Disturbing Academia

My friend Andy has been briefly exploring the academic publishing process at his blog Wide Scope. His perspective is going to be different than mine, because we both occupy very different positions within academia. He is a professor presumably pursuing tenure; I’m a lowly PhD candidate. That said, we have privately expressed frustration to one another about the relatively cliquish of academia, an activity that seems the antithesis of reasonable, open discourse.

The cliquishness that I object to has to do with particular schools of critical thought, as it often seems as if those specialists focus so specifically on their own perspective that they leave no time or energy for any other perspective. So we’re left with a situation in which some of the world’s most learned people have gone from open explorers of important ideas to close-minded cranks who refuse to consider anything but their own perspective. This is troublesome.

The journaling process might be part of the problem, as journals within disciplines tend to be controlled by the particular schools of thought that dominate those disciplines. As a result, professors hoping to get published might believe that their ability to publish is limited by their willingness to attach themselves to various schools of thought.

I know that I’d like to study political philosophy - because I want to be a millionaire, and political philosophers make millions…right? Have I been misled? - but I’ve been presented a world in which there are three schools: historians of political thought, political theorists, and political philosophers. Each of these schools claims various parts of the political philosophical literature as their own, and then claims dominion over what can and cannot be done with political philosophy. These groups are so ingrained into the vastness of academia, I imagine that it can be hard to exist on their margins. I’ve heard horror stories of professors from one school having their applications thrown out by hiring committees comprised of another school’s members.

Because really, what says academic integrity more than allowing the political philosophers of one group to exist at a particular academic institution?

Yet apparently, this is the industry standard. Few bat an eyelash at the apparent hypocrisy of belonging to a school of thought while simultaneously promoting exploration of problems. How can that exploration occur if the framework of the answer is predetermined? How can published work be genuine if some of it is designed to satisfy the school of thought instead of the facts?

More on this subject later.