Mapping the Blogosphere

I’d missed the column, too, so thank you, TR, for pointing it out to me.

I’ve spent a lot of time and energy over the last few years in the work of ‘popular history’ which has made some colleagues wrinkle their noses. It’s not peer-reviewed (even though all of my writing is subject to the close scrutiny of at least one other academic historian) and that’s a big red flag for getting credibility amongst our peers. As long as tenure and promotion require peer-reviewed publications, spending time on popular history means not spending time where it counts, professionally.

Actually that’s not true that Weiner writes about only one destroyed career– that may be the one you know about who is in the book, because he became a rallying point for pro-gun activists, but there are others. Read it: could cheer you up.

And your rendition of how Bellisles left Emory is wanting too. I don’t want to rehearse it here, but if readers want to know a more full version of what happened, and the events that prompted Bellisles’ resignation, they should read Weiner’s essay about it.

Academic history has been on the decline for decades, primarily because of this false binary that the discipline has created between ”professional” history versus “popular” history.

Many fields, not just history, suffer from a lack of comprehensibility to those “outside the circle.” Exclusionary prose combined with a perceived snobbery (“I am the expert; you’re just an amateur”) actually hurt the reputation of academics, especially with the taxpayers who foot the bill for many research grants and professorial salaries. Politicians and certain media can then exploit these feelings for their own anti-education agendas.

The current taxpayer contempt for higher education seems to be fueled by deep feelings of exclusion from the academy, despite having paid to support it.  The exclusion may be a literal one (due to grades, finances, or luck) or it may be a psychological one (due to perceived pretentious attitudes and incomprehensible jargon.)  The taxpayers have ended up paying for research that most of them can’t read, even with a college education, because it is written not to be read outside a certain “club” of academic readers. This creates a great deal of resentment, especially against academics in the social sciences, liberal arts, and education, because these fields directly affect public policy and, hence, the everyday life experience of taxpayers and their children.  Taxpayers feel strongly that these fields SHOULD be comprehensible to them since they are “not rocket science” and usually intersect or interfere with the public’s own notions developed through experience.

When something the taxpayer thinks SHOULD be comprehensible is not, resentment and suspicion grow: resentment at being made to feel stupid (excluded) and suspicion that the very incomprehensibility of these articles is a tool to hide public policy changes or damaging belief systems that the taxpayer will not condone.  Radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh have been easily able to exploit the resentment of “pointy-headed elitist academics” and their “Marxist, atheist” ideologies.  The average Limbaugh listener cannot even check to see if Rush is right or not: the required reading to debunk the talk show host is inaccessible.

This is why academics need to have a 180 degree change in their attitudes toward popular publication. For their own survival professors and researchers, especially in those disciplines affecting public policy and thought, MUST publish popular books and put their theories in as plain language as possible.  They should put videos up on youtube explaining, in the language of the public square, how their ideas or theories relate to everyday life and why they are important.  Now in peril, academics need to learn to do (on a small scale) what billion and trillion-dollar corporations do: get their message out and get public support on their side.  Administrators truly interested in keeping public education afloat might earmark funds for public relations professionals to come in and help with a large scale project to bring comprehensible academics to the taxpayers.

But, regardless, a change MUST happen.  No more can academics sit on the sidelines, comfortable in their internecine battles over “smartness” (which really means “legitimacy”).  We can’t be tearing each other down when we have a battle outside our gates.  No more can academics indulge in institutional snobbery (and yes, we do this), dubbing our colleagues and peer-reviewed journals as worthy of our attention but regarding the taxpayers (who foot our bill) and their interaction with knowledge supremely unworthy.  Deans and tenure committees need to start giving credit to those who popularize (a good word!) our field and create public sympathy for it.  Public sympathy can translate into dollars, especially in states like California where such funding measures are ballot propositions.  

It might even save public education.

I agree. At the core the study of history is not so much fact as it is a collection of generally accepted events. Sure the details may vary but that comes with trying to prove exact details of events that occured thousands of years ago, when we can’t, as a society, take the time to remember what happened 5 years ago unless it affected the whole world. As a student about to graduate the field is definitely  intimidating and exclusive. History should be a discussion for all, educated or not. Sure there is a sector of business that can be created for history as a “profession”, but the History itself is a gift to all. Far too many of my generation have no concept of history beyond vague ideas taught to them in grade school