Over the
last 2-3 decades universities have had obligations of “public dissemination”
and “innovation” added to their tasks. This has happened under a constant
demand that academics should “leave the ivory tower”.
There is much sense in wanting the universities to interact with the rest of society, even more so, as the demand for qualified employees and for knowledge of complex problems is ever on the rise. The universities have dutifully followed through on the demand, not always with enthusiasm, but generally with acceptance, and often with engagement.
There is much sense in wanting the universities to interact with the rest of society, even more so, as the demand for qualified employees and for knowledge of complex problems is ever on the rise. The universities have dutifully followed through on the demand, not always with enthusiasm, but generally with acceptance, and often with engagement.
However,
a vexing rhetorical problem remains. The understanding that the universities are ivory towers persists, as if nothing has changed. Just now, a reputable publishing channel in news about academia, Times Higher Education ran a blogpost headlined "Brexit: a chance for universities to leave their ivory towers behind". I practically screamed. In the text, at least, the ivory tower is in quotation marks:
Every crisis is an opportunity. Brexit is, therefore, the ultimate opportunity for universities to connect and engage with society. Brexit can help to break down the “ivory tower” walls between academia and society, and I firmly believe that this is something that can benefit us all in the long run.
Even without the meaningless abstraction "Every crisis is an opportunity," I find the passage endlessly annoying for its use of the metaphor; even after all these years, and all this effort, re-sticking us behind the walls of the ivory tower can happen at a whim if it benefits a particular argument. The metafor, in fact, annoys me so much, than when reading the article, and the quote in question, all I get out of it is this:
For an avid EU-fan such as myself that is hardly a compelling reason for anything.
Brexit is such a huge mess brought on us by politics, that we as universities have to engage with politicians in order to avert disaster, and this will force us to open up to society.
(my summary, somewhat sharpened)
For an avid EU-fan such as myself that is hardly a compelling reason for anything.
One of the
fundamental problems of the original metaphor was, of course, that the ivory
tower probably never existed in the first place. Even in its most exclusive forms, the
university was always a place, people moved through, picking up knowledge. The central point of
teaching is influence society in a positive way. Young people
entered, spent a number of years at the institution engaging with the knowledge it both developed and represented, and then left with this
knowledge to make it, and themselves, useful in the surrounding society. The
interchange between university and society was always there.
Moreover, a
number of structures in contemporary university life excludes the public in new
and hitherto unknown ways. The exclusive focus on publication in scholarly
journals inaccessible and incomprehensible to the public at large, threatens to
make expert knowledge an affair exclusively for experts. I know of no wall
resembling an ivory tower more closely than the paywall of Elsevier.
Also, many successful academics now work in research centers and research project that have little or no contact with university students, thus severing the classic link between teaching and research; these centers, too, may at times look like ivory tower inhabited by the lucky minority of researchers able to procure large sums of external funding–mainly through having success in publishing in exclusive journals.
Also, many successful academics now work in research centers and research project that have little or no contact with university students, thus severing the classic link between teaching and research; these centers, too, may at times look like ivory tower inhabited by the lucky minority of researchers able to procure large sums of external funding–mainly through having success in publishing in exclusive journals.
However this may all be, the reemergence of the metaphor had me thinking about what genres I actually use or participate in when disseminating from my room in the supposed ivory tower. As a literary scholar, I am taken to be very muck out of touch; to inhabit a room very high up in the tower. But still: if I exclude the normal teaching genres, in what genres do I actually communicate with a broader public?
Foredrag (public lectures)
The foredrag (public lecture) is a big thing in Denmark, following a tradition dating back to N.F.S. Grundtvig. It's basic structure is one where an academic lectures a broader audience about a topic of common interest, and in a way that is both enlightning and entertaining. In fact, these two must be combined in order for the foredrag to be considered a success.I have done a few hundred of those.
Believe me: They cannot be done from the ivory tower. I have seen ivory tower-foredrag attempted; I do not want to see them attempted ever again. It's physically painful to watch.
Oh, and communal singing is often involved.
Journalist briefings
Aforementioned Grundtvig is central figure to Danish culture, so being an expert on him has often entailed briefing journalists about him. I have also briefed on other literary figures, on news satire, and on PhD education. This is a lot of fun, as you can be a little bit lighter when you are just presenting background and do not have to be quoted yourself.
Interviews
These cover several media, TV, radio, newspapers and an assortment of web pages, and they range from short quotes on this or that to extensive pieces of talk radio and even portrait-ish pieces. The media being what it is, I'm sometimes the expert, sometimes an "interesting person". In either case the interview form I encounter, is milder than in the interrogative form often adopted by journalists when interviewing politicians. So, I usually look pretty good - usually.
However, there is a catch. Journalistic interviews will often be seen from a specific angle, and the journalist does not have time for all the caution, all the nuances, and all the hedging, I like as an academic. So sometimes I feel slightly uneasy with the persona of me which appears in news outlets - and from time to time, I'm simply misquoted and look positively silly. But that's the name of the game, and I can live with it.
Answers to inquiries
I have not done a lot of this lately, but ever so often somebody simply gets in touch because they want to ask me stuff. It's frequently either retired people who are just curious, or it is active, and often charmingly assertive, high school students. The queries are often of a curious kind in the sense that questions to be answered tend towards, "what is, you know actually, for real-ish, the meaning of life, the universe, and everything". And these people mean business and are not taking 42 for an answer.
It's not mass communication but it is some sort of outreach (or "inreach" by the public, if you will), and it can get very intense. The payoff is probably not equal to the effort, but I quite like it.
Newspaper reviews
In my line of work, I could do newspaper reviews for ever and ever. A number of my colleagues have a strong dual identity as researchers and reviewers.
I have never done that many; I am no good at judging literary works in public, and even when reviewing non-fiction my hand seems to shake. ("Non-fiction", by the way, is a strange genre label, defined by a negative, but covering most of the writing that actually takes place, Jack Andersen, my colleague at the Center for Genre Research, can tell you more about that.) I simply don´t like taking the sharp approach that defines most good newspaper reviewers - and, I think, all the legendary ones.
Thus, my newspaper reviews always end up being quite friendly, and my persona as reviewer is somewhat defanged. I don´t do a lot of reviewing, and I don´t think I ever will. As a scholarly reviewer I seem to re-aquire my teeth and have no trouble at all biting to the bone, but those reviews are, obviously, not public outreach.
"Dissemination research"
I am not quite sure if this thing even has a genre name. But previously I did a lot of scholarly work in contexts where the actual publication was aimed at a broader audience: anthologies, popular journals, a literary history. This was actual research work, and a lot of what went into these publications was new knowledge fully on the level of my more sombre publications aimed exclusively at an audience of researchers.
I liked working in this genre. It combined my interests in research and in public outreach nicely, and it gave a broader audience access to my actual research; not "just" a later dissemination-version of said research. And given the central role of the interchange between academia and a wider public in Denmark (see "Foredrag" above), it also made me a lot of friends and drew an amount of attention worth the effort.
However, given the way money, status, and recognition moves in a contemporary research landscape, there is little time for such endeavors. Research efforts have to appear in publications that are clearly recognizable as research publications, and they have to be in English, and thus I lose my public research audience, even before the game begins.
This is a great loss and a cause of grief for me, but the structures are against the genre. It is of marginal importance in my writing today.
Newspaper articles and commentary
I have written a few of these, but they are rarely research dissemination proper. They have to be cut too close for (my) comfort. But I'll probably do a few more, come time.
Blogposts
QED.
So, it seems to me that the walls of my supposed ivory tower are pretty permeable. There are a number of genres available to me, in some of these, the outside world even comes to me in order to ask me to disseminate. Moreover, many of these genres are traditional in the sense that they have been handed down to me by previous researcher; and in turn I hand them down to new researchers as a way of getting them to work with dissemination.
When confronted with the metaphor of the ivory tower, I sometimes ask to know where it is, because I want to get in. This, of course, is fine for polemic purposes. But, truth to tell, I don´t want to get in; I am fine in a lively interchange.
And, on this day, I most certainly do not need Brexit to get me out of any ivory towers. In fact, the incompetent orange narcissist in The White House aside, I believe Brexit is one of the few things that could make me depressed enough with the world to isolate myself in an exclusive concentration on my research and the genres connected to it.
The foredrag (public lecture) is a big thing in Denmark, following a tradition dating back to N.F.S. Grundtvig. It's basic structure is one where an academic lectures a broader audience about a topic of common interest, and in a way that is both enlightning and entertaining. In fact, these two must be combined in order for the foredrag to be considered a success.I have done a few hundred of those.
Believe me: They cannot be done from the ivory tower. I have seen ivory tower-foredrag attempted; I do not want to see them attempted ever again. It's physically painful to watch.
Oh, and communal singing is often involved.
Journalist briefings
Aforementioned Grundtvig is central figure to Danish culture, so being an expert on him has often entailed briefing journalists about him. I have also briefed on other literary figures, on news satire, and on PhD education. This is a lot of fun, as you can be a little bit lighter when you are just presenting background and do not have to be quoted yourself.
Interviews
These cover several media, TV, radio, newspapers and an assortment of web pages, and they range from short quotes on this or that to extensive pieces of talk radio and even portrait-ish pieces. The media being what it is, I'm sometimes the expert, sometimes an "interesting person". In either case the interview form I encounter, is milder than in the interrogative form often adopted by journalists when interviewing politicians. So, I usually look pretty good - usually.
However, there is a catch. Journalistic interviews will often be seen from a specific angle, and the journalist does not have time for all the caution, all the nuances, and all the hedging, I like as an academic. So sometimes I feel slightly uneasy with the persona of me which appears in news outlets - and from time to time, I'm simply misquoted and look positively silly. But that's the name of the game, and I can live with it.
Answers to inquiries
I have not done a lot of this lately, but ever so often somebody simply gets in touch because they want to ask me stuff. It's frequently either retired people who are just curious, or it is active, and often charmingly assertive, high school students. The queries are often of a curious kind in the sense that questions to be answered tend towards, "what is, you know actually, for real-ish, the meaning of life, the universe, and everything". And these people mean business and are not taking 42 for an answer.
It's not mass communication but it is some sort of outreach (or "inreach" by the public, if you will), and it can get very intense. The payoff is probably not equal to the effort, but I quite like it.
Newspaper reviews
In my line of work, I could do newspaper reviews for ever and ever. A number of my colleagues have a strong dual identity as researchers and reviewers.
I have never done that many; I am no good at judging literary works in public, and even when reviewing non-fiction my hand seems to shake. ("Non-fiction", by the way, is a strange genre label, defined by a negative, but covering most of the writing that actually takes place, Jack Andersen, my colleague at the Center for Genre Research, can tell you more about that.) I simply don´t like taking the sharp approach that defines most good newspaper reviewers - and, I think, all the legendary ones.
Thus, my newspaper reviews always end up being quite friendly, and my persona as reviewer is somewhat defanged. I don´t do a lot of reviewing, and I don´t think I ever will. As a scholarly reviewer I seem to re-aquire my teeth and have no trouble at all biting to the bone, but those reviews are, obviously, not public outreach.
"Dissemination research"
I am not quite sure if this thing even has a genre name. But previously I did a lot of scholarly work in contexts where the actual publication was aimed at a broader audience: anthologies, popular journals, a literary history. This was actual research work, and a lot of what went into these publications was new knowledge fully on the level of my more sombre publications aimed exclusively at an audience of researchers.
I liked working in this genre. It combined my interests in research and in public outreach nicely, and it gave a broader audience access to my actual research; not "just" a later dissemination-version of said research. And given the central role of the interchange between academia and a wider public in Denmark (see "Foredrag" above), it also made me a lot of friends and drew an amount of attention worth the effort.
However, given the way money, status, and recognition moves in a contemporary research landscape, there is little time for such endeavors. Research efforts have to appear in publications that are clearly recognizable as research publications, and they have to be in English, and thus I lose my public research audience, even before the game begins.
This is a great loss and a cause of grief for me, but the structures are against the genre. It is of marginal importance in my writing today.
Newspaper articles and commentary
I have written a few of these, but they are rarely research dissemination proper. They have to be cut too close for (my) comfort. But I'll probably do a few more, come time.
Blogposts
QED.
So, it seems to me that the walls of my supposed ivory tower are pretty permeable. There are a number of genres available to me, in some of these, the outside world even comes to me in order to ask me to disseminate. Moreover, many of these genres are traditional in the sense that they have been handed down to me by previous researcher; and in turn I hand them down to new researchers as a way of getting them to work with dissemination.
When confronted with the metaphor of the ivory tower, I sometimes ask to know where it is, because I want to get in. This, of course, is fine for polemic purposes. But, truth to tell, I don´t want to get in; I am fine in a lively interchange.
And, on this day, I most certainly do not need Brexit to get me out of any ivory towers. In fact, the incompetent orange narcissist in The White House aside, I believe Brexit is one of the few things that could make me depressed enough with the world to isolate myself in an exclusive concentration on my research and the genres connected to it.
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