Back in March, my friend, Jamie Smith, wrote on his Substack, “Quid Amo,” (which I highly recommend by the way), a post about public scholarship and five thoughts, or pieces of advice he would offer to scholars thinking about moving into such spaces.
Well, I was recently asked by my another friend of mine what I would add to Jamie’s list. So, today I will try to offer a few more “unsolicited pieces of advice,” as Jamie puts it, about public scholarship.
First, here are Jamie’s five points:
Public scholarship is not the same as punditry.
Don’t neglect basic research.
WAIT. Start late.
Public scholarship is not synonymous with brand cultivation or platform building.
Lots of good public scholarship is relatively invisible.
I won’t elaborate or explain any of his points (go read his post).
In my own case, I spent the first 15 years of my academic career talking almost exclusively to academic audiences. I authored or edited numerous books, edited special journal issues, authored nearly dozens and dozens of articles and book chapters, and wrote more book reviews, symposia contributions, and conference papers than I care to count.
About 5 years ago, though, something changed in me - a change I talk about in detail in my recent popular audience book, Camping with Kierkegaard.
That change was a light-switch moment, but there had been many earlier events that contributed to my leaning in such a direction. I had been on numerous panels about public scholarship. I had been an advocate for open-access publishing (and even served on the board of directors for an OA press and gave a presentation to an NEH review board encouraging an embrace of more public-facing scholarship). I had also given numerous presentations to “public” audiences such as young alumni groups, business events, and community organizations. My point is that I had done a lot to lay the groundwork for the substantive change in my professional focus and energies. The thing that I now realize, though, is that I never really considered what I was doing as anything other than “scholarship.” I never narrated any of my activities as deviating from the hope of doing excellent philosophy for whoever was interested in thinking with me.
That said, it was obviously easier to do such work with other academics since they already had the built-in interest and background to allow for very high-level discourse.
Nonetheless, for the past 5 years or so, my primary interest has been to speak to broader audiences, to reach beyond the academy, and to invite people into these philosophical ideas rather than just talking to folks who already understand them.
I have made many missteps along the way, but I genuinely love doing as much public scholarship as I do now. I still do quite a bit of writing and speaking to academic audiences, but, to be honest, I have to motivate myself to do it. What really brings me joy (now that I am 47 years old and a Full Professor) is not the same thing that brought me professional joy when I was 28 and just finishing graduate school.
Anyway, having now published a book of popular philosophy, hosting a podcast, “Campfire Philosophy,” writing regularly here on Substack for “Philosophy in the Wild,” and also having done almost 300 videos on my YouTube channel, “Philosophy for Where We Find Ourselves,” I have learned a lot about how to do (and not to do) public scholarship. For a taste of such work, here is the recent episode of “Campfire Philosophy” that features two other amazing public philosophers: Aaron James and Nick Riggle.
Accordingly, with full awareness that you didn’t really ask for my advice, here are a few more things I would add to Jamie’s list.
Be prepared for a very different kind of criticism.
John Caputo once said of Merold Westphal that he was the most courageous Continental philosopher in the field because Westphal was willing to write in a way that folks could actually understand. The reason the joke works is because when you write clearly and lucidly and, perhaps most importantly, accessibly, you open yourself up to challenge from a far wider audience. If only experts can understand what you are saying, then the criticism that is going to be offered is likely to be very narrow and technical. But, when you write about topics of relevance to human existence, more broadly, then the objections are going to come from all corners! This was tough to get used to, I admit. Yet, I now think that the criticism is tempered by the similarly broad positive feedback. In particular, hearing that my work has genuinely helped someone in their daily life had a very different traction to me now than hearing that some other scholar has used my work as support for their own technical work.
It can be tough to navigate the burden of responsibility for how you are received.
Look, I get that you can’t control how your work is read and misread. All you can do is try to make things clear and then throw it out there. But, I often get emails now from readers that I don’t know personally telling me things about how they have made big changes in their lives as a result of being inspired by my work. That is a strange thing. That a graduate student reads Kierkegaard or Levinas slightly differently after reading one of my books is far different than hearing that someone quit their job, or has taken a new position, or has radically transformed how they spend their time, etc. Though I am always profoundly humbled when I hear such things, it is a responsibility that I fear I am unable to bear easily. I write what I think needs said and what I hope others will find compelling, but it is meant as an invitation to think together, not as wisdom offered from on high. I am not a prophet. I am not a guru. Most days, I am a barely passable virtuous person in my dealings with others. And yet, there is something about seeing/hearing/reading the work of another that tends to elevate the author in ways that are continuously difficult for me to know how to navigate. All I can do is suggest that you keep folks around you who ensure that you are never able to drink your own kool-aid. My wife is always ready to remind me that I am a doofus and watch too much Frasier. I am very thankful for her. So, although I can’t bear the moral weight of the choices of others, I do think it is important to realize that public scholarship will often encourage transformed lives, not just changed opinions. That is tough to handle some days.
You are very likely to get dumber if you are not careful.
One of the great problems with having any sort of “following” (be it on social media or wherever else) is that it can be tempting to think that you are always right. Applause is an addictive drug. So, although the criticism might come from more directions (see point 6), leaning into the spaces where folks are celebrating your work is an easy corrective. And yet, as many many philosophers remind us, it is crucial to be surrounded by “friends of virtue.” As an academic, I think that we must continue to sharpen our abilities and our arguments by submitting them to the fire of challenge from others who are every bit as good (and maybe a whole lot better) than us at the game we are trying to play. As I often tell my students, if you are always winning at tennis, it might be because you keep playing middle-schoolers! So, even as you engage in public scholarship, find ways to engage other scholars about the claims and arguments and views you are defending in public. Bad arguments do not get better when they are found in a New York Times Bestseller. Indeed, they just become far far more socially destructive. So, don’t forget to be more committed to excellence than you are to the size of your audience.
Be careful not to be crushed under a different notion of deadlines.
One of the genuinely soul-killing facts about academic life is feeling like you never have enough time to do everything that needs done. Part of why moving into public scholarship can be refreshing is that it can, at least initially, free you of those publication deadlines, conference submission requirements, and semester timeframes that haunt us constantly as we desperately wait for the next sabbatical when we assure ourselves we will finally get “caught up.” But, if you really throw yourself into public scholarship the pressure of ensuring that you get that video up on YouTube or that post up on Substack every week, etc., can itself be just as joy-robbing. Find ways to remind yourself that the point is to think well with others, not to feed the machine of consumerism.
Build community and trust, not a brand.
Jamie was right to say that public scholarship is not the same thing as brand building. What I would add to that point is that public scholarship should be invested in community building. We scholars should do our best to encourage social trust, the social norms of good reason-giving, the epistemic virtue of humility and honest, and the discursive practices that foster lives of meaning. Again, it is not that we have this all figured out and are now writing an instruction manual. Far from it! Instead, we should be inviting people to care about thinking well. But to do that, we must model what it looks like to be humble about our own thinking, to be honest about our own bias, and to be receptive and responsive to the objections that are offered from folks who may lack the academic training we bring to the table. Think about your work as bread-breaking at table fellowship rather than a presentation about self-help that gets you more press, praise, and profit. There is nothing wrong with financial support for your work (indeed, I am so so very grateful for all the folks who partner with me to support my own work), but as soon as I approach this as a matter of brand building and revenue generation, I have allowed priorities directly at odds with philosophical truth-seeking to impact what I say and how I say it. So, do your best to keep pulling up chairs at the table of thought, rather than getting people to wear your t-shirts while proselytizing at other tables.
Ok, I hope some of that is helpful to you. Let me hear what you think about these unsolicited pieces of advice. I am especially interested in how these ideas might apply more broadly than just to academics doing public work. Maybe they are also relevant to where you find yourself in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. Let’s think together.
This is truly good. I especially like your contrast of brand and community. It is the difference between philosopher and influencer. Both may influence, but one is centered in an empty void while the other in the hard work of community.
Well said. What you’ve said here is helpful to me, because you’ve put into words some of the germs of thoughts about this that have been lying under the soil of my mind for a while now. Thanks.