Not long ago I identified intellectual “silos” in the fields of climate science and economics. The term refers to scholars within an academic discipline who do not communicate with one another. When one segment of a discipline doesn’t even read the prominent works of another, the discipline suffers.
What about history? In this post I will argue that history does have silos but what is troubling is not silos, but schism, that is, a “split or division between strongly opposed sections or parties, caused by differences in opinion or belief.”
First, silos. If you are studying the impact of the Anglican Church on England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688 you may not have much in common with the professor researching the twelfth-century Anasazi in the American Southwest. Your intellectual coterie is likely to be composed of other professionals in your field (e.g., British history in one case, pre-Columbian American history in the other). Continue reading “Silos and Schism in the History Department”
Last fall I discussed a debate over colonialism. Bruce Gilley, a political scientist at Portland State University wrote an article titled “The Case For Colonialism.” The reaction was so negative that the article was retracted and the publisher of Gilley’s forthcoming book decided not to publish it. [1]
The response was painfully unfair. Yet in spite of the retraction (the article was re-published in Academic Questions ) his argument sparked debate. The adversarial positions were made clear.
All too often in academia, however, one intellectual viewpoint simply ignores another.
In 1994, Joseph Stiglitz wrote the book Whither Socialism? [2] At the time, Stiglitz chaired President Clinton‘s Council of Economic Advisors; in 2001 he received the Nobel Prize. In other words, he was (and is) a leading economist. Continue reading “Intellectual Silos in Academia”
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Jay Schalin, director of policy analysis at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.
As a professional commenter on higher education, one of the phrases I encounter ad nauseam is “shared governance.” That is the concept in which the faculty, the trustees, and the administration are roughly coequal partners in higher education decision-making, each having dominance in its own sphere of activities. What makes this so annoying is that one of the common justifications used for it is that it is our “traditional” form of governing universities, and therefore any attempt to question it is out of bounds.
But is it really our tradition? Or is it something that was grafted onto another tradition of governance during the Progressive Era?
One of the bases for this traditional shared governance narrative is the claim that American colleges descend from the scholar-centered University of Paris, and therefore the origins of American colleges are as “communities of scholars.” Higher education historian Edwin Duryea, in his 2000 book The Academic Corporation: A History of College and University Governing Boards, claims that, “The Parisian model appeared in Oxford and Cambridge that, in turn, carried over to America.”1
The Economist has just published an article decrying the decline of history as an academic discipline.[1] Dwight R. Lee, a respected econonomist who is also known as a witty popularizer, offers a comment.
First, the excerpt from the Economist ‘s July 20, 2019, “Bagehot” column:
“Even as history itself has become more dramatic, the study of history has shrivelled. The number reading it at university has declined by about a tenth in the past decade.
“At the same time, the historical profession has turned in on itself. Historians spend their lives learning more and more about less and less, producing narrow PhDs and turning them into monographs and academic articles, in the hamster-wheel pursuit of tenure and promotion. . . .
“And historians increasingly devote themselves to subjects other than great matters of state: the history of the marginal rather than the powerful, the poor rather than the rich, everyday life rather than Parliament. . . . These fashions were a valuable corrective to an old-school history that focused almost exclusively on the deeds of white men, particularly politicians. But they have gone too far. Indeed, some historians almost seem to be engaged in a race to discover the most marginalised subject imaginable.”
Dwight Lee responds:
I don’t know much about what most academic historians do, but I suspect the Economist has described them pretty accurately, and I doubt there is much difference between the British and American variety. Furthermore, I don’t think I am all that biased in my view because my criticism applies in general, if not in particular cases, to academic economists.
I used to say that if someone asked me what they should do to acquire some broad information about economics I would tell them the last thing they should do is take a college economics class, with exceptions of course. What I would suggest is to read some books by journalists who are not overly ideological and who have the ability to write well. For example, The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley; Knowledge and theWealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery by David Warsh; and Keynes and Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics by Nicholas Wapshott. And let’s not forget Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt and “The Petition” and other works by Frédéric Bastiat. All these authors are journalists who learned some economics. (Also there is Common Sense Economics,[2] to which a journalist I know made a huge contribution.)
[1] “Bagehot: The End of History,” Economist 432, no. 9152. (July 20, 2019), 24. (Behind a paywall.)
[2] Authors are James D. Gwartney, Richard L. Stroup, Dwight R. Lee, Tawni Ferrarini, and Joseph P. Calhoun.
