How do we relate to people of historical import? How do we think of people like Einstein, Darwin, Beethoven, Picasso, Kant, etc? We learn about them mostly in school, as The Inventor of Such & Such or The Person Who Innovated Some Such Thing, and I think that this portrayal often gives rise to the perception of a dichotomy between the geniuses of the past, and the normal everyday people that we see all around us (and even within us) in the present. However, there was of course a time when those people were present, not yet the great monoliths of the past. So what would they have looked like in the present, would they already have appeared as these monolithic figures, radically different in kind from the people around them? I suspect not.
In my undergraduate days, I was lucky to learn about Kant (and others of his era) from a professor who was well versed not only in their ideas, but also seemingly in all of the juicy gossip of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, specifically in Germany. There was something very humanizing about learning that Kant had not only overturned the debate between rationalism and empiricism, but that he was a man who very punctually took walks at the same time each day, along the same route. In fact, it's said that the people of Königsberg sometimes actually set their watches to the walks of Immanuel. If you have a penchant for good wine, he was also a good ally to have, as he is reputed to have had a cellar constantly stocked with fine vintages. These kinds of things serve to put human flesh on his superhuman historic bones. He was not just the man who revolutionized the way that we look at philosophy, he was also a man who enjoyed good drink, but was very much a rule-follower (that's in his philosophy too, by the way) and a bit of stickler.
If I remember correctly, there is also a nice exchange between Hegel and Schelling. They are two figures that also loom large in the history of philosophy, and in fact were roommates in graduate school. After some time, though, there was a terrible falling out between them and they came to hate each other. At a conference some years later, the two were put up at the same hotel, and were in fact staying in rooms just down the hall from one another. Schelling staggered back from the conference drunk as a sailor only to find himself entering the wrong room at the hotel. Whose room should he stumble into, of course, but Hegel's, the latter actually in the bath at the time. These two enemies finally meeting face to face, there was nothing to do but have a drink (academics will recognize that kind of behaviour). Through the night they drank and talked, and the next morning, surely through some grueling hangovers, each wrote a letter home to his wife. Schelling wrote about how he was so happy to have seen Hegel, and really in the end Schelling thought that he had misjudged him. Hegel wrote to his wife that he'd run into that old scoundrel Schelling, who was still the same arrogant and ignorant ass that he'd ever been.
The purpose of these stories is to show that this great figures from history that we learn about are in fact people. Often, they are very quirky people, and I find stories about them fascinating and fun because they contrast so starkly with the ascetic picture of such geniuses that we normally get. I had a similar experience in my own life while attending a talk in the philosophy department with my undergraduate mentor, a man whom I greatly idolize for his intelligence, kindness, generosity intellectual and otherwise, etc. When the talk concluded we walked out the door together, and he turned to me and said, "I really just couldn't focus at all on that talk, and didn't follow half of what she said." I was completely floored that this pillar of intelligence before me couldn't command his attention with omnipotence. He, too, struggled to stay focused sometimes... just like the rest of us. That was an experience that marked me profoundly.
I think that it's easy for some Montrealers to forget that McGill is a world-renowned institution. Certainly it was for me while I was growing up, and while I was going through myself. After all, it was the neighbourhood school, almost every adult in my life had gone there. My mother went there, as did my uncle, my aunt, all of their friends, etc. (My father was educated in Germany before he emigrated to Canada.) It was really only in my last year at McGill that it started to dawn on me that it was more than just the school down the road. And it was only when I left Montreal to go to graduate school that it hit me full force: people were shocked that I'd gone to a Big School like McGill. (Part of me wonders whether they were shocked that I had gone to McGill, or that I had gone to McGill.) It's a pretty impressive school, I'm starting to realize, and I once commented to my mentor that I wondered who around me would be a big deal later on in life, who would go on to do something really important and impressive. After all, plenty of important things have happened at McGill, or been done by its students later on down the line. My mentor responded, "Yes, there's probably at least one person in your crowd who will really make an impact. What if it were you?" I was not ready to hear that.
I started off this post wondering aloud (or rather, asilent but atype and apublic) about how we related to the great figures of the past, but really what I was hoping to bring out is the character of great people in general, including in the present. I think that the great dichotomy between Geniuses and the rest (we get no uppercase letters, of course) is unhelpful, both because it places unrealistic expectations on us if we wish to do something really important, and also because such unrealistically stringent criteria for excellence make it too easy to excuse not striving to be so.
Sadly I have only a few parting words for you on the subject of identifying genius. It seems to come with practice, though. The more you learn about geniuses, the more I think it becomes easier to identify them. But here are three features that come to mind when I think about genii.
First, they're game changers—people who see things going on around them working in a few different ways, identify the presuppositions that underlie all of those ways, and question them. Copernicus hypothesized that maybe we were looking at things all wrong by assuming that the Earth had to be the stable point around which the universe rotated. Kant put aside the assumed independence of mind and object that underlies both rationalism and empiricism.
Second, in order to recognize those presuppositions, geniuses would seem to need a pretty good synoptic view of their field. ("Field," in this instance, is used very broadly.) It's only given such a synoptic view, such a comprehensive appreciation for different stances, that one can identify a common feature that underlies them all. If you want to question fundamental assumptions, you need first to identify them, and that requires a broad grasp of your topic. (Note that this kind of synoptic view is exactly the kind of thing away from which our higher education pushes us, as graduate programs are pared down further and further, streamlined to get people through as quickly and efficiently as possible. If I'm right about genius requiring a synoptic view, that does not suggest that we're entering much of a golden age for genius, or at least not that post-graduate education is the way there.)
Third, it requires dedication. My grandfather always used to say that genius was 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration, and from what I've learned about the great people of our past, he was right: they worked like dogs.
So if you want to find a genius, just keep your eyes open for someone who's got a really broad view of their field, on the basis of that view asks questions radically different than the mainstream (specifically ones that question presuppositions underlying the very positions of the mainstream), and works like hell to find answers. Of course, identifying and challenging former presuppositions does not necessarily give you much direction, seeing what may not have worked in the past probably doesn't give you enough information to know which avenue to take up instead in moving forward. Perhaps that's inspiration, and of that I know nothing at all, so I will say no more.
Monday 25 June 2012
Saturday 16 June 2012
Quite Depressing, 30s'-style
I've recently been doing something that I had hoped I might never do: start reading a lot about politics. I've also been reading quite a bit about history (though I don't think I ever had an aversion to that), specifically Canadian history. In today's post, I want to talk a little bit about some parallels between what I've been reading about Canada's path through the Great Depression and the politics that we're seeing now. Is this alarmist? Probably so in other hands, but I don't mean it that way. What I mean to do is just like at the political climate of the Depression in Canada and pick out a couple of features that we should watch for, signs of trouble. I also think that we can easily recognize those signs in our present situation. However, where I wish to break off from the more alarmist line is to say that these signs are probably present in varying degrees in all societies, and that it's not their presence that we need to keep our eyes on, but rather their intensity. So, on with the task.
According my appalling interpretation of history, there were two watchwords that defined the response by the Canadian government to the Depression: order, and balanced budget. These two were prized above everything. When municipalities across this country begged the federal government for relief money, the feds simply responded that there wasn't money for that sort of thing, that the budget couldn't withstand borrowing substantial sums of money (which is of course exactly what they did in 1939, and I can't imagine the national economy was in better shape after 10 years of depression than it was after five, say); lastly, they said that aid to the citizenry was a municipal matter anyway and so the feds refused to take any responsibility for it. One particularly telling tale is that of a group of unemployed Vancouver men who occupied a post office in the city in protest. They were perfectly peaceful and actually allowed people to go about their business, but refused to leave. (The society embraced these men, by the way, sending them food, baked goods and coffee to keep their spirits up throughout the occupation. The common man certainly felt this action was warranted.) Eventually, the mayor of Vancouver decided that he'd had enough and sent the police to break up the occupation. The leader of the occupiers spoke with the head policeman on the scene, and agreed that the occupiers would leave peaceably if they were to be arrested and charged. However, the police were given specific orders not to arrest them, as to put them in jail and feed them would cost money. Rather, the occupiers were simply to be turned out. This was unacceptable to the occupiers, and when they were told that the government had heard their message loud and clear, and that they should go home, to which the occupiers respond that if they had homes to go back to, they wouldn't be there.
The point that I wish to draw here is that the government simply refused any responsibility for and refused to do anything about the social problems in its country. As long as the people were kept in line, often by violence, and even more often by laws that muzzled rational discourse and backed up by the threat of violence, then all was well. The Padlock Law in Quebec was just such a law: it allowed the police to padlock the home or business of anyone found to be in possession of or distributing communist material, or furthering communist ideas. The law of course also applied to anyone found to be aiding anyone in such pursuits. It wasn't applied very often: it didn't need to be, as the threat of its application was sufficient. The definition of communism in the law, you ask? None given, as "any definition would prevent application of the law." (Those are the words of Maurice Duplessis, by the way.) Similarly unjust laws were passed in Alberta, where Aberhardt tried to annex the banks into the provincial government. However, that legislation was handily struck down, and one may venture the suggestion that perhaps a rich banker has more sway in society than does a "communist," though that term was applied broadly to say the least.
So, that's just a little taste of what the Great Depression held in store for Canadians. Let's look at the contemporary Canadian landscape a wee bit. Fortunately, the Canadian government hasn't made it very difficult for us to find parallels, and they even come nicely identified with numbers: C-10 and C-38. C-10 is the omnibus crime bill, which would make our criminal laws much harsher in this country. Many have condemned C-10 as approaching the model of American criminal law, when even the Americans have been saying lately that the plan didn't work out as they'd hoped. C-38 is the looming bit of "budget" legislation. I use scare quotes when referring to it as a budget because the only thread that ties the whole 420-page bill together is that each of its issues in some way addresses Canada's deficit situation. I think that these two bills correspond to the two Depression watchwords: C-10 shows the emphasis on maintaining order in society, despite the costs that such a criminal policy has been shown to have in the United States (but after all, who was going to fill all of our brand new prisons without C-10?); C-38 shows the use of economic matters to avoid facing up to important issues, such as the state of our democracy. The opposition parties submitted over 1 000 amendments to the bill, of which over 800 were accepted for voting by the speaker, who organized them into over 150 separate votes in Parliament. Not one was accepted by the majority Conservative government. Not a bloody one. They also wouldn't go along with the suggestion that this bill was too disparate, and should be broken up into chunks for separate debate.
The Depression-era Canadian government was fascist. It was a police state that used the budget to justify anything and everything, and used unjust laws and police violence to suppress any dissension. With C-10 and C-38 at the federal level, with Bill 78 and the police brutality we've seen come out of Quebec, it seems like we should be keeping a sharp eye on this situation. It's getting pretty bad up here.
According my appalling interpretation of history, there were two watchwords that defined the response by the Canadian government to the Depression: order, and balanced budget. These two were prized above everything. When municipalities across this country begged the federal government for relief money, the feds simply responded that there wasn't money for that sort of thing, that the budget couldn't withstand borrowing substantial sums of money (which is of course exactly what they did in 1939, and I can't imagine the national economy was in better shape after 10 years of depression than it was after five, say); lastly, they said that aid to the citizenry was a municipal matter anyway and so the feds refused to take any responsibility for it. One particularly telling tale is that of a group of unemployed Vancouver men who occupied a post office in the city in protest. They were perfectly peaceful and actually allowed people to go about their business, but refused to leave. (The society embraced these men, by the way, sending them food, baked goods and coffee to keep their spirits up throughout the occupation. The common man certainly felt this action was warranted.) Eventually, the mayor of Vancouver decided that he'd had enough and sent the police to break up the occupation. The leader of the occupiers spoke with the head policeman on the scene, and agreed that the occupiers would leave peaceably if they were to be arrested and charged. However, the police were given specific orders not to arrest them, as to put them in jail and feed them would cost money. Rather, the occupiers were simply to be turned out. This was unacceptable to the occupiers, and when they were told that the government had heard their message loud and clear, and that they should go home, to which the occupiers respond that if they had homes to go back to, they wouldn't be there.
The point that I wish to draw here is that the government simply refused any responsibility for and refused to do anything about the social problems in its country. As long as the people were kept in line, often by violence, and even more often by laws that muzzled rational discourse and backed up by the threat of violence, then all was well. The Padlock Law in Quebec was just such a law: it allowed the police to padlock the home or business of anyone found to be in possession of or distributing communist material, or furthering communist ideas. The law of course also applied to anyone found to be aiding anyone in such pursuits. It wasn't applied very often: it didn't need to be, as the threat of its application was sufficient. The definition of communism in the law, you ask? None given, as "any definition would prevent application of the law." (Those are the words of Maurice Duplessis, by the way.) Similarly unjust laws were passed in Alberta, where Aberhardt tried to annex the banks into the provincial government. However, that legislation was handily struck down, and one may venture the suggestion that perhaps a rich banker has more sway in society than does a "communist," though that term was applied broadly to say the least.
So, that's just a little taste of what the Great Depression held in store for Canadians. Let's look at the contemporary Canadian landscape a wee bit. Fortunately, the Canadian government hasn't made it very difficult for us to find parallels, and they even come nicely identified with numbers: C-10 and C-38. C-10 is the omnibus crime bill, which would make our criminal laws much harsher in this country. Many have condemned C-10 as approaching the model of American criminal law, when even the Americans have been saying lately that the plan didn't work out as they'd hoped. C-38 is the looming bit of "budget" legislation. I use scare quotes when referring to it as a budget because the only thread that ties the whole 420-page bill together is that each of its issues in some way addresses Canada's deficit situation. I think that these two bills correspond to the two Depression watchwords: C-10 shows the emphasis on maintaining order in society, despite the costs that such a criminal policy has been shown to have in the United States (but after all, who was going to fill all of our brand new prisons without C-10?); C-38 shows the use of economic matters to avoid facing up to important issues, such as the state of our democracy. The opposition parties submitted over 1 000 amendments to the bill, of which over 800 were accepted for voting by the speaker, who organized them into over 150 separate votes in Parliament. Not one was accepted by the majority Conservative government. Not a bloody one. They also wouldn't go along with the suggestion that this bill was too disparate, and should be broken up into chunks for separate debate.
The Depression-era Canadian government was fascist. It was a police state that used the budget to justify anything and everything, and used unjust laws and police violence to suppress any dissension. With C-10 and C-38 at the federal level, with Bill 78 and the police brutality we've seen come out of Quebec, it seems like we should be keeping a sharp eye on this situation. It's getting pretty bad up here.
Thursday 7 June 2012
State of the Federation, pt. 2
(I've got in mind to update this blog about once a week (probably on Saturdays), but as I'll be leaving tomorrow morning for a brief jaunt in Toronto, I'll post this now instead. Last week I wrote the first part of my report on the Humanities and Social Science Congress. It brought up a bit more bile and venom than I had expected, so I decided to break it into parts. Here's the second.)
After hearing the Governor General give his talk about the present high water mark we're seeing in the life of the Canadian scholar, I went to a panel discussion on the topic of community-engaged scholarship. I'd only ever heard of this once before, when I attended a workshop on the subject specifically treating the issue of establishing such ties with community groups. Community-engaged scholarship is research that involves specific communities in carrying out academic research. The communities themselves are involved in the research itself, their input used in the formation of everything from assessing relevant research questions to gathering data.
Often in these relationships, the scholars involved provide professional expertise, bringing knowledge and understanding of (and thereby access to) scholarly research pertinent to the problems at issue in the community. In other words, the scholars involved serve as a liaison or bridge between a community on the one hand, and on the other hand a body of scholarly literature relevant to issues pertaining to that community.
What makes that literature inaccessible to the community at large in the first place? There are two factors at work here. The first is that the majority of cutting edge research is published in peer-reviewed journals. In Canada, and specifically in the humanities and social sciences, the vast majority (read: almost all) of the papers published in these journals are written by university researchers. University researchers, of course, are funded by public tax dollars. So public tax dollars are used to produce the content of these journals. Those journals are also edited by the prominent academics in the relevant field. However, they are privately published (mostly online these days) and subscriptions are prohibitively expensive. University libraries must subscribe to a good number of such journals simply to facilitate the research of its scholars, but lavish indeed would be the public library that could afford any such subscriptions.
Let's take stock. The production of this research is funded by public money, as is the reviewing and editing process. But the final product is handed to a private enterprise, which then turns around and charges publicly-funded universities for access to content that they themselves produce. Why would any academic with a conscience publish in such a venue? Because tenure and promotion dictates that only certain types of publication can count towards fulfilling their research expectations: publications in these journals are a linchpin in that process of getting the job security (and salary, and status) of a tenured professorship.
Luckily, peer-reviewed journals are starting to offer the option to keep the work publicly accessible. If the author indicates that they would like anyone to be able to download their writing for free, many journals will honour their request. The only hitch is that the author must then pony up $3 000 per article from their own pocket. At a time when up and coming scholars are harder and harder pressed for money (see last entry in my blog), it isn't feasible for most academics, even the conscientious and well-meaning ones, to make their work freely accessible to the public that has actually already paid for it.
The first hurdle in the trek towards accessibility is that the research is just too expensive for the average person to afford. The second is, in my mind, even more serious: even if the research were made available gratis, these primary texts are written in a technical jargon that just locks out the average reader. Not only is the average reader locked out by this technical jargon; other academics, even ones in nearby and related disciplines, often have considerable difficulty fighting their way through the primary texts of their colleagues in different departments. Sadly, the jargon barrier actually stands strongly between researchers even in the same discipline! The current academic situation is one of hyper-specialization. The ivory tower is tall, perhaps taller than ever before.
Getting back to community-engaged scholarship, the role of the professional researcher as a liaison between expensive, technical, jargon-filled primary sources and practical community applications is an important role. There are other liaison efforts: for example, the SnapShot program that puts out occasional snippets about research currently underway at particular universities in Canada, letting the population know what their researchers are up to. There is also a conference series called "Philopolis" that explicitly seeks to provide discussions of cutting edge philosophical research in a manner (financially and technically) accessible to the public, while explicitly engaging that research with issues of public interest.
In the question period that followed this panel on community-engaged scholarship, I couldn't help myself from raising one that burned in my mind: given that such liaison efforts are only necessary because the primary form of this research is inaccessible to the public, would our efforts not be better served to just make that research accessible in its primary form? Why not just make research financially and technically accessible from the get go, and forget the need for some translation between professional and public?
There are two possible reasons that academics might not want to do that: the first is that making their research exclusive gives it a certain caché. Making their research accessible would erode the elite status of our academic researchers. That's a very cynical way to look at things: hopefully we're above such petty concerns. The second is that writing advanced research in an accessible language, avoiding getting bogged down in jargon, finding a way to cash those terms out in a way that most people would understand, these are all things that require particular skills. As a fellow philosopher remarked when I suggested to her that we move to a more accessible model of scholarship: "But you know, it's a pretty special person who's able to make such complicated ideas simple to understand." Damn right it's a special person that's able to do that! But that is absolutely no reason to throw up our hands in despair. That is no reason to avoid putting extra value on those skills. It is a deeply concerning state of affairs indeed if we are willing to accept that the difficulty of a task is a sufficient reason not to undertake it at all.
Efforts to liaise between technical and expensive primary literature and the communities that stand to benefit from it (and have already paid for it) are important and laudable efforts indeed. But why do we never seriously consider an ideal of scholarship according to which such liaising is not even necessary? Does it require structural change in our institutions; does it require a set of skills currently undervalued in academia; would it require an awful lot of effort? Yes, yes, and more yes.
The move toward accessibility is a project I would be unbelievably proud to see undertaken as a nation; perhaps nothing would stir in me greater feelings of pride in Canadian scholarship. And I'm willing to work for it. Work like hell, in fact.
After hearing the Governor General give his talk about the present high water mark we're seeing in the life of the Canadian scholar, I went to a panel discussion on the topic of community-engaged scholarship. I'd only ever heard of this once before, when I attended a workshop on the subject specifically treating the issue of establishing such ties with community groups. Community-engaged scholarship is research that involves specific communities in carrying out academic research. The communities themselves are involved in the research itself, their input used in the formation of everything from assessing relevant research questions to gathering data.
Often in these relationships, the scholars involved provide professional expertise, bringing knowledge and understanding of (and thereby access to) scholarly research pertinent to the problems at issue in the community. In other words, the scholars involved serve as a liaison or bridge between a community on the one hand, and on the other hand a body of scholarly literature relevant to issues pertaining to that community.
What makes that literature inaccessible to the community at large in the first place? There are two factors at work here. The first is that the majority of cutting edge research is published in peer-reviewed journals. In Canada, and specifically in the humanities and social sciences, the vast majority (read: almost all) of the papers published in these journals are written by university researchers. University researchers, of course, are funded by public tax dollars. So public tax dollars are used to produce the content of these journals. Those journals are also edited by the prominent academics in the relevant field. However, they are privately published (mostly online these days) and subscriptions are prohibitively expensive. University libraries must subscribe to a good number of such journals simply to facilitate the research of its scholars, but lavish indeed would be the public library that could afford any such subscriptions.
Let's take stock. The production of this research is funded by public money, as is the reviewing and editing process. But the final product is handed to a private enterprise, which then turns around and charges publicly-funded universities for access to content that they themselves produce. Why would any academic with a conscience publish in such a venue? Because tenure and promotion dictates that only certain types of publication can count towards fulfilling their research expectations: publications in these journals are a linchpin in that process of getting the job security (and salary, and status) of a tenured professorship.
Luckily, peer-reviewed journals are starting to offer the option to keep the work publicly accessible. If the author indicates that they would like anyone to be able to download their writing for free, many journals will honour their request. The only hitch is that the author must then pony up $3 000 per article from their own pocket. At a time when up and coming scholars are harder and harder pressed for money (see last entry in my blog), it isn't feasible for most academics, even the conscientious and well-meaning ones, to make their work freely accessible to the public that has actually already paid for it.
The first hurdle in the trek towards accessibility is that the research is just too expensive for the average person to afford. The second is, in my mind, even more serious: even if the research were made available gratis, these primary texts are written in a technical jargon that just locks out the average reader. Not only is the average reader locked out by this technical jargon; other academics, even ones in nearby and related disciplines, often have considerable difficulty fighting their way through the primary texts of their colleagues in different departments. Sadly, the jargon barrier actually stands strongly between researchers even in the same discipline! The current academic situation is one of hyper-specialization. The ivory tower is tall, perhaps taller than ever before.
Getting back to community-engaged scholarship, the role of the professional researcher as a liaison between expensive, technical, jargon-filled primary sources and practical community applications is an important role. There are other liaison efforts: for example, the SnapShot program that puts out occasional snippets about research currently underway at particular universities in Canada, letting the population know what their researchers are up to. There is also a conference series called "Philopolis" that explicitly seeks to provide discussions of cutting edge philosophical research in a manner (financially and technically) accessible to the public, while explicitly engaging that research with issues of public interest.
In the question period that followed this panel on community-engaged scholarship, I couldn't help myself from raising one that burned in my mind: given that such liaison efforts are only necessary because the primary form of this research is inaccessible to the public, would our efforts not be better served to just make that research accessible in its primary form? Why not just make research financially and technically accessible from the get go, and forget the need for some translation between professional and public?
There are two possible reasons that academics might not want to do that: the first is that making their research exclusive gives it a certain caché. Making their research accessible would erode the elite status of our academic researchers. That's a very cynical way to look at things: hopefully we're above such petty concerns. The second is that writing advanced research in an accessible language, avoiding getting bogged down in jargon, finding a way to cash those terms out in a way that most people would understand, these are all things that require particular skills. As a fellow philosopher remarked when I suggested to her that we move to a more accessible model of scholarship: "But you know, it's a pretty special person who's able to make such complicated ideas simple to understand." Damn right it's a special person that's able to do that! But that is absolutely no reason to throw up our hands in despair. That is no reason to avoid putting extra value on those skills. It is a deeply concerning state of affairs indeed if we are willing to accept that the difficulty of a task is a sufficient reason not to undertake it at all.
Efforts to liaise between technical and expensive primary literature and the communities that stand to benefit from it (and have already paid for it) are important and laudable efforts indeed. But why do we never seriously consider an ideal of scholarship according to which such liaising is not even necessary? Does it require structural change in our institutions; does it require a set of skills currently undervalued in academia; would it require an awful lot of effort? Yes, yes, and more yes.
The move toward accessibility is a project I would be unbelievably proud to see undertaken as a nation; perhaps nothing would stir in me greater feelings of pride in Canadian scholarship. And I'm willing to work for it. Work like hell, in fact.
Saturday 2 June 2012
State of the Federation, part 1
As many around me are doubtless aware, the accessibility of ideas (and particularly of philosophical ideas) is an important topic to me. This interest began when I first read Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game, also published under the title Magister Ludi, which explores a fictional world in which the academy is entirely segregated from, but still supported by, the community at large. My fear is that this story is less and less fictional with every passing moment. In Canada, university researchers have a responsibility to the public, as it is they who fund the institutions that support our research. We academics are chosen as the researchers of the people, to represent them and their interests in our intellectual forays. Sadly, it feels like the people who support our research are being snubbed. We thumb our noses at the public when we neglect to publish our research in forms accessible to that very public.
In the spirit of opening up the academic world to the populace at large, I will now present a short report on the 2012 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. For those not in the know (and I myself was one of them up until I started my doctorate two years ago), Congress is an annual gathering at which all of the Canadian societies and associations of the humanities and social sciences hold their yearly meetings. All of these meetings take place over the course of about a week or ten days, and all at the same location. Last year, Congress took place in Fredericton, New Brunswick at UNB and St Thomas University. This year, it was at the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University, in the Kitchener–Waterloo region of Southern Ontario. Obviously, Congress is a pretty big affair, considering that in each of the last two years, it has taken two universities to host this intellectual love-in.
And a love-in it truly was, verging on self-congratulation. The first address that I went to see was one of the Think Big lectures, offered in this instance by the Governor General of Canada, David Johnston. I must admit that I don't know most of what the GG said: his first remark was so utterly flooring that I had trouble following him on any of his later points. I could barely believe that he opened his address by claiming that it is currently the best time in history to be a scholar in Canada. I spent most of the rest of the talk thinking about who exactly he was referring to when he used the word "scholar."
Perhaps he was referring to undergraduate students. Surely that couldn't be the case, thought I: the value of an undergraduate education in the job market these days, particularly of degrees in the arts, is laughable. Everyone's got one, so the value of it is severely decreased. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Some, myself included, would say that the value of education far exceeds its economic importance, and that a good education is valuable even if significantly better job prospects don't come of it. However, that value relies on the education itself being of good quality, and that is far from the case these days. I have been a teaching assistant for the last two years, and have been nothing short of appalled by the inferior quality of work submitted to me. People are completing undergraduate degrees without the skills necessary for any measure of critical reflection. They don't know how to process what they read, they can't think through arguments, and have trouble expressing themselves coherently in written form. One student in my first semester was nearly illiterate. Orally, they actually fare alright, from the very little that I've seen of oral presentation.
Undergrads are not getting a significant benefit on the job market; they aren't getting a significant intellectual benefit; they don't seem to be getting much of anything. Except for debt, of course. Especially shocking was that the Gov. Gen. had the gall to make this remark while the streets of Montreal seethe in anger over a proposed tuition increase that prompted students to strike for three months (and counting). It is less and less feasible to finance one's own education, and those who do so mostly incur massive debts. And the government's response to a lack of funding in the education system is simply to inject more money by raising tuition rather than to even countenance the possibility that perhaps the money it currently spends might be mismanaged. Undergraduate education is becoming more and more difficult to justify as education quality plummets, expected debt loads for graduates become greater and greater, and the job opportunities necessary to repay such debts are conspicuously absent. Clearly Johnston couldn't have been referring to the undergrads when he spoke of the Prime Time to be a scholar in Canada.
Perhaps he was referring to graduate students. But there again I had trouble seeing how this could be true. Yes, many graduate students receive funding, but the majority of funding agreements are contingent upon working as a teaching assistant in one's department. And once tuition fees are deducted from one's salary, basically all but the smallest handful of graduate students live below the poverty line in Canada, while working for what amount at the end of the day to be negligible wages. (I must say at this juncture, that I consider myself to be extremely lucky to be in the department that I am. The working conditions for graduate students in my department are significantly better than others of which I hear through the grapevine.) Graduate students also, for the most part, feel the economic pinch. And the quality of their education is dropping as well: graduate students are "fast-tracked," hustled through their programs as quickly as possible in order to comply with ever more draconian standards imposed upon them from administrators who run universities like businesses rather than like educational institutions. This hustling through has the undesirable end result of putting a whole bunch of doctors and masters out there (there's something undeniably poetic about those titles) who lack the intellectual breadth to engage with scholars across disciplinary divides or (Heaven forbid) with ever-less-educated general public. This breadth was a hallmark of graduate study in the days when comprehensive exams were par for the course. Such exams have at many institutions been deemed to time consuming, and accordingly eliminated.
Perhaps the Governor General was referring to young academics having it better than ever. Once more, I have trouble understanding how this could be true. There was a time when graduate students would finish their degrees and would reasonably believe that they had a good chance to find a steady tenure-track job. No more. Young academics finish graduate school, along with hordes of others, only to find themselves in a flooded market. It is not uncommon that even a school in a backwater town in The Middle of Nowhere will get 300-400 applicants for a single entry-level, tenure-track position. There are few such positions, and far too many candidates. As in many other job sectors, the belief was that the Baby Boomers would retire, and that this great wave would open the floodgates for young workers, chomping at the bit, to get their foot in the door in an entry-level position. However, as in other sectors, the financial squeeze in the last few years has prompted those same Boomers to hang on to their positions just a little bit longer. Furthermore, when these senior intellectuals have retired, universities have been so financially squeezed that they actually close the position rather than hiring a young up-and-comer to fill the void. As the market is so competitive, young academics are expected to have ungodly credentials: lists of publication as long as your arm (or longer, should you have short arms), unfathomable depths of teaching experience documented with reviews so glowing that one dare not look at them but from an oblique angle, and so on. Clearly, the Gov. Gen was not talking about young academics then either, as they have a pretty tough lot and very long odds of even being able to continue their research (professionally) after graduate school.
I can only then conclude that the Governor General was referring to established, tenured academics. They live quite comfortably, the majority making salaries with six figures (eight, if you include decimal places; otherwise I'd be in that category, too!), and already enjoying the stability in their employment to carry out the scholarly research that which interests them. Yes, perhaps it's true that there has never been a time in Canadian history when it has been better to be a scholar of this ilk, being able to thumb one's nose liberally at all those on the lower rungs of the ladder, which my own Governor General did to me as I sat flabbergasted by the audacity he showed in publicly announcing the present Hey Day of Canadian Scholarship.
(Here endeth the first part of my informal report. I hadn't intended to break this into parts; but then again I also hadn't counted on having so much to say on this first topic. Stay tuned for more.)
In the spirit of opening up the academic world to the populace at large, I will now present a short report on the 2012 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. For those not in the know (and I myself was one of them up until I started my doctorate two years ago), Congress is an annual gathering at which all of the Canadian societies and associations of the humanities and social sciences hold their yearly meetings. All of these meetings take place over the course of about a week or ten days, and all at the same location. Last year, Congress took place in Fredericton, New Brunswick at UNB and St Thomas University. This year, it was at the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University, in the Kitchener–Waterloo region of Southern Ontario. Obviously, Congress is a pretty big affair, considering that in each of the last two years, it has taken two universities to host this intellectual love-in.
And a love-in it truly was, verging on self-congratulation. The first address that I went to see was one of the Think Big lectures, offered in this instance by the Governor General of Canada, David Johnston. I must admit that I don't know most of what the GG said: his first remark was so utterly flooring that I had trouble following him on any of his later points. I could barely believe that he opened his address by claiming that it is currently the best time in history to be a scholar in Canada. I spent most of the rest of the talk thinking about who exactly he was referring to when he used the word "scholar."
Perhaps he was referring to undergraduate students. Surely that couldn't be the case, thought I: the value of an undergraduate education in the job market these days, particularly of degrees in the arts, is laughable. Everyone's got one, so the value of it is severely decreased. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Some, myself included, would say that the value of education far exceeds its economic importance, and that a good education is valuable even if significantly better job prospects don't come of it. However, that value relies on the education itself being of good quality, and that is far from the case these days. I have been a teaching assistant for the last two years, and have been nothing short of appalled by the inferior quality of work submitted to me. People are completing undergraduate degrees without the skills necessary for any measure of critical reflection. They don't know how to process what they read, they can't think through arguments, and have trouble expressing themselves coherently in written form. One student in my first semester was nearly illiterate. Orally, they actually fare alright, from the very little that I've seen of oral presentation.
Undergrads are not getting a significant benefit on the job market; they aren't getting a significant intellectual benefit; they don't seem to be getting much of anything. Except for debt, of course. Especially shocking was that the Gov. Gen. had the gall to make this remark while the streets of Montreal seethe in anger over a proposed tuition increase that prompted students to strike for three months (and counting). It is less and less feasible to finance one's own education, and those who do so mostly incur massive debts. And the government's response to a lack of funding in the education system is simply to inject more money by raising tuition rather than to even countenance the possibility that perhaps the money it currently spends might be mismanaged. Undergraduate education is becoming more and more difficult to justify as education quality plummets, expected debt loads for graduates become greater and greater, and the job opportunities necessary to repay such debts are conspicuously absent. Clearly Johnston couldn't have been referring to the undergrads when he spoke of the Prime Time to be a scholar in Canada.
Perhaps he was referring to graduate students. But there again I had trouble seeing how this could be true. Yes, many graduate students receive funding, but the majority of funding agreements are contingent upon working as a teaching assistant in one's department. And once tuition fees are deducted from one's salary, basically all but the smallest handful of graduate students live below the poverty line in Canada, while working for what amount at the end of the day to be negligible wages. (I must say at this juncture, that I consider myself to be extremely lucky to be in the department that I am. The working conditions for graduate students in my department are significantly better than others of which I hear through the grapevine.) Graduate students also, for the most part, feel the economic pinch. And the quality of their education is dropping as well: graduate students are "fast-tracked," hustled through their programs as quickly as possible in order to comply with ever more draconian standards imposed upon them from administrators who run universities like businesses rather than like educational institutions. This hustling through has the undesirable end result of putting a whole bunch of doctors and masters out there (there's something undeniably poetic about those titles) who lack the intellectual breadth to engage with scholars across disciplinary divides or (Heaven forbid) with ever-less-educated general public. This breadth was a hallmark of graduate study in the days when comprehensive exams were par for the course. Such exams have at many institutions been deemed to time consuming, and accordingly eliminated.
Perhaps the Governor General was referring to young academics having it better than ever. Once more, I have trouble understanding how this could be true. There was a time when graduate students would finish their degrees and would reasonably believe that they had a good chance to find a steady tenure-track job. No more. Young academics finish graduate school, along with hordes of others, only to find themselves in a flooded market. It is not uncommon that even a school in a backwater town in The Middle of Nowhere will get 300-400 applicants for a single entry-level, tenure-track position. There are few such positions, and far too many candidates. As in many other job sectors, the belief was that the Baby Boomers would retire, and that this great wave would open the floodgates for young workers, chomping at the bit, to get their foot in the door in an entry-level position. However, as in other sectors, the financial squeeze in the last few years has prompted those same Boomers to hang on to their positions just a little bit longer. Furthermore, when these senior intellectuals have retired, universities have been so financially squeezed that they actually close the position rather than hiring a young up-and-comer to fill the void. As the market is so competitive, young academics are expected to have ungodly credentials: lists of publication as long as your arm (or longer, should you have short arms), unfathomable depths of teaching experience documented with reviews so glowing that one dare not look at them but from an oblique angle, and so on. Clearly, the Gov. Gen was not talking about young academics then either, as they have a pretty tough lot and very long odds of even being able to continue their research (professionally) after graduate school.
I can only then conclude that the Governor General was referring to established, tenured academics. They live quite comfortably, the majority making salaries with six figures (eight, if you include decimal places; otherwise I'd be in that category, too!), and already enjoying the stability in their employment to carry out the scholarly research that which interests them. Yes, perhaps it's true that there has never been a time in Canadian history when it has been better to be a scholar of this ilk, being able to thumb one's nose liberally at all those on the lower rungs of the ladder, which my own Governor General did to me as I sat flabbergasted by the audacity he showed in publicly announcing the present Hey Day of Canadian Scholarship.
(Here endeth the first part of my informal report. I hadn't intended to break this into parts; but then again I also hadn't counted on having so much to say on this first topic. Stay tuned for more.)
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