[As I did a
couple years back, I wanted to start the fall semester by highlighting a
few of the things I’m working on and looking forward to this fall. I’d love to
hear about what you’ve got going on for the final few months of 2014 as well!]
On the community
that’s working to advance a vital goal.
I’ve written a
great deal in this space—including this
week-long series—on the ideals, challenges, and complex realities of public
scholarship. Producing such scholarship, becoming a public scholar, has become
a central, lifelong goal of mine, but I recognize full well the obstacles and
pitfalls that come with such a goal. And I don’t mean only the frightening
kinds of attacks and punishments that have come the way of public scholars such
as William
Cronin and Steven
Salaita in recent years, although those are worst-case scenarios to be
sure. But there are also more mundane frustrations inherent to public
scholarship, starting (and maybe ending) with this one: it’s incredibly
difficult to know what, if anything, an individual can do to move toward such a
goal.
I’m not going to
pretend like I have any definite answers to that frustration, but I do believe
this: as with most anything, a supportive community working together toward
that goal goes a long way toward helping any individual get there. And I’m very
proud and excited to say that I have recently joined precisely such a community
of public scholars: the
Scholars Strategy Network. SSN comprises nearly 500 scholars, spread out
across a huge range of universities and institutions, all working toward the
shared goal of “Research to Improve Policy and Enhance Democracy.” We do so
through a similarly wide range of mechanisms: two-page Briefs,
such as my
first on diversity in American history; op-eds, placed in newspapers and other
media; and panel discussions, workshops, and many other forms of
conversation hosted by SSN’s regional
networks.
I’ve just begun
to get involved with SSN, through the Boston
regional network, and look forward to a number of fall events and
opportunities that will help me further develop both that communal connection
and my individual work and voice. And that’s the key to an effort like SSN, I
would argue: that there’s no distinction between the communal and individual
goals, that instead the advancement of the former entails and depends on
successes in the latter (and vice versa). Too much of the time, in academia as
in every other facet of 21st century American life, individual
success is framed as a competition with other individuals, as a zero-sum game.
Of course realities like the job market contribute to such narratives, and I
don’t mean to dismiss such realities or their effects. But on a larger scale,
SSN embodies the Bruce Springsteen philosophy to which I still hold: “Remember,
in the end, nobody wins unless everybody wins.”
Next fall plan
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What's on your autumn agenda?
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