On “public scholarship”: 5 unsolicited axioms
Miscellaneous thoughts on scholars reaching wider audiences
“Public scholarship” is a bit of a buzzy term in higher ed right now. You’ll find regular essays about it in the Chronicle of Higher Education. You’ll find disciplinary discussions, such as the American Philosophy Association’s “Public Philosophy” hub and the American Academy of Religion’s grants for public scholarship. Last night, the faculty senate meeting at my own university included yet another “generative discussion” about public scholarship and why it should be important.
Our local discussion at my university was catalyzed by a short essay that framed “public” scholarship, I would say, almost entirely in marketing terms, encouraging scholars to cultivate a “brand” and build a platform, mostly (it seemed) by spending a lot of time on social media [barf].1
Suffice it to stay that I’m not sanguine about framing “public scholarship” in these terms. It seems mostly focused on dissemination channels, chasing virality and attention. Encouraging scholars to participate in a capitalized economy of attention-seeking, in a social media ecosystem that only further compromises our ability to actually reflect and think, does not seem like constructive way to think about public scholarship.2
I can imagine all kinds of fruitful versions of public scholarship, and I don’t think we need to settle on some ideal model or rationale or even definition. As a working assumption, let’s just say that “public scholarship” is comprised of strategies for the fruit of scholarly labor to reach wider audiences and have some input and impact outside of the narrow specialities of the academic guild. The “public” scholar writes3 for some public(s) beyond the narrow public that is one’s discipline (and likely specialized, sub-discipline)—all the other “experts.”
Elsewhere, I have variously described such work as “outreach” scholarship or “translation” scholarship insofar as the goal is to find ways for specialized, disciplinary insights to “hit the [existential] ground” for communities beyond the academy. Fortunately, my own university’s “Expanded Statement of Mission” has long recognized both “advanced” scholarship and “applied” scholarship as scholarly endeavors that are equally incentivized, celebrated, and rewarded. It’s one of the reasons I have been grateful to be part of such a liberal arts context with a thick sense of its obligation to constituencies beyond the academy. (At our best, I think we operate as a “think tank” for the church—if the church will have us.)
Our local conversation about these matters at last night’s faculty senate meeting, as well as some recent conversations with younger colleagues, got me thinking about some of my own working principles for approaching public scholarship. For what it’s worth, in no particular order (and these points are kind of inter-twined as I see them), here are five:
Public scholarship is not the same as punditry. The great temptation, I think, is for scholars to be lured into simply becoming commentators on the outrage du jour. What our media ecosystem wants is zingers and soundbites. Scholars are generally smart people, with no lack of opinions, with the added patina of credentials and expertise. We’d also like to sell a few more books. So when we’re invited to play this role, it’s tempting. But I worry that the very habits of mind required for such forays into The Discourse compromise what is most germane to being scholars. Being careful, diligent, making appropriate qualifications, attending to potential counter-arguments, etc.—all the features of what make academia seem “boring”—are squashed by the shrill confidence of the Twitterverse and the clipped timeframes of talking-head-world. If you start to spend all of your time in that world, your habits of mind are not immune to co-option and, before you know it, you’re no longer a scholar; you’re just an opinion-offerer, an op-ed machine.
Don’t neglect basic research. I think being a public scholar is looking for opportunities—I might even say a “calling”—where the integrity of your own research program and expertise intersect with, and serve, a wider world. In other words: the public scholar should not let the chase for wider attention become the deciding factor for how they will spend their scholarly energies. In short: don’t let your research program be driven by “relevance.” Start by assuming the world doesn’t care about the questions, problems, and topics that fascinate you. Pursue them anyway, and then wait and see if, in fact, it turns out your neighbors start asking questions you’ve been asking for years.
WAIT. Start late. I literally thank God that Twitter didn’t exist when I was in grad school in the 90s. I can imagine being suckered into the thrill of immediate gratification that comes with participation in The Discourse as a young academic. My advice to others today is to live as if social media didn’t exist and not get distracted by public scholarship in the first decade of your career. Earn your stripes in your disciplines. Dot the i’s and cross the t’s of your narrow field of expertise. Publish in the arcane, specialized journals where 7 other people will read what you’ve contributed—those 7 people are important for the conversation you’re in. Earn tenure and establish yourself in a field. In doing so, you will be learning crucial disciplines that will contribute to the formation of “habits of mind” that will also make you someone who can make genuine, original contributions to public reflection beyond the academy. You will also be earning a certain kind of authority that is more portable than you might guess.
Public scholarship is not synonymous with brand cultivation or platform building. Perhaps this is a way of saying the significance of public scholarship is not measured by scope or scale. But what I think I mean, more specifically, is that public scholarship should not be driven by trying to secure a certain kind of fame.4 I think public scholarship should be measured in terms of quality and depth of impact rather than superficial reach and awareness. My point here might either be naive or elitist, but if the scholar’s “day job” does anything, it should at least liberate us from the rat race of “building a platform” as if our lives depended on it.
Lots of good public scholarship is relatively invisible. To state the obvious: there is all kinds of important work of public scholarship that doesn’t register on social media. And not all public scholarship looks like publication in notable newspapers and magazines. This is because there are many publics. What are your publics? It might be a local housing authority; it could be a local church. You might teach Sunday school. You might write a short essay for a trade magazine or give a talk to a local history club. You might speak at a local chapter of the Urban League and completely revitalize how people see themselves and their neighborhood. Don’t confuse “public scholarship” with notoriety or the scale of your contribution. Just put your scholarly gifts and expertise on offer—and at the service of—the “little platoons” where you find yourself. Sometimes the best public scholarship is diaconal.
Were there no public scholars before social media?
My first Substack post explains, in this regard, why I dropped out of The Discourse and social media ecosystem.
I say “writes,” and will probably privilege writing/publishing as a mode of outreach in what follows, but I would say writing is only one mode of engaging wider publics. When my colleagues in astronomy invites elementary school children into the observatory, that, too, is a kind of “public” scholarship (or perhaps we might say public “teaching?”).
For my Augustinian take on the complexities of “fame,” see my chapter on “Ambition” in On the Road with Saint Augustine.