The Humanities Filter Bubble?

Not long ago, I posted an innocent question to Twitter about "alternative academics."

Wondering if #altac is most relevant to humanities PhDs. In many other fields, these are simply jobs, not alternatives to something.
— Kevin R. McClure (@kevinrmcclure) May 30, 2014

I have continued to think about this question, particularly in the context of online writing on the academic job market and higher education journalism more generally.

There has been an efflorescence of online writing, it seems, about the academic job market, especially since The Chronicle of Higher Education launched their new jobs site, Vitae. The news and advice columns in Vitae represent but one part of a large body of journalistic work related to the state of higher education. Many journalists are tackling tuition increases that outpace inflation and skyrocketing student loan debt. They are taking on President Obama's proposed rating system and sexual assaults on campus. In general, all of this writing is a good thing. It demystifies, at least to some extent, the academic job market and highlights crucial issues that demand public attention and conversation.

Not all of these articles are written by "traditional" journalists. Many of them, in fact, are PhDs who have found a way to cobble together a paying gig out of their highly developed analysis skills and experiences in higher education. Based on a remarkably unscientific scan, many of these writers come from the humanities. There are several reasons this could be the case. First, the humanities prioritize the ability to craft strong narratives, meaning those trained as scholars in these fields are more than capable of churning out cohesive, well-articulated essays. Second, I have gathered that there are more humanities PhD graduates than available academic jobs, creating a pool of people seeking work outside of academe that recognizes their unique skills.

Many of these writers have strong opinions about academe. This is refreshing in most cases, as many people working in higher education need a wake up call. I love reading the pieces they produce because they often have a deep-rooted sense of social justice. However, their writing also raises questions about the existence of a humanities filter bubble, of sorts. (I qualify this because the original concept of a filter bubble was based upon a computer algorithm that cuts out of view disagreeable things. I recognize it's an imperfect concept for what I'm arguing here). A filter bubble in which the major issues of higher education are described and assessed through the lens of humanists. If a large amount of writing about finding a professorship comes from humanists who struggled on the job market, for example, is the picture unduly informed by their discipline-based experience? Are certain issues ignored and others given greater attention simply because they are most related to the humanities? Are we missing important voices and perspectives?

I don't have answers to these questions. Thus, this post is largely speculative. I may not be tapped into circles of writers coming from other disciplines. I'm not at all suggesting here that humanists stop writing about higher education issues. I hope they continue their good work. Rather, for the sake of balance, I would like to see more writing from people in other fields. More scientists, clinicians, educationists, engineers, and artists.

I would love to hear from writers about this idea. Is there a humanities filter bubble in online writing on the academic job market and higher education?

Round One with the Tenure Monkey

As a graduate student, publishing was a relatively painless process for me. I typically cleaned up a paper I wrote for a class and submitted it to a decent journal in my field or to an online publication. I avoided the top journals, recognizing that my papers were often glorified literature reviews. I didn’t get nervous about sending anything in because the stakes were low. I had no idea at the time that I was going to become an academic, so a rejection did not much matter to me. In fact, I expected rejection on some level. When it worked out, I was, naturally, thrilled. When it didn’t, I simply shrugged and kept moving.

A few months ago, I found myself finished with graduate work and restless. I felt the need to do something--to fill the void left by my finished dissertation. Although I had been advised to set my dissertation aside, I pulled out a chapter and started cutting and pasting pieces together. I rewrote a few sections to ensure it was cohesive, but this was, I admit, largely a recycle job. The result, I thought, was a decent paper. Certainly not groundbreaking work, but it was a newer topic in the field. Unlike my class papers, it actually featured data that I collected and analyzed. With this in mind, I sent it in to a top journal.

In some ways, my approach to publishing this paper was nothing new. It might be captured in the rhetorical question, “Why not?” However, part of what compelled me to even open my dissertation was the desire to begin a pipeline of publications as I entered my first year as an assistant professor. Assuming that I would have little time to write in the coming months, I figured I would have a few pieces under consideration before I even started. This was a strategic decision, but it was not particularly thoughtful. It was predicated on the idea that my dissertation work was ready for publication. In reality, it needs a great deal more refinement. I succumbed to the “publish or perish” mantra before even starting the job.

This week, I received word that my paper didn’t even make it beyond the editorial review. I was shocked. While I had certainly experienced rejection, I couldn’t believe that my paper was so bad that it wouldn’t be sent to external reviewers. The email from the editor was polite and encouraged me to consider other journals, but provided no other feedback. I immediately opened my paper and re-read what I submitted. Using 20-20 hindsight lenses, I noticed a few weaknesses, but was still somewhat perplexed. Was I aiming too high in submitting to a top journal? Is this topic now old news? Should I simply get over myself and realize that rejection is part of the game?

I thanked the editor and shared the news with a few friends and mentors. They told me that this happens to everyone. Some people don’t bat an eyelash, tweak a few minor things, and quickly submit their rejected paper to another journal. Some people ask colleagues to make suggestions, before trying again. My strategy is to take some time to think more carefully about how to best transform my dissertation from a 300-page graduation requirement into a true piece of scholarship. In the meantime, nevertheless, the experience has sparked a fair measure of reflection.

One of the ideas that I have repeatedly mulled over is that, as a graduate student, I wrote with a certain degree of bravado. I was not particularly worried about how the paper would be received by the sages of my discipline because it only had to be good enough to pass a course. As a result of this perhaps foolish air of invincibility, my writing was good. I went back and read a few old papers and was shocked by how well the narrative flowed and how convincingly I presented arguments that I wouldn’t dare vocalize today. There was an edge to my work--an edge that came with the liberty of writing without overthinking a topic or torturing each sentence. I came to realize how vital that edge can be.

Einstein ardently believed that individual liberty was the cornerstone of creativity. He constantly rebelled against convention and noted that God’s punishment was to make him an authority later in life. He was painfully aware of the fact that, as he became more rooted in the comforts of being a celebrity academic, he was less able to entertain new theories of physics. He lost some of his revolutionary spirit and he knew it.

Throughout the past week, I have not reached the conclusion that my creativity has run dry. I’m certainly not an authority on much of anything, nor do I regularly compare myself to Einstein. However, I have been reminded of how important it will be to protect that sense of edge and not let the tenure monkey steer my thinking and writing.  If I publish simply to publish, I may not perish on the tenure track, but I certainly won't have much fun.

Not A Journalist, Not An Academic, But A 'Journademic'

I shared an article on my Twitter feed today whose title alone seems to have struck a chord. Whereas most of the articles I retweet seemingly receive little attention, this one resulted in a string of new followers. It was called “Why Academics Need to Think Like Journalists.” It’s a simple piece that, upon further inspection, seems to be a sales pitch for a service to help academics reach “influential audiences.” The few tips it provides were not particularly helpful to me, but the article lingered in my mind all day.

It’s not that I disagree with the article’s basic premise. Pushing academics to write for real people and come up with sexy titles is great. Many of us are very much attempting to insert ourselves in the “social story.” We recognize that certain academic publications do more to pad our CVs and fill dusty bookcases than influence public opinion through compelling narratives. Perhaps it is true that not enough of us think this way, but the reward structure, as it currently stands, makes thinking like a journalist a luxury. Nevertheless, your call to action is right on target. But what if, wise journalists, the spotlight it similarly directed in your direction? 

   

Journalists, it seems to me, could learn a thing or two from academics. Unlike journalists, academics constantly ask: How do we know what we think we know? We are steadfast in our convictions yet work to ensure that our claims can be supported with rigorous research. Without belittling the power of individual experience, we question the application of a single observation to a larger population. When we as academics get something wrong, there can be significant consequences. I wish I kept a running count of how many online articles from journalists have completely misrepresented issues in higher education finance. But it doesn’t seem to matter: the article gets clicks, the comments section fills with heated debates, and the journalist moves on to the next story.

And let’s not forget a final but crucially important point missing in this conversation. Whether or not a piece of scholarship is read or immediately understood by the public is not, by itself, a metric of quality. When Einstein’s theory of general relativity was confirmed with experimental data, there was phenomenal press coverage. Very few people understood the theory, and many journalists blatantly mocked its abstruse language and equations. Einstein wrote a book that was designed to explain his work in more accessible language, but he struggled to respond to a litany of journalists begging him to sum up his theory in a sentence. While I agree that academics publishing work that never reaches the hands of those who most need it makes little sense, we must also admit that there is intrinsic value in producing knowledge, irrespective of the medium through which it is ultimately communicated.

What I would like to see even more than academics thinking like journalists and journalists thinking like academics is something closer to a true a hybrid. A journademic, if you will. This is not entirely invented out of thin air. I’m inspired by writers like Ida Tarbell, who wrote extensive, painstakingly researched pieces for McClure’s Magazine (no relation). Along with writers like Ray Stannard Baker and Lincoln Steffens, Tarbell helped invent investigative journalism and took on major issues of the day, including wealth inequality and corruption. I’ve been encouraged to see long form journalism become marginally popular again, after years of listicles and, ironically, blog posts. However, I would love to see a whole movement of hybrids arise, channeling the muckracker spirit.

The ingredients for this movement are already sprouting. There is a growing population of people who are trained as researchers yet find little enticing or attractive about traditional academe, with all its exclusivity, competition, and bickering. And there are those who have PhDs that, due to a range of structural problems and through no fault of their own, could not find steady employment as professors upon graduation. Although some people do not believe “alt-ac” (short for alternative academic) is a solution to these structural problems, there is reason to be optimistic about the potential of people who can write fantastically well, are sensitive to social justice concerns, and approach problems with the conceptual vocabulary and methodological maturity of an academic.

What we need now are courageous publications and organizations who are willing to fund journademics. If academe is too rooted in the status quo and journalism is beholden to clicks and thinly disguised product placements, how can we promote writing at the intersections? I’m short on answers, but hopeful that such platforms exist and will readily support any that emerge.