Hiring and the Academy: A Response to "Durham in Wonderland"

(Written in response to the post on Tuesday, December 12th, 2006, entitled “Creating Wahneema’s World.”)

Posts such as this that target University hiring practices without looking into the specifics of what goes on highlight some of the weaknesses of indiscriminate blogging. Here I reference Prof. Johnson’s comment, “Imagine, for instance, a U.S. History position, with a search committee composed of Chafe, Thavolia Glymph (who lamented that things were “moving backwards” when DNA tests revealed no matches to lacrosse players), and Peter Wood (who has gone out of his way to appear to slander his own students).” Even accepting the premise that these three subscribe to a “groupthink” that would necessarily be negative (such a point would require further elaboration that can here be broached), the idea that such a committee would ever be assembled, and that they would have no oversight from their department(s) at large is grossly mistaken.

Quite simply, this is not the way that hiring committees work: specific committees, usually made up of between three and five members (though varying from department to department, search to search, and university to university), are responsible for directing the initial phases of the candidate search, but no matter the amount of independence found at early stages, the hire is always subject to departmental overview at the final stage. Thus, even if the “’groupthink’ search committee” brings in three “ideologues” for interviews, the department can always reject all candidates.

So not only is all not lost, there are actually a good number of mechanisms in place at Duke and across academia that forestall just the type of hiring “horrors” that Prof. Johnson here bemoans. True, targeted hires work quite differently (not the same as senior hires, it’s worth pointing out, though Prof. Johnson seems to collapse the two) and may in some cases be in need of additional scrutiny, but the normal process of hiring is conducted with oversight and backstops: this is not a willy-nilly process.

Anyone with experience in academic hiring practices is aware of such facts, and to suggest that candidates are somehow railroaded is irresponsible. Blogging is certainly a wonderful resource and has opened avenues of information dissemination, but without editorial oversight they rely on either a) authorial vigilance, or b) community oversight. In regards to this particular post I feel it’s important to point out some of the missteps, such as that highlighted above. I find much of Prof. Johnson’s work regarding the Duke Lacrosse case both well-researched and well-intentioned, but as this blog has moved further afield from those specifics its factual basis is growing more questionable.

Let me respond to one other mischaracterization in this post: African and African-American Studies does not have fifteen full-time, dedicated faculty members. Instead, they have fifteen core professors: professors housed in other departments who teach the majority of AAAS courses. As the program turns into a fully-fledged department this will certainly change, but it is inaccurate to state that “13.8 percent of the arts and sciences faculty can offer classes in a major that attracts only 0.5 percent of the school’s undergraduate body as majors.” Rather, these fifteen professors are responsible for teaching X number of classes (say, for instance, at two classes a semester for each professor, a total of 60 classes a year, though I will point out that this is an assumed number, and not one that I have researched), Y of which will be listed in AAAS, and a high percentage of those (not 100%, I don’t believe, but close), will also be cross-listed in other departments (often the professor’s home departments).

This is all a complicated outgrowth of the modern university, one that is seeking to move beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries to more fluid and specialized study. (It should be pointed out that this is taking place across the university, in the sciences as well as in the humanities.) The upshot of it is that the 13.8% of professors dedicated to 0.5% of the majors is the result of superficial manipulation of numbers, not a close look at how the AAAS program actually operates within the complex world of Trinity College departments.

The larger issue that interests me, of course, is how this case has demonstrated a wide variety of positions taken by academics within the public and scholarly arenas, and how the general public has responded to these interventions. “Durham in Wonderland” is an example of this, both in the way that it represents an academic’s take on the issue, and the manner in which it has gone out of its way to critique the role that some of Duke’s faculty have played in the last few months. In fact, I believe that it was this interaction that first prompted Prof. Johnson’s interest.

This is to be lauded: not only do I think that scholars have an obligation to engage the public realm, but those interactions should be as closely critiqued by their peers as their scholarly work. What we as academics and scholars demand is intellectual rigor, and that should be the case both inside and outside the ivory tower, however differently articulated. As representative of just such a critique, I can respect the work of “Durham in Wonderland,” even as I may disagree with it from time to time.

But this is not to say that all critique is equal, or that every engagement on the part of this blog has been productive. Useful though many of the comments have been, and vigilant though the community is that it has produced, I have come to wonder if the conversation that it engenders is always productive, with regard to both the lacrosse case in specific and the nature of the Duke (and, moreover, the university) more broadly. Certainly, no public figure can be held responsible for every reaction that he provokes within his intended audience, but as the comments on this blog have become more racist, less informed, and as the blog posts themselves have moved away from clearly articulating specific responses to the case toward more general speculations about Duke and the humanities at large, I have begun to wonder if this example of public intellectualism is not as harmful as some of those that it critiques.

As I see it, the role of the public intellectual is to raise the level of popular discourse, to clarify obscurities, and to generally illuminate the complexities of the world around us. They are responsible for moving the conversation forward toward solutions, for explicating generalizations, and for educating the public. Accuracy is (or course) a part of this, but so is recognizing perception, and channeling discussion toward productive topics, and away from party rancor or ill-defined divisiveness.