Stephen Walt on blogging
A scholar makes the case for public philosophy
Harvard professor and Foreign Policy blogger Stephen Walt reflects this week on his entry into the blogosphere. It’s an interesting look into the problems academics face in trying to communicate their ideas to the public and yet the necessity for them to do so. Walt explains the stark difference between academic writing and blogging – scholars take their time, carefully examine and qualify their arguments, and try to make things perfect, while bloggers are fast-paced, ambitious, and make necessarily provisional arguments.
But the most compelling part is his call to action toward other academics:
Indeed, given the concerns I’ve sometimes expressed about the “cult of irrelevance” in academe, I’ve come to believe that blogging ought to be actively encouraged in the academic world. I’m not saying that all political scientists, historians, or economists ought to start their own blogs, but we shouldn’t penalize scholars who do engage in this activity and we might even consider rewarding it, the same way we should reward scholars who care enough about public service to use their talents and training working in the public or NGO sector. It would be good for the IR field if academic scholars were expected to write a few blog posts every now and then, if only for the purpose of self-examination. If the typical academic had to write a blog for two weeks, they might discover they had nothing to say to their fellow citizens, couldn’t say it clearly, or that nobody cared. That experience might even lead a few of my fellow academics to scratch their heads and ask if they were investing their research time appropriately, which would be all to the good.
This, of course, is music to the public philosopher’s ears. There are a number of important points here. First, it’s interesting that he refers to an actual “cult” of irrelevance in academia; this implies that the tendency of scholars to veer toward the abstruse and abstract is cultural rather than inborn. There is no unwritten law that stipulates the continued irrelevancy of political science. Rather, the inertia of tenure pressures, risk aversion, and over-specialization may be at fault.
Secondly, Walt provides a way out. If academics were rewarded for or perhaps even required to engage the public as he has, he suggests that they would see their work in a different light. Blogging is one way of providing the tests of relevancy and practicality to one’s research in a way traditional scholarly venues can’t replicate. It also exposes one’s ideas to an incredibly large potential audience, which is both frightening (I may not be as smart as I thought I was) and helpful (now I know better).
I hope more academics follow in Professor Walt’s footsteps, and I would especially love to see political fields encourage public intellectualism in the way he describes. Do it not only for the good of the world of ideas, but for the very viability of your enterprise!
-Colin
Related posts:
- Blogging in pajamas
- Hobbes and religion … in Hebrew
- What is a public intellectual?
- The lessons of the Stephen Farrell rescue
- Public philosophy 4 kidz, continued
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