involved. But, hey, there are things we do in life for money, and then there are things we do in life. If writing is what we do, then writing is what we do whether we get paid nor not, and whether we succeed or fail.
As you get older, rest
assured, you accept failure as part of your writing life. You realize
the many forms failure can take: There is sentence-to-sentence failure,
in which the words fly from your brain out the window or throw
themselves on the page like suicide bombers. There is the failure to get
on the page what is in your head. There is a failure of will. There is
organizational failure, in which you wind up collapsing.
You develop strategies
to deal with it all. You develop a kind of sixth sense, a detective’s
intuition about what will fail and what won’t. But above all, no matter
how much you fail, you still sit down at your computer every day, and
you keep going.
Exactly! It is every single day at the computer reading, blogging, and then every once in a while piecing together an op-ed. And then worrying that the well has dried up.
As a high school student, and especially as an electrical engineering undergraduate, the urge within me was to understand the human condition and the economic deprivation that was all around me.
Naive that I was, I thought the answers could be explored through formal graduate schooling. It turned out that much had been investigated and written about even those couple of decades ago. The more I spent time in the libraries and the classes, the more I was convinced that there was very little--if any--for me to explore and contribute. Unlike in electrical engineering, where revolutionary insights took us from the diode to the transistor to the integrated chip and Moore's Law, and the world of unknown that was ahead, for all purposes everything had already been explored about the human condition and the relative economic deprivation around the world.
Thus, it was not the pedantic understanding that was needed, I decided, but a way to connect the understanding gained with the people outside academe. Sometime during my final year as a graduate student, in a conversation with a faculty, I outlined to him my interests in being an academic who does not engage in formal academic research but in scholarship that would be for a non-academic audience. Like writing newspaper opinions. .
He thought it was much needed. But he warned me that academia would not care about any intellectual approach that did not conform to established protocols. He said something along the lines of "they will get jealous of your public exposure, and you will not get any support."
A month after graduating, my first ever newspaper opinion piece was published. That was twenty years ago, in July 1993. Against the background of the Fourth of July fireworks, I argued that the American society ought to worry not about restricting fireworks but about restricting guns. Twenty years ago, and I shudder to think about the number of people who have died from maniacal violence since.
Over the twenty years, the number of published newspaper opinions stands at 158, which averages to about eight per year. I suspect that the rate would diminish as I go forward, particularly because of the rapidly decreasing newspaper readership.
So, as I get more into the twilight of a mediocre career, I wonder if this route that I consciously chose was any more constructive than the options that I discarded. It is not easy to figure out counter-factuals. It is what it is, of course. However, I like to believe that it has all been worth it, and that I did not stray away from that goal of understanding the human condition and economic deprivation and doing my tiny little bit to address it.
During a session on Friday that was devoted to "unasked questions" about liberal education, Amy Jessen-Marshall, associate vice president for academic affairs at Otterbein College, speculated about how to change faculty incentive systems.
"What would happen," she asked, "if we fundamentally rethink the definitions of scholarship and scholarly activity, or at least broaden them?" Such a change, she said, could allow colleges to reward faculty members for various types of civic and community engagement, and also for working on interdisciplinary undergraduate-research projects that could increase students' engagement and understanding.
I am all for improving teaching, and changing the absolutely screwed-up criteria for tenure and promotion. But, I am tired of tilting at windmills :(
I have blogged (particularly here, here, and here) about public scholarship.
However, over the last couple of weeks I have been forced to wonder whether I ought to, instead, play the dirty old publishing game in academe. You know, author papers in academic journals that nobody would read! And I simply hate that game, which is nothing but a farce--at the expense of taxpayers in universities like mine, and I wrote about this too.
Today, a colleague emails me a link to the Christian Science Monitor, along with a note that "this appears to be written for you" ..... I am just simply excited with her note in the first place, and then with the content of the piece in the Monitor. So, what is that about? Here is an excerpt:
Suppose that 30 or 40 prominent research universities issued a joint statement, urging their faculty to publish in popular venues – and promising to consider such articles in promotion and salary decisions. Believe me, you'd see more and more professors writing for the newspaper.
To be sure, some faculty would continue to turn up their noses at it. As the historian Patricia Limerick has quipped, these professors resemble the people nobody wanted to dance with in high school; as a defense mechanism, they pretend that they never wanted to dance in the first place.
But I think plenty of academicians would want to dance, if the academy rewarded it. And it would be good for their disciplines, too. These are tough times for the social sciences and humanities, especially, which need to justify their budgets to already-strapped state legislatures and donors. What better way to prove your worth to the public than to write for it?
That is what I am talking about. Or, writing about. Thanks to Professor Zimmerman.
