This time ten years ago, I was in the first semester of my master's degree in politics and sociology at the University of Bristol. After that, I spent six years doing various jobs (mostly research admin work) at the same institution. In 2015, I moved to Aberystwyth University to start my PhD.
So, in one way or another, whether at the fringes or somewhere closer to the centre, I've spent the past decade within the (lately much-maligned) academic bubble. Of course, previous to that, I spent three years studying as an undergraduate but I don't think that really counts. It was a completely different experience.
It was during my master's studies that I was first socialised into the academic habitus—the norms, mores, and general engrained common sense of the community. It was at this time that I made friendship and acquaintance with those who were starting their own PhD projects, as well as those already embarked upon their careers. It was also at this time that I first realised that these people were not, on the whole, significantly more intelligent than I was (something I had previously, perhaps semi-consciously, assumed to be the case).
Being the first in my immediate family to go to university, and growing up in a small, rural, provincial town, I had little to no prior exposure to such conditions of middle-class being. However, being white, male, and speaking with a more or less standard southern English accent, I think I was able to 'pass' fairly quickly.
One of the first things that I noticed in this 'habitus' (some time before I learned of the concept) was what I call The Academic Nod. In my experience, it occurs during the course of most half-way intellectual conversations. You may recognise it: In the process of sharing some fact or theory you've read or think is interesting, your conversation partner will nod in a serious, subtly mannered fashion.
The Academic Nod occupies a zone of inscrutability between 'oh, how interesting' and 'yes, I know that.'
I found this quite difficult to navigate for a time, until I'd learned how to do it too. It's confusing because it is an approving gesture and yet it is difficult to tell whether the person is saying 'yes, yes, I've heard this all before' or 'please, do go on.' Indeed, this ambiguity seems to be its purpose.
The Nod would seem to come from competitive knowledgeability. Academics are, of course, supposed to be highly knowledgeable, often on a very wide range of topics. Therefore, their bodily comportment generalises this appearance, and their dialogical habits are gradually adapted to it. This disposition is perhaps found in its purest form in the classroom, where intellectual authority is performed most obviously, but it is evident almost everywhere.
I have since become quite adept at such mannerisms and, thus, am often able to appear significantly more knowledgable than I actually am. Of course, one has to be careful in maintaining this epistemically in-between position. You don't want to fall into the trap of committing to knowing something that you don't, since you could well then be contradicted and hence look foolish. That's where Theory becomes important (being able to formulate convincing and digressive responses on the basis of sometimes minimal information).
This has all been going around in my head, on and off, for a decade. However, what's brought it to my fingertips, now, is the recently heightened obsession, in the press and elsewhere, with 'academic bias.'
For instance, only today, an open letter has been doing the rounds, denouncing the appointment of a Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge who practices an updated version of the kind of race science often thought (naively, of course) to have been left behind in the nineteenth century. This denunciation has been met with the by the now-familiar gnashing of teeth from various apologists, many cloaking themselves behind half-baked notions of rationalism and intellectual freedom.
I don't intend to discuss this particular case here. However, it brings to my mind a number of issues.
There's no doubt that there is a left/liberal leaning to academia (more liberal than left), at least when compared with any other arm of civil society. This is well-documented. However, it is also, in my experience, rather over-estimated.
For starters, this leaning is heavily dependent upon discipline, career path, and funding stream. I write primarily of the social sciences and humanities, since these are the communities that I know. I've learned from those working in, for example, mechanical engineering (never mind business schools, etc.) that quite different political tendencies are evident there, where industry money is so abundant, and rather different psycho-social tendencies are generally rewarded.
It's not especially surprising that a career requiring many years of preparatory education, and that is considerably less well remunerated than occupations of similar social standing (though, of course, it is well-paid in general), tends to attract those for whom money is not necessarily the top priority. Nor is it surprising, then, that such persons tend not to be especially right-wing. However, we should also remember that not all academics teach or research. Indeed, the political dispositions of those who enter vastly better paid positions in bloated university administrations is wont to be quite different.
Moreover, I think it's important not to confuse theoretical and political positions. There are many academics in the social sciences and humanities who identify as, for instance, Marxist but whose concrete political convictions would seem to hew markedly more to the centre-ground (and beyond). Likewise for many other self-identified radical political-theoretical traditions.
Certainly, there are plenty of Marx scholars who wouldn't be caught on a picket line if their lives depended on it. Likewise, those scholars whose work brings them to engage in sustained, long-term community work, wherever that may be, are fairly unlikely to become jet-setting, high status professors. That's not how it works.
Some have argued that academics are, pretty much by definition, bought and paid for by the prevailing world order due to their structural socioeconomic position. I find that a little too all-consumingly deterministic. However, the problem is well-observed.
What is perhaps surprising for me, all things considered, is just how successfully certain leftist enclaves of academia have been able to hold onto whatever minimal hegemony they have, in spite of the onslaught from all sides by a neoliberal and conservative order that is incontestably dominant pretty much everywhere else.
For all the idle-minded commentators who bleat on about viewpoint diversity, where else has any such perspective been able to build any sort of foothold in the institutions of civil society? Certainly not in the oligarch-owned media. Certainly not in the constitutional and legal establishment of late-imperial Euro-American societies.
If certain 'viewpoints' stand out as over-privileged in some localised portions of academia, that perhaps says at least as much about what is taken to be unremarkable and conventional in almost every other position of social judgement.
So, to conclude, what I have really learned over the past ten years is that as naive, conflicted, complacent, suffocatingly bureaucratic, and frequently out of touch academia may be, it remains something worth fighting for. The almost infinite shades of pretence and dissimulated jealousy with which it is guarded only betrays the privileges that remain there, still.
Showing posts with label academic freedom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label academic freedom. Show all posts
Friday, 7 December 2018
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Reply to Michael Dawson re: academic freedom
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/07/social_science_and_the_public_sphere#comment-94856
@Michael Dawson:
My point was hardly that everything published in academic social science journals today is hunky-dory (if you permit me the phrase), nor that there are not serious weaknesses across the (intellectual) board. I myself would not accept the familiar chant you adopt of 'po-mo must go!' as I find many of these theories, if engaged with, are very important; perplexing perhaps but then I get that when I read anything by a hardline rational choice theorist (no less taxing on the terminological front). That said, there is a fringe orthodoxy concerning this sort of (po-mo) work that is somewhat intellectually stagnant, but that's another matter.
In fairness while I did have the po-mo 'critical' brigade partly in mind when I wrote the above, the only name I made reference to was Robert Cox who surely could not, save for causing him extreme offence, be associated with postmodernism yet he would likely share many of my criticisms, I think, with regard to the dangers of reification of objects of study (the state, human nature, etc.) and the strictures (and structures) of academic discipline that restrict the possibilities of knowledge production. One might legitimately disagree with him and all that he stands for but I don't think one can deny his rigour or the vitality of his thought, nor the space he holds open for critical thought. It was this sort of critical-ness I had in mind primarily.
By the way, I know Walt did not mention anything to do with 'critical' theory, I brought this up as a following-on point from my interpretation of Walt's comments, which I interpreted as relating to this point - and this I stand by.
I appreciate your candor, however.
To reiterate: my point (insofar as I intended to convey it) was that to reject in a somewhat ambiguous manner whole swathes of academic literature without naming any names (as your reply also fails to) is not only unhelpful vis-à-vis constructive debate but is in fact dangerous for academic freedom because it plays into the gaping jaws of an increasingly loud narrative which pronounces that the overarching structures of current political life are fine (even natural) and the only valid research paradigm addresses the production of ways of doing things within these wider structures.
In other words: "We've got the polity sorted, go make us some policy". ("Nothing to see here, move along!")
Given the economic, ecological and political problems that we all face, regardless of our nationality (it was this that perhaps irked me the most in Walt's post - the suggestion that academics owe a duty of deference to their nation rather than to their scholarship; this is a dangerous road), we have to consider that the things we take for granted might be involved inimically with the problems we actually face. Narrowly 'policy-oriented' research cannot address this kind of thing (not that such research is without value, of course - I do not believe this at all).
By way of rearguard defence: I would not by any means say that there are no articles published in decent journals that fall below standards I would consider acceptable. I simply consider it hysterical to suggest that this is some sort of cancer that can and must be removed; that there is 'good' research and 'bad' research and that someone (or anyone) should deem which is which so generally without giving good reasons as to why. I do not consider it the role of anyone - a nobody grad student like me or a well-known and respected, tenured, Ivy League professor like Walt - to say what is of value and what is not in such a sweeping manner (throwaway blog-post or not). Ascertaining the value of these things requires much more carefully defined terms and, dare I say it, more rigour.
There seems to be a number of issues that have become merged here and part of that might be my fault. There is a legitimate concern over excessive methodologism; I would accept that and see now that this is perhaps what others were getting at while I waxed tangential. On that I say this: it is important to be self-reflective on how academic knowledge is produced, surely no one would deny this, yet, I agree, in some quarters this becomes all encompassing and the Academy closes in on itself as the weight of its own intellectual circularity reaches a singularity at which point no life nor light escapes its pull (if you allow me the poetics - its late). This problem, if we accept for a moment that it is such a thing, cannot be addressed by wholesale rejection of nameless literatures.
I repeat the main point I was trying to make: I think this is, simply, dangerous. There are forces at work (not all that 'dark' perhaps but no less real or severe for their existing out in the open daylight) that are attempting and have attempted (with a lot of success, it must be said) to restrict the possibilities of academic knowledge production.
I am not a rudderless idealist when it comes to university life, as it happens. I wouldn't even accept that 'knowledge is a virtue in itself' - I just think that you can't always predict what will become valuable. I will defend to the comment word-limit, however, this assertion: universities should not be reduced to being simply and solely places for turning young people into economically utilisable units and turning unreflectively accumulated data into deferentially served-up policy for the same old ways of doing things. Prof. Walt would probably agree with this I'm sure. He just might not agree, and this is my point (if there actually was one after all this), that the manner of his post (I feel fairly silly for expending all this energy on one blog-post, but, alas, it is done) plays into this denigration of the institutionalised production of high-level, high value knowledge.
I do not think prof. Walt 'conservative' or even uncritical on the whole. He is a lone critical voice on a number of issues and I commend him for this and wish others had the same moral fibre. If I thought otherwise then I probably wouldn't read this blog. I just value academic freedom. And this is under threat. Plus it is, of course, possible to be refreshingly outspoken on, say, Middle Eastern politics and conservatively un-self-reflective on other issues such as, say, the historical contingency of realpolitik. But that's a whole other can of worms...
Bottom line(s): Even if there are some elements of academic research that wouldn't be missed if they disappeared, these cannot be fairly singled out as if they carried some distinguishing, essential feature; this kind of question is much to important to jump to such conclusions.
@Michael Dawson:
My point was hardly that everything published in academic social science journals today is hunky-dory (if you permit me the phrase), nor that there are not serious weaknesses across the (intellectual) board. I myself would not accept the familiar chant you adopt of 'po-mo must go!' as I find many of these theories, if engaged with, are very important; perplexing perhaps but then I get that when I read anything by a hardline rational choice theorist (no less taxing on the terminological front). That said, there is a fringe orthodoxy concerning this sort of (po-mo) work that is somewhat intellectually stagnant, but that's another matter.
In fairness while I did have the po-mo 'critical' brigade partly in mind when I wrote the above, the only name I made reference to was Robert Cox who surely could not, save for causing him extreme offence, be associated with postmodernism yet he would likely share many of my criticisms, I think, with regard to the dangers of reification of objects of study (the state, human nature, etc.) and the strictures (and structures) of academic discipline that restrict the possibilities of knowledge production. One might legitimately disagree with him and all that he stands for but I don't think one can deny his rigour or the vitality of his thought, nor the space he holds open for critical thought. It was this sort of critical-ness I had in mind primarily.
By the way, I know Walt did not mention anything to do with 'critical' theory, I brought this up as a following-on point from my interpretation of Walt's comments, which I interpreted as relating to this point - and this I stand by.
I appreciate your candor, however.
To reiterate: my point (insofar as I intended to convey it) was that to reject in a somewhat ambiguous manner whole swathes of academic literature without naming any names (as your reply also fails to) is not only unhelpful vis-à-vis constructive debate but is in fact dangerous for academic freedom because it plays into the gaping jaws of an increasingly loud narrative which pronounces that the overarching structures of current political life are fine (even natural) and the only valid research paradigm addresses the production of ways of doing things within these wider structures.
In other words: "We've got the polity sorted, go make us some policy". ("Nothing to see here, move along!")
Given the economic, ecological and political problems that we all face, regardless of our nationality (it was this that perhaps irked me the most in Walt's post - the suggestion that academics owe a duty of deference to their nation rather than to their scholarship; this is a dangerous road), we have to consider that the things we take for granted might be involved inimically with the problems we actually face. Narrowly 'policy-oriented' research cannot address this kind of thing (not that such research is without value, of course - I do not believe this at all).
By way of rearguard defence: I would not by any means say that there are no articles published in decent journals that fall below standards I would consider acceptable. I simply consider it hysterical to suggest that this is some sort of cancer that can and must be removed; that there is 'good' research and 'bad' research and that someone (or anyone) should deem which is which so generally without giving good reasons as to why. I do not consider it the role of anyone - a nobody grad student like me or a well-known and respected, tenured, Ivy League professor like Walt - to say what is of value and what is not in such a sweeping manner (throwaway blog-post or not). Ascertaining the value of these things requires much more carefully defined terms and, dare I say it, more rigour.
There seems to be a number of issues that have become merged here and part of that might be my fault. There is a legitimate concern over excessive methodologism; I would accept that and see now that this is perhaps what others were getting at while I waxed tangential. On that I say this: it is important to be self-reflective on how academic knowledge is produced, surely no one would deny this, yet, I agree, in some quarters this becomes all encompassing and the Academy closes in on itself as the weight of its own intellectual circularity reaches a singularity at which point no life nor light escapes its pull (if you allow me the poetics - its late). This problem, if we accept for a moment that it is such a thing, cannot be addressed by wholesale rejection of nameless literatures.
I repeat the main point I was trying to make: I think this is, simply, dangerous. There are forces at work (not all that 'dark' perhaps but no less real or severe for their existing out in the open daylight) that are attempting and have attempted (with a lot of success, it must be said) to restrict the possibilities of academic knowledge production.
I am not a rudderless idealist when it comes to university life, as it happens. I wouldn't even accept that 'knowledge is a virtue in itself' - I just think that you can't always predict what will become valuable. I will defend to the comment word-limit, however, this assertion: universities should not be reduced to being simply and solely places for turning young people into economically utilisable units and turning unreflectively accumulated data into deferentially served-up policy for the same old ways of doing things. Prof. Walt would probably agree with this I'm sure. He just might not agree, and this is my point (if there actually was one after all this), that the manner of his post (I feel fairly silly for expending all this energy on one blog-post, but, alas, it is done) plays into this denigration of the institutionalised production of high-level, high value knowledge.
I do not think prof. Walt 'conservative' or even uncritical on the whole. He is a lone critical voice on a number of issues and I commend him for this and wish others had the same moral fibre. If I thought otherwise then I probably wouldn't read this blog. I just value academic freedom. And this is under threat. Plus it is, of course, possible to be refreshingly outspoken on, say, Middle Eastern politics and conservatively un-self-reflective on other issues such as, say, the historical contingency of realpolitik. But that's a whole other can of worms...
Bottom line(s): Even if there are some elements of academic research that wouldn't be missed if they disappeared, these cannot be fairly singled out as if they carried some distinguishing, essential feature; this kind of question is much to important to jump to such conclusions.
Saturday, 12 December 2009
Response to Stephen Walt re: academic freedom
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/07/social_science_and_the_public_sphere
I can only respond to this argument with incredulity. I would very much like to hear from Prof. Walt (a) some examples of this pointless research he is so disapproving of and (b) a specific defence of just how Prof. Walt's research benefits his 'fellow citizens' in such obvious and complete ways that it goes without saying that his is of the 'good' kind that should be encouraged (and given more funding).
Here in Britain, the government's new research rules stipulate that 25% of all research funding for institutions will be assessed on the basis of its 'economic and social impact'. No one knows quite what that means; most agree it is a stupefyingly reactionary policy masquerading as 'common sense'. Everyone, from Nobel prize winning chemists to cultural studies professors are disgusted. It is a populist move born of total ignorance as to how research works right across the academy from physicists who never know which speculative, almost incomprehensible hypothesis will turn out to be valid in 25 or 50 years to the likes of political science where the most ostensibly 'practical' and 'policy relevant' research projects are actually the least 'political' because they invite little or no critical thinking as to the current state of affairs but take it either (a) as a permanent and unchanging, dare I say 'natural', situation (I'm looking at the so called 'realists' and their crippling ahistoricism here, and that means you too Walt!) or (b) as something which it is not the place of academia to criticise - that is to say, that the study of politics should not be political.
Nobody wants to see universities churning out pointless, introverted, apolitical research but where exactly is this research? If anyone can point to the research that actually deserves this label I will gladly join the chorus (I'll sing tenor), however I think that this sweeping characterisation, without putting too fine a point on it, is hasty, overbearing and, frankly, rude.
It is difficult to argue against Prof. Walt's argument seeing as he doesn't specify any research in particular that is of this meaningless 'ivory tower-ish' quality, however I suspect that those studies against which his populist, common-sensical broadside is directed are of the self-styled 'critical' sort that, I believe quite rightly, refuses to engage with the 'cult of relevance' because they wish to place the state of polity (and the polity of the state) under scrutiny - i.e. they do not take for granted that the problems we face as humans (rather than citizens and patriots as Walt's argument seems to suggest) are born of a lack of, in Robert Cox's terms, 'problem solving knowledge' - they do not assume that political problems can be solved by qualitatively 'better' knowledge which can be simply operationalised within existing political structures. Instead they stress the importance of of 'critical knowledge' - that is, knowledge that challenges the way policy is made and the environment in which it is enacted not just what policy is in this extremely narrow sense implied by the call for 'policy relevance'.
In short, from what is an obviously (and this is not a criticism as such - I am aware this is a blogpost not a journal article but Walt does have form on this sort of argument...) thinly argued and sparsely articulated pronouncement it is difficult to mount a concerted and articulate reply, however, my opinion (for what it is worth) can be summed up thusly:
(a) I do not believe that there is a great deal of literature that conforms to the stereotype Walt articulates here. I especially do not believe that there is a great deal of this literature published in mainstream U.S. international relations journals.
(b) I believe that these disapproving broadsides against certain kinds of ('critical' rather than 'problem solving') scholarship emerge from an intellectually conservative, establishmentarian position that Prof. Walt himself occupies. It is primarily an argument that seeks to enclose legitimate debate within a sphere of comfort for such conservative points of view. It is a move that seeks to exclude alternative points of view simply because their conclusions are not directly and unproblematically applicable to present polity. It therefore valorises and naturalises present polity as the only possible political structure. Now, to argue for this permanent perfectionalism is one thing (and I would be interested to engage positively in this debate), however to dismiss all those who argue against this political articulation because they are, simply, 'irrelevant' to its own ways of functioning is quite another.
That said, I do not dispute that there are serious weaknesses in many areas of contemporary scholarship, particularly in IR. As it happens, I would locate the position Prof. Walt occupies among those weak positions along with, chances are, many of the positions taken up by those researchers Prof. Walt has deemed 'irrelevant'. I am an equal opportunities critic.
Of course, I should stress again that I am aware that this is a blogpost and academic rigour is in this sense unnecessary. However, as I said before, Prof. Walt has form on this sort of argument and it is an argument that is gathering pace on this side of the Atlantic precisely because of its populist, common-sensical (yet covertly ignorant and establishmentarian) appeal. I would gladly engage with this sort of argument in a sustained and coherent way.
I must, therefore, (again, for what little it is worth) respectfully but totally refute the claims made in the above blogpost as reactionary, conservative and posing a serious threat to the possibility of diversity within academia at present.
I can only respond to this argument with incredulity. I would very much like to hear from Prof. Walt (a) some examples of this pointless research he is so disapproving of and (b) a specific defence of just how Prof. Walt's research benefits his 'fellow citizens' in such obvious and complete ways that it goes without saying that his is of the 'good' kind that should be encouraged (and given more funding).
Here in Britain, the government's new research rules stipulate that 25% of all research funding for institutions will be assessed on the basis of its 'economic and social impact'. No one knows quite what that means; most agree it is a stupefyingly reactionary policy masquerading as 'common sense'. Everyone, from Nobel prize winning chemists to cultural studies professors are disgusted. It is a populist move born of total ignorance as to how research works right across the academy from physicists who never know which speculative, almost incomprehensible hypothesis will turn out to be valid in 25 or 50 years to the likes of political science where the most ostensibly 'practical' and 'policy relevant' research projects are actually the least 'political' because they invite little or no critical thinking as to the current state of affairs but take it either (a) as a permanent and unchanging, dare I say 'natural', situation (I'm looking at the so called 'realists' and their crippling ahistoricism here, and that means you too Walt!) or (b) as something which it is not the place of academia to criticise - that is to say, that the study of politics should not be political.
Nobody wants to see universities churning out pointless, introverted, apolitical research but where exactly is this research? If anyone can point to the research that actually deserves this label I will gladly join the chorus (I'll sing tenor), however I think that this sweeping characterisation, without putting too fine a point on it, is hasty, overbearing and, frankly, rude.
It is difficult to argue against Prof. Walt's argument seeing as he doesn't specify any research in particular that is of this meaningless 'ivory tower-ish' quality, however I suspect that those studies against which his populist, common-sensical broadside is directed are of the self-styled 'critical' sort that, I believe quite rightly, refuses to engage with the 'cult of relevance' because they wish to place the state of polity (and the polity of the state) under scrutiny - i.e. they do not take for granted that the problems we face as humans (rather than citizens and patriots as Walt's argument seems to suggest) are born of a lack of, in Robert Cox's terms, 'problem solving knowledge' - they do not assume that political problems can be solved by qualitatively 'better' knowledge which can be simply operationalised within existing political structures. Instead they stress the importance of of 'critical knowledge' - that is, knowledge that challenges the way policy is made and the environment in which it is enacted not just what policy is in this extremely narrow sense implied by the call for 'policy relevance'.
In short, from what is an obviously (and this is not a criticism as such - I am aware this is a blogpost not a journal article but Walt does have form on this sort of argument...) thinly argued and sparsely articulated pronouncement it is difficult to mount a concerted and articulate reply, however, my opinion (for what it is worth) can be summed up thusly:
(a) I do not believe that there is a great deal of literature that conforms to the stereotype Walt articulates here. I especially do not believe that there is a great deal of this literature published in mainstream U.S. international relations journals.
(b) I believe that these disapproving broadsides against certain kinds of ('critical' rather than 'problem solving') scholarship emerge from an intellectually conservative, establishmentarian position that Prof. Walt himself occupies. It is primarily an argument that seeks to enclose legitimate debate within a sphere of comfort for such conservative points of view. It is a move that seeks to exclude alternative points of view simply because their conclusions are not directly and unproblematically applicable to present polity. It therefore valorises and naturalises present polity as the only possible political structure. Now, to argue for this permanent perfectionalism is one thing (and I would be interested to engage positively in this debate), however to dismiss all those who argue against this political articulation because they are, simply, 'irrelevant' to its own ways of functioning is quite another.
That said, I do not dispute that there are serious weaknesses in many areas of contemporary scholarship, particularly in IR. As it happens, I would locate the position Prof. Walt occupies among those weak positions along with, chances are, many of the positions taken up by those researchers Prof. Walt has deemed 'irrelevant'. I am an equal opportunities critic.
Of course, I should stress again that I am aware that this is a blogpost and academic rigour is in this sense unnecessary. However, as I said before, Prof. Walt has form on this sort of argument and it is an argument that is gathering pace on this side of the Atlantic precisely because of its populist, common-sensical (yet covertly ignorant and establishmentarian) appeal. I would gladly engage with this sort of argument in a sustained and coherent way.
I must, therefore, (again, for what little it is worth) respectfully but totally refute the claims made in the above blogpost as reactionary, conservative and posing a serious threat to the possibility of diversity within academia at present.
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