Main Menu · Search ·Current Issue ·Contact ·Archives ·Centennial ·Letters to the Editor ·FAQs
Why do some academics--especially untenured academics--choose not to address themselves to you, the readers of this magazine, one of the best audiences in the world? Zachary Karabell, Ph.D. '96, has taught at Harvard and Dartmouth, but now lives in New York City, where he writes essays and reviews for various publications. In his new book, What's College For? The Struggle to Define American Higher Education (Basic Books, $24), he explains: "Scholarship is narrowly defined. It looks a certain way, and each field develops its own definitions of good scholarship."
|
The narrow definition of scholarship excludes many types of writing. For instance, in history, an article in the American Historical Review or a book published by Harvard University Press is an important credential for tenure. But an article in Harper's magazine or a book published by a commercial publisher is not. The first two are peer-reviewed scholarly publishers, the latter are more commercial and are directed at the general reader. At a conference held at the University of Chicago in the spring of 1997, several professors scoffed at the notion of writing for "glossy magazines" or commercial publishers. What can be found there isn't scholarship, they said; it's popularized, oversimplified pap. As one presenter said of academics as opposed to journalists, "We are not in the gist business."
If a young professor were to spend her time writing for a local newspaper about some pressing community issue, or another were to take his time to explain to Washington politicians why the cold war is not a good paradigm for military spending today, they might be doing society either much harm or much good. In neither case would those activities count in their favor in the decision to grant tenure. Scholarship is defined by academics as something different from a rigorous essay in The New Yorker or an impassioned op-ed in a local paper. Here again, academic freedom is a much more limited concept than it at first appears to be.
It is true, as [one full professor] said, that once you earn tenure, you have your guild card and can then do what you want. But it is a rare individual who can cleave closely to a restrictive set of norms for fifteen years of graduate school and assistant professorship without internalizing those norms. By the time the tenured professor has passed through all the necessary hoops, he will probably adhere closely to those norms for the rest of his life.