Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user Alexandra Samuel on 2005-03-08
It’s been an exciting 48 hours here on alexandrasamuel.com. It’s been swell hearing from all the folks who were shocked, outraged or otherwise engaged by my digressions (in November, and this week) on the subject of Condoleezza Rice’s political science career, but I think it’s time I got back to to the business at hand: thinking about the Internet’s role in public engagement.
So in the spirit of effective online dialogue, let me highlight a few points of agreement, as well as a few points of continued discord.
First and foremost, let me be clear on my true, tongue-out-of-cheek position: Neither Condoleezza Rice nor any other academic, in any field, should ever be academically sanctioned for any speech or activity that enjoys the protection of the First Amendment (or up here in Canada, of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms). I can perhaps see why people took my original post as a serious call for Dr. Rice’s removal from the halls (registry? annals?) of political science, but it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek.
And second, let me agree with all those who pointed out that political science is not a “real” science. I am always available for a long diatribe on this subject myself, and will happily sign on for a campaign to rename it political studies. My original post was aimed as much at deflating the significance of my own Ph.D. as at deflating Dr. Rice’s.
While the above amounts to significant agreement on the substantive issues, there was continued disagreement over the terms and tenor of debate. A number of frustrated would-be commenters have blasted my policy of rejecting fully anonymous, unaccountable posts. They have every right to express their views on this issue, and on my original posts, and there are plenty of places on the net where fully anonymous commentary is more than welcome. But I am under no personal obligation to provide a home for their anonymous comments, particularly in the context of a site that is dedicated to meaningful and accountable dialogue. I know their disappointment in having their comments rejected is shared by a large number of advocates for Texas hold-em poker.
Finally, let me point out the encouraging evidence that this discussion has provided for the notion of online deliberation. Even in the face of blatant partisanship, failed efforts at humour, and rhetorical excesses — mine and others’, on all three counts — this discussion managed to evoke substantive engagement with an important issue: how can we distinguish between unsanctionable errors in academic conduct, and sanctionable violations in other fields? The very effective critique posted at Kalblog included this terrific answer to that core question:
The reason why there’s nothing analogous to disbarment or being stripped of your medical license is because political scientists can’t seriously hurt anyone while practicing political science, because all they do is teach, research, and write books and papers that maybe four other people in their area of expertise will ever read. Sure, some students may sleep through their classes instead of learning something, and I’ve even heard of a few particularly bad cases of students actually coming out of a political science class knowing less than when they went in, but they’re not like doctors or lawyers who actually can make life-and-death decisions that really affect people. Sure, Condi’s impacted a lot of lives as National Security Advisor, and will affect many more at State, but she isn’t “practicing political science” in any academic sense.
This is an excellent argument against holding academics professionally accountable for their contributions to public life — and an equally good argument for holding them morally and intellectually accountable. Condoleezza Rice has almost certainly had a far more wide-reaching impact on the world through her role in the Bush Administration than she could ever hope for as a political science scholar. But precisely because of their potential impact, we should ask all political scientists engaged in public service to hold their work to some approximation of the intellectual and professional standards we demand of the colleagues who remain inside the academy.
I guess I’m now a real blogger: I’ve had my first and second thrashings at the hands of fellow bloggers. My offending entry suggested that Condoleezza Rice be excommunicated from the (admittedly permeable) bounds of political science on the grounds of gross malpractice. So much for satire.
As an ardent free speecher myself, I’m not unsympathetic to their critiques (though, given the blogs in question, I wonder whether they’d have been as quick to oppose the professional excommunication of say, Noam Chomsky). The real irony is that free speech activism was a central part of the Ph.D. in question.
But now, just to be ornery, I’d like to raise a larger question: are we saying that any field in which the work product is intellectual or artistic must be free of all professional sanctions? After all, we (generally) accept the idea that doctors can lose their licenses, or that lawyers can be disbarred for violations of their professions’ core standards. But the idea of “excommunicating” a political scientist for egregious violations of even the loosest pretensions to empirical validation or the pursuit of truth somehow feels (even to me) problematic. Partly because of the practical effects — as my critics point out, it’s far more likely that junior academics will be censured than that senior celebrity academics will be — but partly because we have that well-founded, principled skepticism about anything that smells like censorship.
The difficulty is that in any field that consists of creating and promulgating words and ideas — such as academia — there is no way to hold people accountable without in some way setting parameters on what kinds of speech will be acceptable within the bounds of the field. We seem willing to live with those parameters, in some contexts: when would-be academics present dissertations that are inadequate to the intellectual standards of their field, they are denied the professional recognition of a Ph.D. And when journalists plagiarize text or falsify stories, we don’t argue for the protection of their jobs on free speech grounds.
But wait, you say, wouldn’t even tenured academics be sanctioned if they falsified information? See, now you’re catching on.
I recognize that, as a practical matter, any effort at holding current members of any academic field to the research and intellectual standards imposed on would-be Ph.D.s would inevitably and unacceptably compromise speech rights. But as an issue of principle, do we really believe that it is undesirable for our nations’ intellectuals and educators to be held to some sort of collective standard of intellectual integrity?
UPDATE: COMMENTS AND ACCOUNTABILITY
This thread has certainly brought a lot of free speech advocates out of the woodwork. I’ve had lots of comments on this post, as well as on my original entry, some of which you can read below. But it is interesting to note that many of these would-be free speech defenders have submitted their comments anonymously — which is not exactly in keeping with a committment to free and open debate. The difference between diatribe and dialogue is that in a dialogue, people both talk and listen; if you’re not available to receive responses to your comments, you’re not listening, and you’re certainly not engaging in dialogue or debate.
For that reason, I will only approve comments that have a verifiable e-mail address, and not one created for the sole purpose of commenting on this blog. That doesn’t mean you have to use your real name to post — one of the great things about the Internet is that people can build meaningful reputations and accountability using traceable or untraceable handles. (Another theme of my dissertation, by the way, for those of you who are actually interested in whether my own research meets the standards I am advocating.)
But I do expect people to take on some form of accountability for their comments. After all, I have put my name on my posts — why should my fellow defenders of free speech be shy about standing behind theirs?
UPDATE: FOR THE RECORD
What I think about what other people think about what I think. What do you think?
Wired has a story on how the US government is using RSS as a tool for communicating with the public. This is great news, since RSS is a nice way of bridging “push” and “pull” (remember how trendy that distinction used to be?) The Wired story links to RSS Gov, a web site that tracks government use of RSS.
But in a classic example of unintended consequences, my search for a nice tidy definition of push vs. pull turned up this web site about Internet evangelism, which announces that April 24 2005 will be World Internet Evangelism Day. How’s that for a concept? Anyhow could make for an interesting example of using the Internet as a mass mobilization tool. Stay tuned….
Yesterday I finally received my doctorate. The actual piece of Latin-inscribed paper showed up at my door care of Fedex (classy move, Harvard!), officially licensing me in the practice of political science.
Yesterday was also the deadline for submitting proposals for the 2005 meetings of the American Political Science Association. And in a not-entirely-unrelated story, yesterday also saw President Bush announce his choice for Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice — herself a political scientist.
This confluence of events had me thinking about what the hell it means to be a political scientist, anyhow. I don’t think there is a tent big enough to hold me and one of the chief architects of the present war in Iraq. And I have to wonder about our collective pretensions to positive social science when someone can hold onto her political science credentials while acting as one of the most persistent defenders of that “weapons of mass destruction” trope.
So I’ve been thinking: shouldn’t political science have its equivalent to disbarment or excommunication? After all, if we want the term “political scientist” to mean something, then a doctorate shouldn’t be a one-way ticket. When political scientists promulgate ideas or institute policies that violate even the most generous interpretations of our collective wisdom, they are not only disregarding their own academic training, but devaluing the intellectual authority and standards of our field. So shouldn’t there be some threshold — it can be a generous one — beyond which one loses the right to practice political science?
Ah well. Any field that still claims Henry Kissinger as one of its own can certainly survive Condoleezza Rice.
UPDATE: COMMENTS AND ACCOUNTABILITY
This thread has certainly brought a lot of free speech advocates out of the woodwork. I’ve had lots of comments on this post, as well as on my subsequent entry, some of which you can read below. But it is interesting to note that many of these would-be free speech defenders have submitted their comments anonymously — which is not exactly in keeping with a committment to free and open debate. The difference between diatribe and dialogue is that in a dialogue, people both talk and listen; if you’re not available to receive responses to your comments, you’re not listening, and you’re certainly not engaging in dialogue or debate.
For that reason, I will only approve comments that have a verifiable e-mail address, and not one created for the sole purpose of commenting on this blog. That doesn’t mean you have to use your real name to post — one of the great things about the Internet is that people can build meaningful reputations and accountability using traceable or untraceable handles. (Another theme of my dissertation, by the way, for those of you who are actually interested in whether my own research meets the standards I am advocating.)
But I do expect people to take on some form of accountability for their comments. After all, I have put my name on my posts — why should my fellow defenders of free speech be shy about standing behind theirs?
UPDATE: FOR THE RECORD
What I think about what other people think about what I think. What do you think?