If you’re reading this, you know the American West has an Edge, but you may not know it has a Center. From that Center, Patricia Nelson Limerick writes about how to be a public scholar.
- Face up to the fact that your own convictions may not be the final word in human wisdom….
- … keep your hypotheses in a limber state; do not leap to conclusions; resist the common human habit of celebrating the evidence that supports your pre-existing point of view, while dismissing the evidence that invites you to question your assumptions.
- If you can find a way of making your case without angering your audience, getting their backs up, and making them defensive, by all means, choose that approach. Direct verbal combat is fun and self-satisfying but rarely productive….
All of this sounds very sensible, as the very sensible Timothy Burke says.
Now, here are some guidelines given me by an editor of op-eds:
- [Op-ed] pieces … prove a thesis. That thesis is almost always able to be phrased as: “Conventional wisdom says X. But X is wrong. Here’s why.”…
- Usually the first sentence of the second graf is something to the effect of “But this [conventional] analysis has it all wrong.”…
- In the case of possible objections to your argument, you … knock them down….
- [P]ieces [end] with a punchy and argumentative last sentence.
Do these bulleted lists sound compatible? I think they do not. So at least implicitly, Patricia Nelson Limerick’s model of how to be a public scholar must include “do not write op-eds.”
Indeed, the traditional model of writing commentary is not the model of public intellection she proposes; she has in mind “applied work,” or “Stand[ing] before an audience of federal employees, environmental advocates, county commissioners, state legislators, utility managers, or urban and regional planners. Hav[ing] those people look earnestly and expectantly at you, radiating the faith that a university-based historian will be able to say something that will be useful to them in their lives and careers.”
Limerick’s model of public scholarship entails becoming part of the process on which intellectuals normally remark; it’s antithetical to the critical role traditionally played by public intellectuals. This is—not to push a metaphor too far, but—a very “Center” kind of idea, and not an “Edge” one at all.
Op-eds, and op-ed discourse, are (as Michael Bérubé noted here) not the only game in town for your public scholar and there’s a lot to hate about them; blogdom offers more open-ended ways of engaging a non-scholarly public. But blogging too is more “Edge” than “Center,” more in keeping with the traditional role of intellectual.
21 comments
May 15, 2008 at 7:26 am
Timothy Burke
I don’t see anything intrinsically contradictory about writing op-eds and being a critical public intellectual. The problem with the op-ed bullet list is a problem with the current character of the op-ed. It’s not that blogging (or intellectuals) should adapt to the op-ed; it’s that the op-ed is stuck in a peculiarly static and lifeless pose at the moment, captive to old-media journalism’s rear-guard defense against online media forms.
May 15, 2008 at 7:34 am
Vance Maverick
Reading an op-ed, I know it has to make a point in a limited space, and will often take the contrarian tack (in order to register at all). So if it comes out swinging simplistically, without accounting for disagreement, I’m not surprised. In other words, if its audience reads with reasonable expectations, then an op-ed that follows the editor’s rules won’t actually break Limerick’s rules.
The fatal defect, though, is brevity. There’s seldom enough space for the op-ed to be fair even to the arguments on its own side. (Krugman at his best, i.e., when the subject doesn’t have to do with the Obama campaign, has managed, sometimes miraculously.) But the narrowness of space means only a fortune cookie’s worth of thought can be transmitted: it’s public, but not very intellectual. Of course, the demise of the newspaper is making it less public all the time.
May 15, 2008 at 7:37 am
eric
Timothy, the contradiction I see is not between writing op-eds and being critical, it’s between writing op-eds and being a Limerick-style public scholar.
I think the op-ed has its problems, but I don’t think they’re related to the challenge posed by new media. I think op-eds are intrinsically punchy, argumentative, and in a scholarly sense, incomplete. They’re 800 words long, for pete’s sake. And they’re, if you like, a short 800 words—in an 800-word blog post all the words can be yours, because you can link to things you reference; in an op-ed you have to summarize the arguments you’re opposing and the evidence you’re adducing before you get on to your own ideas. Go back before the new media, and they look much the same as they do now.
May 15, 2008 at 7:37 am
eric
Or what Vance said.
May 15, 2008 at 8:20 am
Timothy Burke
I think you can be conflicted, ambiguous or critical in brief. I don’t think they have to “knock down all objections”; in 800 words you can also usefully muddy waters that others take to be clear.
May 15, 2008 at 8:22 am
eric
in 800 words you can also usefully muddy waters that others take to be clear
You can, yes: can you get it published on an op-ed page?
May 15, 2008 at 9:01 am
andrew
Limerick has written op-eds for the New York Times; I think at one point she was actually filling in for someone for a week or so. I don’t know how they compare to the guidelines above.
May 15, 2008 at 9:08 am
Vance Maverick
The theses of the pieces I can find seem to be (1) the West is beautiful and (2) there should be greater comity and conversation in public life.
May 15, 2008 at 9:11 am
Adam Arenson
I was about to make Andrew’s point.
My impression, too, is that as Limerick becomes more interested in starting conversations at her Center between seemingly opposing sides–environmentalists and oil executives, etc.–she has embraced a sense of consensus, where in her academic work she is still willing to press hard to make her perspective heard.
Her most recent columns for the New York Times struck me as the reflective, implied kind, something Nicholas Kristof and Timothy Egan do well. It’s a strategy of not staking a position as much as describing the dire situation, and then allowing the reader to solidify the appropriate, hinted-to convictions.
So perhaps less a contradiction than a difference in styles…
May 15, 2008 at 9:20 am
Timothy Burke
No, of course you can’t get a piece that muddies the water published on a op-ed page, but that’s my point. The problem is with op-eds as a genre at present.
May 15, 2008 at 9:27 am
eric
The problem is with op-eds as a genre at present.
Yeah, I agree with you, except I would put the period after “genre”.
I actually did know that Limerick writes op-eds and indeed, on one of the most important op-ed pages in the English-writing world.
I’m not sure that she got to write them because she followed the guidelines she gives here, though.
May 15, 2008 at 7:55 pm
shadowcook
That may be so, Eric. I offer this only. Sometimes when a piece by an academic public intellectual shows up in the mainstream press that my non-academic liberal friends read, they ask me if I know the writer. Limerick took over for Maureen Dowd for a couple of weeks about a year or so ago. To a man and woman, they loved her columns and even went so far as to express the irritating wish that more academics wrote like her. None of them commented on her edginess or whatever point she was making. They relished the information and perspective. I get the same feedback about Lepore’s New Yorker pieces.
I believe this is a question of audience. Which audience? There are a lot of people out there who do not find polemics interesting or comfortable. They want to read more of the sort of thing that reinforces and further informs the opinions they already hold.
May 15, 2008 at 8:14 pm
eric
They want to read more of the sort of thing that reinforces and further informs the opinions they already hold.
This is indeed a very establishment, very Center idea. It’s hardly a way to change things, to tell people that what they think is jolly terrific.
May 16, 2008 at 6:21 am
The Constructivist
Depending on where you live and the size of your local newspaper, it’s not all that hard to get an op ed published and make up your own rules. In the smaller places, usually all you gotta do is ask.
As to the notion that a public intellectual must be a critical intellectual, I have 2 responses: (1) most aren’t, if you count as public intellectuals the neoliberals and neoconservative think tankers and university types who get the most place, and most never will be as long as we have the political economy we have; (2) there are a lot of ways to be critical and I don’t see how getting dialogues started between those who aren’t used to addressing each other can’t be a part of that.
More elaboration on the Edge/Center reversal, please!
May 16, 2008 at 7:00 am
eric
I don’t see why mine are controversial claims. Let me review this as I understand it.
1. Limerick is proposing that if you want to be a public intellectual, you need to act as you would act in the classroom—respect for nuance, opposing viewpoints, perhaps seeking consensus.
2. I am saying in response, I do not think this is how you get to be a public intellectual, and I offer as evidence the guidelines for writing op-eds—which nobody has suggested do not more or less accurately reflect how most op-eds are written.
Now in response some people have said, but Limerick didn’t write her op-eds like this for NYT. And some others have noted, but her earlier work—her better-known books—are indeed less conciliatory in tone.
Which I would suggest is consistent with my observation: maybe once you have reached the Center, you can be conciliatory, but that is not how you get to the Center.
May 16, 2008 at 8:36 am
The Constructivist
Isn’t this just a standard sell-out argument? How do you afford your rock and roll lifestyle?
May 16, 2008 at 8:40 am
The Constructivist
I shouldn’t be commenting while grading. Or posting!
May 16, 2008 at 8:43 am
eric
Isn’t this just a standard sell-out argument?
No, I don’t think so. Isn’t “the standard sell-out argument” that X has “gone soft” with success, or maybe suddenly and for clear reasons become attuned to the need for a reduction in the estate tax? I think—I hope I think—I’m being more charitable than that. I am not suggesting that PNL has “gone soft,” nor indeed am I imputing any motive.
May 16, 2008 at 11:36 am
The Constructivist
See, that’s what I get for trying to have my Cake and eat it, too!
May 16, 2008 at 11:37 am
The Constructivist
That was a lot of work for a bad joke. Back to real work!
May 21, 2008 at 5:25 pm
eric
See, I’m not hip. You should never forget this when trying to crack jokes around here.