Abstract
The storming of the Capitol on January 6 was a ghastly bookend to an American presidency unlike any other in this nation’s history. Donald Trump began his term by promising to end “American carnage” and to “make America great again.” He ended it by encouraging a violent coup against democracy.
These developments provide only the latest reason why academics should speak out publicly. We need to lend our voices to the work of preserving and reforming the political system that the former president and his allies have tried to destroy.
I must admit that, after more than 40 years of teaching, it was hard for me to find my bearings at the start of the Trump era. But the more I saw the damage the former president was doing to public discourse, and to the simple idea that truth matters, the more I became convinced that my academic colleagues and I needed to speak out and get into the arena.
Doing so requires spending less time in cloistered conversations with each other and more time drawing on our expertise to speak to a public audience. It means devoting energy that might have produced more specialized contributions to my field’s journals to the illumination of public issues.
At this moment in our history, too much is at stake for college and university teachers to persist in our teaching and research, as we did before Trump came on the scene.
So I decided to take the plunge and joined the conversation about the issues and outrages of the day. In that process, I have sometimes felt like an envoy from a place where facts still matter to a world in disarray.
I pledged myself to follow a few rules: Leave the jargon behind. Write and speak in ways that the general public might find compelling. Persist in the face of hostile responses.
None of this came easily.
Part of my difficulty came from the fact that I have publicly eschewed what I once derisively called “advocacy academics.”
More than 30 years ago, the sociologist Susan Silbey and I published an essay entitled “The Pull of the Policy Audience.” We examined the involvement of academics in the early New Deal and took to task our colleagues who followed in their footsteps by conducting scholarship designed to promote political causes.
There and elsewhere, I was highly critical of public intellectuals who seemed to sacrifice rigor in order to reach people outside the academy. Their work did little to advance the academic fields that accorded them the platform from which they spoke.
I confess that I was one of those faculty members who, as Arizona State University Professor Devoney Looser puts it, hung on “tenaciously to the notion that speaking exclusively to the fewest, smartest people is evidence of thinking the deepest, best thoughts.”
As I tried to get a foothold in the “commentariat,” I hoped that few would remember what I’d written about “pulls” and “policy audiences.” And I have had to learn the tricks of the trade, most of which rub up against deeply engrained academic habits.
When you write, be pithy. Colorful. Put the lead up front. Show you know something that others do not. Present a clear critique and policy recommendation preferably in 1,000 words or so.
Not being a regular columnist for any outlet, I also had to figure out how to peddle my wares in an environment where things move very quickly, where saying the unexpected and garnering “likes,” retweets, and reactions—often even hostile ones—is the order of the day.
Newsmakers are in a hurry. Speed counts. Deadlines matter. Be ready to drop everything when breaking news intersects with your expertise.
My writing has appeared regularly (in 2020 I published 85 pieces) in The Guardian, The Washington Post, USA Today, Slate, CNN, and other media outlets. But along the way, I have had to get used to the fact that the response to many of my pitches would be no response at all. Nada.
When editors do answer, they often just say that they will “pass.” And never an explanation for this result. No peer reviews with suggestions for improvement. Revise and resubmit? Forget about it.
But I admit it is great when you catch the moment and an editor responds, “We’ll take it.”
The rewards: seeing things appear quickly, using scholarly expertise for the public good, and reaching a large audience. One my pieces got several hundred thousand views, substantially more than the total number of readers for all of my academic work combined.
There are however clear down sides, like seeing your work vanish from public view just as rapidly as it appears.
I also have to admit that I am not sure what my colleagues think. Do they regard me with the same jaundiced eye that I once cast on the public intellectuals and the policy audience?
Moreover, colleges and universities don’t really know how to assess public writing. While communications offices praise public writing and promote our work, it doesn’t seem to “count” in a way that helps secure jobs, tenure, or salary increases.
Did any piece I wrote about Trump’s authoritarianism, former Attorney General William Barr’s fecklessness or the continuing cruelty of America’s death penalty change anyone’s mind or otherwise made a difference? I cannot see it yet, and I’ll never know.
But, as Edward Said rightly noted, public intellectuals help the societies in which they live to maintain “a state of constant alertness.” Their work serves their fellow citizens by manifesting “a perpetual willingness not to let half-truths or received ideas steer one along.”
I took on the role Said describes to combat Trump’s half-truths and insidious lies. In the world that he leaves behind, there is no sign that the assault on truth will end.
I will continue to write as I have in order to bear witness to the power of truth and the possibility of building a more just and less dangerous society. I hope others who have not already done so will join in that work and that colleges and universities will encourage them to do so.