3 comments

1. The definition of “academentia” is “the degeneration of faculties by degrees.” I spent 5 years not getting a PhD in Classical Studies and 4 years teaching university after that. In the US, at least, it’s hard enough even to *find* a tenure-track job, and faculty members can’t afford to spend time on anything that doesn’t count toward tenure. (If you don’t get tenure, you have to find another job and start over again, and universities are known to turn down applications which departments unanimously support, because it’s cheaper for them to hire a new assistant professor than promote the person who’s already there.)
   On top of that, there’s tremendous pressure (or was in my department in the early 1990s) to be a Serious Scholar. Enthusiasm is frowned upon. Innovation is frowned upon. I wanted to explore Greek theater in modern performance. Heresy! One of the first things the graduate student advisor ever said to me was “I never saw a performance of a Greek tragedy from which I learned anything.” I walked over to the Theater department and asked what I’d have to do in order to put on a play, and got involved with one of the student theater groups. Classes I took in theater didn’t count toward my degree. And departments don’t talk to each other. They’re too busy competing for funding.
   I ignored all these things, produced plays, learned a lot from doing it, introduced some people in different departments to each other, got a prestigious fellowship with the Institute for the Humanities, which sponsored another production. One of my fellow Fellows there said “I can’t see you as a tenured professor.”
   I was insulted, but he was right. After a mock-interview, I was told “No one wants to hear that you want to come to their school to start a center for ancient theater studies.” Too entrepreneurial, I guess. I’d heard tales of people being shunned if they published popular books for a general audience instead of unintelligible jargon-ridden monographs.
   Students, on the other hand, have access to lots of technology at school that they wouldn’t at home. And many schools are recording lectures and releasing them through RSS feeds. If something has an obvious pedagogical application, university teachers will use it. But blogging as most people understand blogging (rather than creating, say, a class discussion wiki) is likely to be something that only gets done after all the other far-too-numerous obligations are met. The typical humanities professor works 16 hours a day for a pittance. And there is, at least within specialties, already a community, one which might not see much need to move beyond e-mail discussion lists, particularly if no one is upgrading the on-campus technology.

2. Well for some reason the Trackback Ping didn’t work but… Mitch I talked a bit about people being openly critical of companies online (twitter, blogs, etc.) and how I disagree with not being able to be hired because of that in a DeysCast (http://deys.ca/?p=72). Maybe of interest maybe not, just figured I’s let you know in case you wanted to use it in a show. Thanks for fostering a conversation and for helping me with some content for an episode of my show!

3. It’s interesting to hear the many different types of feedback I’m getting in both audio and text format. It seems that there are some very progressive academics and others that are not so quick to embrace these new channels of communication.
   My guess is this conversation has legs and will be running for quite some time.

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