Corporate control of public sphere

closer engagement with the policy world and more explicit efforts at public outreach are not without their own pitfalls. Scholars who enter government service or participate in policy debates may believe that they are “speaking truth to power,” but they run the risk of being corrupted or co-opted in subtle and not-so-subtle ways by the same individuals and institutions that they initially hoped to sway. Powerful interests are all-too-willing to use the prestige associated with academic scholars to advance particular policy goals, and scholars are hardly immune to temptations that may cloud their judgment or compromise their objectivity. Furthermore, scholars who embrace the role of a “public intellectual” may be tempted to sensationalize their findings to attract a larger audience or find themselves opining on topics on which they have no particular expertise. Instead of improving the quality of public discourse, such behavior may actually degrade it.

When citizens and leaders seek to grasp the dizzying complexity of modern world politics, therefore, they must inevitably rely upon the knowledge and insights of specialists in military affairs, global trade and finance, diplomatic/international historians, area experts, and many others. And that means relying at least in part on academic scholars who have devoted their careers to mastering various aspects of world affairs and whose professional stature has been established through the usual procedures of academic evaluation (e.g., peer review, confidential assessments by senior scholars, the give-and-take of scholarly debate, etc.).

Because scholars are protected by tenure and cherish the principle of academic freedom, and because they are not directly dependent on government support for their livelihoods, they are uniquely positioned to challenge prevailing narratives and policy rationales and to bring their knowledge and training to bear on vital policy issues. If we believe that unfettered debate helps expose errors and correct missteps, thereby fostering more effective public policies, then a sophisticated, diverse and engaged scholarly community is essential to a healthy polity.

Within academia, by contrast, even intense disputes are supposed to be conducted in accordance with established canons of logic and evidence. Ad hominem attacks and other forms of character assassination have no place in scholarly discourse and are more likely to discredit those who employ them than those who are attacked.

Because academic scholars are free from daily responsibility for managing public affairs, they are in an ideal position to develop new concepts and theories to help us understand a complex and changing world.

The picture sketched here is obviously something of an ideal type, and I am not suggesting that that the academic world consistently lives up to these expectations. As noted above, university-based scholars of international affairs—and especially the disciplines of political science and history—have increasingly focused on narrow and arcane topics and are contributing less and less to policy formation or public discourse.[9] And when academics do address topics of obvious policy relevance or public interest, the results are often presented in impenetrable, jargon-ridden prose and disseminated in venues that neither policymakers nor the public are likely to read. Even when scholars have something useful to say, in short, their tendency to “speaking in tongues” diminishes their impact on the public sphere.

Yet the growing gap between theory and practice and the declining role of scholars in the public sphere also reflects the professionalization of academic disciplines and the norms and incentives that prevail in the scholarly world. In particular, the academic disciplines that are most concerned with global affairs (political science/international relations, history, economics, sociology, anthropology/area studies, etc.) are largely governed by university-based scholars who have little if any experience in the policy world. With rare exceptions, policymakers, policy analysts, or public intellectuals do not play significant roles in the governance of academic disciplines, leaving the latter free to set their own norms and criteria of merit. Not surprisingly, scholarly disciplines have come to privilege highly specialized research (as opposed to teaching, public service, or public engagement) because that is what most members of these fields prefer to do.

Younger scholars are cautioned not to “waste” their time publishing op-eds, weblogs, or articles in general readership journals. Scholars who write for Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, or even rigorously peer-reviewed journals such as International Security are sometimes dismissed as insufficiently rigorous, based on arbitrary and dubious notions of what constitutes “genuine” scholarship.”[14]

Professionalization also discourages academic scholars from addressing controversial topics or challenging well-established taboos. Although university scholars are quick to defend the institution of tenure and the principle of academic freedom, in most cases this commitment has more to do with a desire for lifetime sinecures than a commitment to using these protections to take on politically controversial topics. Smart young scholars know that being too controversial can annoy potential donors, alarm deans and department chairs, and alienate senior colleagues, thereby undermining prospects for promotion or later advancement. Focusing one’s efforts on narrow and uncontroversial topics that are of interest only to one’s fellow academicians is by far the safer route to the Holy Grail of lifetime employment. Given this incentive structure, it is hardly surprising that academic engagement in the public sphere and the policy world is declining.

As scholars, therefore, our challenge is to chart a course between the Scylla of hyper-professionalized irrelevance and the Charybdis of corrupt opportunism. We should begin by recognizing that the norms and incentives that guide the scholarly enterprise are neither divinely ordained nor fixed in stone; like all norms, they are “socially constructed” by the academic community itself and by the outside stakeholders who have an interest in what the academy produces.

greater disagreement about the norms used to judge academic work might even be desirable, because a heterogeneous intellectual community working on these issues is probably preferable to a monoculture where a single method, theoretical perspective or political orientation predominates.[18]Even the best social science theories are highly imperfect, and once-popular ideas and approaches are often exposed as hollow with the passage of time. When dealing with vital yet contentious issues (i.e., the sorts of topics that routinely arise in world affairs), we will be better off nurturing a diverse intellectual ecosystem instead of placing all our bets on a single way of trying to grasp something as complex and contingent as international affairs.

First, and most obviously, academic departments could give greater weight to policy relevance and public impact in hiring and promotion decisions. Instead of focusing almost entirely on peer-reviewed professional journals and/or monographs by university presses, for example, promotion review committees could also do a systematic evaluation of a candidate’s other contributions to knowledge and public discourse, including weblogs, popular journals, trade books, or other professional studies (such as National Academy of Science proceedings).

Similarly, instead of focusing primarily on sheer quantity of academic publications or imperfect measures like citation counts, review committees could be asked to perform a more systematic evaluation of a scholar’s impact on public discourse or policy debate.[20] In addition to academic citation counts, for example, a review committee could also track the number of news reports or blog hits that discussed a candidate’s work, or examine citations in both academic and non-academic journals.

Professional associations could encourage greater involvement in the public sphere by doing more to acknowledge and valorize it.

If they enabled younger faculty to stop the clock in this way, however, academic departments would have more members who understood how governments and key global organizations actually worked, and they would become more adept at translating scholarly research into useful knowledge for their students and practical guidance for policymakers and the public at large. Such individuals would probably be better teachers as well, because students, unlike many professional academics, really do care about the real world and have little tolerance for empty scholasticism.

Furthermore, if academic scholars made a practice of asking practitioners what topics or questions might be most interesting or useful, the benefits for both communities might be considerable. For instance, what if people with real-world experience were regarded not just as potential consumers of scholarship or as data points in a survey, but as a source of guidance about scholarly research agendas, methods, and modes of presentation? Instead of deriving dissertation topics or research ideas primarily from lacunae in the academic literature, we could also ask policymakers what sorts of knowledge they would most like to have, or what recurring puzzles merit extended scholarly attention. Among other things, outside experts are more likely to ask “so what?” when confronted by an elegant and well-crafted study addressing a question that is of interest to hardly anyone.

Another way to increase the public impact of universities, as Rogers Smith points out in his own essay in this symposium, is to place greater emphasis on the traditional role of teaching. Effective teaching is one of our responsibilities as scholars and student interest is one way to gauge whether a department’s activities are broadly relevant to contemporary issues.

Scholars who study global affairs also need to have a long-overdue discussion about the broader ethical responsibilities of our profession.

By contrast, social scientists rarely discuss their public responsibilities and this topic plays little or no role in graduate training in most academic departments.[23] If it did, it might raise some awkward but useful questions about whether our profession exists largely for our entertainment and livelihoods, or whether society has a right to expect something more.

Second, the pressure to publish only in certain journals—many of which have methodological biases towards ‘scientific’ (quantitative) methods—gives academics plenty of incentive to adopt those same methodologies. Scholars have arguably become overly cautious, even conformist, in order to meet the perceived demands of editors and reviewers.

To increase one’s chances of being published, scholars are likely to adopt ‘safer’ publication strategies and shy away from pursuing methodological innovation which is deemed as ‘risky’. Safer publication strategies can include working within recognised methodological frameworks, especially those preferred by the designated ‘mainstream’. What this means for academics researching forced labour is that institutional pressures could condition such scholars to abandon methodological innovation, which is sorely needed.

This can jeopardise the reputations and careers of even established scholars, let alone junior academics. The structural pressures are reinforcing, and scholars are once again encouraged to pursue methods that are likely to yield findings in line with funder’s expectations. With regard to forced labour, this once again reinforces the clear preference for quantitative research that produces numeric ‘facts’.

Certain commentators would argue yes. Yet despite the problems laid out above, scholars do have a responsibility to share their knowledge and make it available both within and outside of their academic communities