Fraudulent news allegations circulate, the “alternative facts” of politicians have become commonplace, and funding for the arts and humanities faces the threat of decline. In the age of Trump, scholars must step out of the shadows of their libraries, their labs, and their classrooms — or risk the day when those libraries, labs, and classes will not be able to cast shadows. Today more than ever, scholars must produce scholarship for the public.
Although the political climate promises to drain the pools of funding on which scholars rely, it does not appear to be squelching public thirst for scholarly research on the critical challenges we face as a nation: disenfranchisement, sexism, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, sexual violence, inequality, violent policing, incarceration, poverty, war, climate change, terror, deportations, and limited access to education and health care.
It is not a coincidence that scholars took home all three of the recent major nonfiction awards: Pulitzer Prizes in both history and general nonfiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. The University of Michigan’s Heather Ann Thompson won the Pulitzer for history for Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (Pantheon). The Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond received the Pulitzer for general nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction for Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Crown). The Emory University African-American studies scholar Carol Anderson won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism for White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide (Bloomsbury), and one of us, Ibram X. Kendi, won the National Book Award for nonfiction for Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Nation Books).
In comparison, only one of these five book prizes went to an author with an academic affiliation in last year’s award cycle.
Why can’t a public lecture be esteemed as highly as a conference presentation?
The growing attacks on the credibility of journalists and the burgeoning skepticism of partisan politicians, judges, and talking heads seem to have provided a unique opportunity for scholars, drenched in their research, to replenish the minds of the nation. The public appears to be experiencing a vacuum of expertise. Perhaps people will now bestow more trust on the expertise of America’s notoriously and proudly independent academics.
Scholars can defend truth, if they can only yank themselves out of their conferences, their journals, and their academic jargon. Now more than ever before, scholars must be at the forefront of public debate.
This means more public scholarship, not more public scholars. The distinction is a crucial one. Public scholars are known by the public. Public scholarship directly impacts the public.
To bring this about, we must think creatively about how we can produce scholarship that touches lives far beyond the walls of academe, a conversation that is already underway.
The innovation and proliferation of public syllabi — including #Fergusonsyllabus, #Charlestonsyllabus, and Trump Syllabus 2.0 — underscores how academics are using their knowledge base to provide literature for people trying to understand these difficult racial times. Some of the blogs and podcasts produced by scholars are attracting a wide readership and influence beyond the academy, efforts that are increasingly being recognized in the profession. In 2015, for example, the American Historical Association released a set of Guidelines for the Professional Evaluation of Digital Scholarship by Historians. The guidelines emphasized the significant role of digital history in “expanding what history is, and can do, as a field, as well as the audiences that it addresses.” Other disciplines should follow suit.
But scholars and administrators can do more. Professional association leaders, department chairs, deans, and provosts must encourage and reward public scholarship. Tenure and promotion committees should make public scholarship the expectation — not the exception. They must take concrete steps toward ensuring that scholars receive credit for the diverse ways they produce their scholarship.
Why can’t a public lecture be esteemed as highly as a conference presentation? Why can’t trade books be valued as much as university press books? Why can’t editing a blog be equated to editing a journal? Instead of publishing a study in a journal — and hoping the media publicizes it — why can’t scholars also receive credit for a short essay published in a periodical based on the findings in the longer journal essay? Why can’t academics devise novel ways to update the peer-review process for public scholarship?
The traditionally slow pace of change in academe is yet again out of step with the quickening march of information. Academe’s hallowed review process is exceptional in stopping the flow of fake scholarship. But when scholars regard only those works that have undergone this time-consuming and tedious review process as scholarly, when scholars demand field-specific jargon, and when scholars call for in-depth literature reviews, they are discouraging public scholarship. Only academics obsess over which books and articles were cited. Only academics want to slog through heavy jargon.
To be sure, some academics, like us, prefer not to read jargon or insanely long literature reviews. But, even though it has been proven ineffective and inefficient in reaching the public, these practices remain the norm.
There is a distinction between literature produced for experts in the field and literature aimed at the general public. But whether it is considered scholarly should be based on the depth and breadth of the originality, the research, the analysis, and the impact on disciplinary and policy discourses — not simply on how it is produced or where it appears.
It is possible for a book, an article, and a talk to be deeply scholarly, and at the same time fully accessible to individuals of all intellectual backgrounds — from those with no formal education to those who have obtained the highest degrees in their fields. Work that achieves this, regardless of its medium, should be viewed as achieving a scholarly task.
We have tried to provide models for how this can be done through our own scholarship and through our collective work as editors of the blog Black Perspectives. But models are not enough. As an academic community, we must adjust our values to take advantage of a changing world that appears to be valuing and needing public scholarship.
The scholarly resistance toward public scholarship has run its course. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake is no longer for knowledge’s sake when knowledge itself is at war.
Knowledge seekers and producers cannot retire to their silos and expect their intellectual values or academic communities to survive. They cannot expect truth to survive by sitting on the sidelines.
Public scholarship is the lifeline. It can and will prevent the creation of a post-scholar America.
