Inmates of the Ivory Tower

Professor Joseph Nye's op-ed on the growing divide between the Academy and the Real World in the IR field has sparked discussion (or should I say, intergalactic war) amongst bloggers, with a particularly geektastic entry from the Duck of Minerva:



Highlights from Nye's article:

Scholars are paying less attention to questions about how their work relates to the policy world, and in many departments a focus on policy can hurt one's career. Advancement comes faster for those who develop mathematical models, new methodologies or theories expressed in jargon that is unintelligible to policymakers. [...]

Some academics say that while the growing gap between theory and policy may have costs for policy, it has produced better social science theory, and that this is more important than whether such scholarship is relevant. Also, to some extent, the gap is an inevitable result of the growth and specialization of knowledge. Few people can keep up with their subfields, much less all of social science. But the danger is that academic theorizing will say more and more about less and less.

As a solution to this, Nye proposes "a reappraisal within the academy itself", suggesting

Departments should give greater weight to real-world relevance and impact in hiring and promoting young scholars. Journals could place greater weight on relevance in evaluating submissions. Studies of specific regions deserve more attention. Universities could facilitate interest in the world by giving junior faculty members greater incentives to participate in it. That should include greater toleration of unpopular policy positions.

Nye's comments may be true enough with regards to political science, but as a scholar hailing from an even more obscure corner of academia, the discussion makes me wonder whether these solutions might be applied to other disciplines.

Trying to envision a classicist or english scholar attempting to be 'relevant' brings a laughable image to mind. Just as a dalliance with real policymaking can scuttle an IR tenure review, an academic whose work is accessible enough to show up in a newspaper column or, God forbid, Borders, will likely be tossed out to rot with the rest of the tenureless pop-scholars. If academics are becoming less and less relevant, it is a prison largely of their own making and one they occupy somewhat smugly.

Time was, universities were the seedbeds of intellectual innovation. The Oxford and Cambridge University Presses were among first printing houses in England and, throughout periods of authoritarian press control, helped disseminate information that could not be printed in London. The illustrious alumni of these institutions went on to become world leaders, men and, later, women who not only redefined the contexts of their time but shaped new discursive possibilities for society today.

But things have changed. With the myriad means of expression available, people now acquire their information from other sources. The movement toward specialization and abstraction that Nye and Drezner recognize in their faculties is in fact a problem with the very nature of the institution. Rather than reevaluate their function within society, academics increasingly withdraw from it, embracing their irrelevance with self-congratulatory resignation. If Plato knew then that he would be derided for stating that the City would never have rest from its evils "until philosophers are kings" how much more absurd would his claim seem today? Socrates argued that only with the marriage of wisdom and political greatness could "our State behold the light of day", but the species of wisdom produced by modern universities is only tenuously linked to the practical skills needed for effective participation in society.

Why, then, should the Academy change? Why must universities play an active role instead of concentrate on being a self-contained factory of thought? I will refrain from spouting sentimental fluff on the advancement of thought and duty to humankind, but I do believe that one of the most inspiring features of our time is a trend toward greater integration between branches of society. The potential for mutual enrichment is too high to disregard.

For those who would object that academics must be free to frolic in a haven of pure thought if they are expected to generate great scholarship, it is essential to reflect upon what 'great scholarship' has come to mean. Too often in academic communities, 'greatness' is measured in a work's denseness, sophistication and, yes, abstractness of thought. Not only does this scale place disproportionate value on distance from lay knowledge but, all too often, it rewards bad writing. If it is to remain a valuable institution for producing knowledge, academia must give up the pardoning of irrelevance for the sake of maintaining a divide between the layman and the scholar. This is not to say that all academic work must in some way be accessible to the general public but it should be remembered that much of the 'art' that is studied in liberal arts was created for precisely this sort of consumer. Shakespeare wrote for a throng of bellowing, hooting, whistling, weeping spectators--his scholars would do well to keep that in mind.


-JK